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“Welcome, everyone, to an Introduction to Visual Art History. I’m Professor Jhin Khada and I will be teaching you this semester. For any questions you may have, you can contact my assistant Hwei.”
Ezreal quietly listened to the middle-aged man at the centre of the auditorium explaining what material the class would cover and how the class would be graded.
“Half of the grade will be on the written exam. In the last class, we will go over some questions from previous years. The other half will be on a group project. In pairs, you will visit an art museum of your choice from the list on blackboard. For the first part of this project, you will walk around with your partner and discuss what you see. You will then write a short report on what you discussed during your visit. Secondly, you will choose one work of art and present it in a short paper. Understood? Good, because I will not be repeating myself.”
Ezreal typed away on his MacBook Pro. He noticed brief eye contacts, nods, and smiles were exchanged between some student when the professor had said they would have to pair off. He sighed. Being the loner that he was, he hadn’t made any friends at the university yet.
“I have already made pairs,” Professor Khada continued. He went to the next powerpoint slide which contained the names of all the students taking this class, combined with a partner.
Ezreal searched for his name. Next to his was written “Kayn Shieda”. Not someone he knew, but to be fair, he didn’t exactly know a lot of people. He looked around, as if the name alone could tell him who his mystery partner was.
“As there are students from different courses taking this class, I made sure to pair you all up with someone from a different course. I think these combinations of different fields of study will lead to more diverse and interesting discussions.”
For the rest of the class, the professor covered prehistoric art, such as cave paintings and the Venus of Willendorf.
The rest of the day was uneventful, and Ezreal returned, exhausted, back to his dorm room. He made himself some dinner and watched some videos on youtube. When he was done with the dishes, he opened his laptop again and decided to send this Kayn an email.
Hello Kayn,
It appears that we will be partnered for the museum project for introduction to visual art history. Do you already have a preference for a specific museum?
Kind regards,
Ezreal
A week later, Kayn had yet to reply. Before the next class, Ezreal looked up his name on social media to see if he could find a picture. As it turned out, his partner had a public instagram page for his art. Most of the pictures were of the art itself, which consisted of rather unpleasant to look at paintings with heavy use of the colour black, and each post was captioned with lyrics from some band that had been popular in the 2000’s and of which at least one member had allegation of unsavoury behaviour come out in more recent years. Luckily, a few posts featured the artist himself, posing proudly next to one of his ghastly paintings. The most recent one from a few weeks ago, with the caption “And will you tell all your friends / You've got your gun to my head?”, showed a young man with long pink hair and an eyepatch. Ezreal had no doubts that he would be able to spot this guy among his classmates.
Ezreal did not spot Kayn in the next class, which covered art in the Antiquity. Unless this Kayn had radically changed his appearance in the last few weeks, Ezreal could only conclude that he was skipping class. Ezreal resorted to trying to contact his instagram.
Hey Kayn, we’re both in the same class on art history and we’ve been assigned as partners for a project. Did you get my email? Kind regards, Ezreal.
A few minutes later, Ezreal’s phone pinged.
lolwut
Ezreal typed quickly.
Do you take Khada’s class on art history? - Ezreal
A few minutes later, Kayn replied.
yeah, i see ur email now. just pick a museum. i can drive.
Ezreal found a museum he liked, called the Glasc, and Kayn agreed. They arranged to meet next week Wednesday when Kayn would pick Ezreal up from the campus’ parking lot.
*
Wednesday noon rolled around. Ezreal was sitting on the curb, impatiently waiting. Kayn was more than ten minutes late already. Ezreal checked his phone, but Kayn hadn’t had the curtesy to let him know that he would be late or that he would show up at all. He sent a message inquiring about Kayn’s whereabouts and then put his phone back in his pocket. He gazed around the area. The sun was shining, and people were lounging around in the grass. In the distance, he could hear the jingle of an ice cream truck. A few seconds later, a blue truck with an ice cream cone on top pulled up. Ezreal kind of fancied a little treat now that the temptation was in front of him, but before he could decide to actually buy anything, a young man with striking pink hear leaned out the window of the truck. The man tapped the side of the truck.
“Get it, loser!”
Ezreal stared at Kayn and his vehicle of choice.
“We’re not seriously driving around in that!” Ezreal exclaimed.
Kayn laughed and pushed open the door. “Unless you feel like walking, yeah we are.”
Reluctantly, Ezreal joined Kayn in the truck.
“I think there’s still some ice cream in the back if you want some. Free of charge.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Okay, your loss.”
“Do you know the way?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
A small crowd of eager students had gathered next to the truck. Kayn ignored them and began driving off, the ice cream truck jingle blasting from the speakers. Ezreal looked back at the disappointed crowd who were staring at the truck.
“Can you at least turn the music off?”
“Don’t know how to do that, it’s not my car, I’m just borrowing it.”
