Painting didn't come easily to Nobel prize for Literature winner Rabindranath Tagore though he worked at it for a long time. He did however make a habit of turning his written mistakes, cross outs, etc into elaborate drawings and doodles as he wrote. "He turned struck-out words into ornamental motifs and sometimes linked the scratched out words on the pages of his manuscripts into an art-nouveau-like arabesque .....Victoria Ocampo who spotted these during his stay in Argentina as her guest was impressed and found artistic merit in them. "He played with erasures,‟ she wrote, "following them from verse to verse with his pen, making lines that suddenly jumped into life out of this play: prehistoric monsters, birds, faces appeared.‟'* Tagore went on to be recognized as a great painter, and was the first Indian artist to have artwork displayed around the world.
*Current Exhibitions Upcoming Exhibitions Past Exhibitions. "Rabindranath Tagore: The Last Harvest | New York". Asia Society. Retrieved 2012-12-18.As a way to acknowledge and reconcile our own inevitable 'mistakes and cross-outs' I think it would be great to collect them in the art room as the year goes by, or encourage other teachers to contribute, and have children choose 'a mistake' to use as a starting point for any type of artwork, depending on the materials at hand and the time frame. It could be the community scrap bin that kids turn to when they finish with something else or they could be distributed randomly and incorporated into paintings or collages, sketches, etc. imagine a whole display of artwork made from other people's mistakes or false starts. It sends a good message about upcycling as well.
Tagore 1861-1941
Tagore's own signature:
No comments:
Post a Comment