opinions

My senior year in college I took Art History 101. I loved these kinds of classes. I think I am the only person I know who enjoyed Western Civ!

On the first day of class the teacher put up a slide of this cave painting. Then she asked all the obligatory art teacher questions. And the students gave all the same old answers. "it looks as though the artist was wanting to represent what was important to him/her." and "the artist was trying to make a statement about hunting and the connection with nature" and "the artist was tying in the bird man and beast with some sort of phallic symbolism"

And then I raised my hand. I can't remember what her exact question was that provoked me to respond... but it had to do with that little bird. A very simply drawn outline of a bird or duck or something with an ODD looking line coming vertically out of its body. And I can't remember what all the other students hypothesized about in regards to the importance of the line. But I do know what I said.

"Is it possible that the artist just made a mistake? He/she started to draw a bird and then something else attached to that bird but stopped. Maybe they were just doodling or fooling around. Maybe its a sight gag that we can't understand? or maybe they just messed up."

The class started to snicker a bit and the teacher looked at me as if I had lost my mind. She said "No." that none of my opinions were right and that in fact she could WITH the UTMOST CERTAINTY tell me that I was flat out WRONG!

I argued back..."how can you tell me I am wrong? Shouldn't my guess be as equally viable as all the other guesses? I mean, we are talking about people who barely had a verbal language let alone the idea of art being sophisticated. It's not even a one out of a million billion ga-jillion chance that it could have been a mistake or a doodle? You are absolutely positive that it has some real important smarty pants meaning?"

She answered "Yes"....

To this day it bothers me that she dismissed my ideas. She was my teacher. If I was wrong she should have explained WHY and taught me where the weakness of my theory was. Or (and what I was thinking/hoping she would say) she should have given some props to my original idea... but neither happened and I never raised my hand in that class again.