Describing Kayn’s driving as reckless would be the understatement of the century. Ezreal was gripping the seat just to calm himself as Kayn was hazardously speeding through the town. Ezreal could see people coming out of building, cash in hand, waiting for an ice cream truck that just drove past them. If he could have melted like ice cream and disappeared into the ground at that moment, he would have. This was about to be the longest drive of his life.
“So, we just gotta go into the museum and comment on stuff?”
“And write down what we said. And choose one work of art and write a paper on it.”
“Huh. Good thing you’re prepared.”
“So, what are you studying?”
“Art.”
“That sounds cool.”
Ezreal waited for Kayn to ask him what he was studying in return, but the question never came.
“I saw on your instagram that you paint a lot.”
“Yeah!” Kayn went on to monologue about his creative process while Ezreal held on to the car seat for dear life.
After what felt like an eternity, they made it to the museum. Kayn’s parking was as questionable as the rest of his driving skills. They walked into the building and up to the ticket booth. They made their way along the path the museum had prepared. The tour started with an introduction to Glasc’s beginnings as the private art collection of a certain Renata Glasc, after who the museum was named, and its eventual evolution into the grand and respected art museum it was today. Along the regular collection, the museum also had temporary exhibitions and the current one was on science and art. They decided to walk through the permanent collection first and then finish with the temporary exhibition. Ezreal brought out his notepad and pencil to write down their conversation.
“That’s cool. That’s lame. I don’t like that one. That one’s boring. Mhm, that one’s fun.” Kayn strolled through the museum, providing nothing but the most superficial and subjective opinions.
“I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to be doing,” Ezreal said, trying to keep up with Kayn’s pace. Kayn barely glanced at the artworks and didn’t even take the time to read any of the information panels.
“Hey, slow down! What are you even doing?”
“Commenting on the artworks?” Kayn said, nonchalantly.
“But we’re not supposed to just give our personal opinions as if it’s a review, we’re supposed to make, like, an analysis of what we see.”
Kayn looked around. “And what do you see?”
Ezreal looked at the closest artwork, which was a painting with flowers. “That’s a painting in the impressionistic style. That’s a style from the 19th century-“
“Pff, boring. You’re just remembering stuff, man, you’re not looking,” Kayn interrupted.
“What do you mean?” Ezreal was taken aback.
“I mean what I said, you’re not looking. You’re in your own head, you’re not here in the moment,” Kayn answered.
Ezreal just stared back at him.
“Come,” Kayn said as he grabbed Ezreal’s arm. “Let’s go.”
Kayn dragged Ezreal into a big room with benches.
“Sit and watch,” Kayn ordered.
Ezreal didn’t quite get what compelled him to obey, but he did. He sat down and stared at the painting across from him. A dramatic baroque painting of some guy getting killed with very intense lighting. Ezreal looked at the painting until every detail of the image had been seared into his memory. He looked over to Kayn, who seemed to be observing him.
“So, what did you see?”
“Euh... I see the paint strokes, the composition, the lighting, ...”
“In other words, you’re still not looking.”
Ezreal stared at Kayn, baffled.
Kayn sighed and pointed in the direction of the painting Ezreal had been looking at. “Now, look at the ones looking.”
“The other visitors?”
“Exactly. What are they doing?”
Ezreal tried again. He observed how the other visitors were behaving. A few people paused to read the plaques with the name of the painting and painter and date of the painting, but most just sauntered from painting to painting. A minority of visitors had headsets with an audio guide or one of the museum’s guidebooks, but most visitors were just taking in the artworks as they were.
“Ya think most people are here analysing each artwork like some kind of history class?”
“But we’re here for a history class.”
“To write about our experience. And everyone of our unoriginal classmates is going to be all up in their own heads about the art. But let me ask you this. Why does all this old art matter anyway?”
Ezreal frowned. “It’s our culture?”
Kayn shook his head. “Art mattes because it matters to people. So, if we want to write about art, we gotta write about how people experience it, ya know?”
Ezreal leaned back on the bench, contemplating what Kayn had said.
For the rest of the afternoon, they sat back and wrote down the different behaviours of visitors they observed. Ezreal was shocked by the amount of people who merely glanced at a painting before moving to the next one, not even taking the time to read the plaque. Of course, many visitors still took the time to inform themselves more about a work of art, but as Ezreal and Kayn moved around the museum, it was noticeable that as they got closer to the end of the tour, fewer and fewer people were reading plaques.
“People get tired by the end of it, huh?” Ezreal commented.
“Information overload,” Kayn added.
Their visit came to an end, and they returned to the ice cream truck. As they drove off, the jingle blasted through the truck’s speakers.
“How come you know so much, by the way?”
Kayn shrugged. “I’ve got a good mentor.”
Ezreal glanced over to Kayn. Perhaps the guy wasn’t as stupid as everything about him would lead one to believe.