There is nothing worse than finding out,
via late planning, that there is not enough time to do something.
I vividly remember devising my “revision”
timetable for my final examinations in college and discovering that I had to
“do” Jane Austen in the morning of one day and Charlotte Bronte in the
afternoon of the same day if everything was to be covered! It made for some fairly hairy, adrenalin
boosted learning – and to this day Austen’s novels tend to merge into one
great, exquisitely written marriage fest.
The latest late planning revelation is that
the presentations of my Making Sense of Modern Art have to be telescoped into a
fairly short period of time. A very
short period of time.
Let me explain.
A normal school timetable is usually built
around the concept of three terms. Given
the idiotic way that we have of finding the date of Easter, these three terms
are not of equal length but, for general purposes, the year is divided into
three.
I teach a course which is taught three
times during the year and I therefore assumed (fatal!) that I would be teaching
each of the three groups for a term.
Wrong.
For example: the present term ends with the
start of the Easter holidays on the 2nd of April, but my second term
course actually end on the 13th of February. That is officially, because there is a week
of trips before then starting on the 5th of February (which is a
Sunday) so the period of teaching actually ends on Friday the 4th of
February, or in my case on the 3rd of February because I do not have
a lesson on Friday. So, from a
comfortable view taking in April to illustrate all the finer details of the
course I now find myself trying to cram everything in before the start of
February!
This is my own fault of course because
there was a single line on one of the many documents I have which told me the
essential information about the length of the second term as far as taught
groups was concerned, but I relied instead on a vague idea of it being some
time in early March to keep me going.
I should follow the lead of Suzanne and
make sure that I have all my lessons dated and planned from the start of the
year! Shame on me!
Next term (oh, how often have I heard all
this before) will be different and I will fill in one of the many forms that
Suzanne has given me so that I will know exactly where I am going in terms of
the term time!
Meanwhile (and this is to be kept as a
close secret) I have completed the two years Mock Examinations papers that I am
supposed to mark and I am merely waiting for the class lists so that I can
enter the marks on the sheets.
Very dangerously I find that all of my
papers will have been sat before the end of this week and, if I keep up my
furious (in all senses of the word) marking rate I should be finished before
the rest of the Department start on their appointed tasks – thereby making me
available to “assist” my colleagues in getting the mountain of marking
done. This, with all due respect to
outmoded concepts of Christian Charity, is a bad thing. I am going to keep most mousy quiet about it
all and find other places in school to lurk so that my efficiency (in this
single regard) does not become generally known!
After school to Montjuic and the Fundació
Joan Miró for a visit to the exhibition which I declined to pay vast sums of
money to go and see when I was in London last.
This was a good decision as my teacher’s identification card meant that
I got in free in Barcelona!
The exhibition of an artist who is far from
being one my favourites, even in terms of Catalan art, was actually quite
stimulating. This was not only because
they had a reasonable selection from Miró’s early paintings, but also because
there were some startlingly large and effective canvases from his late work
too.
Although Miró is best known for his Surrealist
paintings and the later Abstract Expressionist productions I was most impressed
by the series of paintings centred around his parents’ home in Mont-roig. These are highly detailed and colourful
canvasses which are representational while the components of the landscapes are
simplified into a series of stylized decorative elements which make the
finished work more closely related to an exercise in graphic design than a
startlingly modern exercise in contemporary art.
It is a tribute to this exhibition that it
becomes startlingly clear that although the canvasses became larger and the
painted symbols became more abstract and rough that Miró never lost sight of
his fascination with the small details which make his paintings almost lapidary
in their effect.
Perhaps this attention to detail can be
seen best in the three very large paintings (267cm x 350cm) called “Painting on
White Background for the Cell of a Recluse I, II, III.” The white painted surface on each painting is
only disturbed by a thin, black meandering line. On two of the paintings the lines roughly
descends from right to left while on the “central” panel the line descends in a
just-off vertical way to a vague hook like curve at the end. To sit on a bench and look at these three
walls is a remarkable experience almost equivalent in power to the Rothko room
in the Tate.
Well worth visiting and a considerable
achievement on Suzanne and my part considering this is a Thursday of a week
which seems to have been ploughing its painfully slow way along for at least
the last twenty or so days. And we have
to go in to school tomorrow for an early start.
What dedication to culture we both show.
Tomorrow will see the rest of the classes
take the papers that I will have to mark, but I will have no time during the day
to get them started so they are going to hang over me during the weekend –
because I have no intention whatsoever of bringing the papers home to do.
On another point I have been informed by
Suzanne that the new date for the end of my second term class on Modern Art is
wrong and that I was right in the first place about when the bloody thing is
supposed to come to a conclusion. Back
to the drawing board and see what can be salvaged from my re-jigged plans. Can plans be re-re-jigged? And can I pretend that all this chaos is
exactly what I had planned in the first place?
One can but try.
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