I bet this is true: The endless art in French antiques could make the most minimalistic person become a hoarder.
Everywhere you turn at a French brocante, there is something chipped, gilded, hand-carved, or gloriously worn down to its bare wood. It takes zero effort to fall in love with the accidental beauty of things that tumble to a brocante.
Which brings me to a memory about art, perfection, and my daughter Chelsea.
Years ago, when Chelsea was a senior in high she had to take an art class. I use the words had to very deliberately, because art was not her forte.
She was a straight-A student, and she was genuinely terrified that Art—of all things—was going to be the class that ruined her GPA.
Sometimes I look at my daughter and shake my head, wondering how in the hell she came out of me. Worrying about an art grade would have been the absolute last thing on my mind at her age.
Anyway, the first couple of grades she got back were worse than she imagined. One afternoon, she came home, slammed her books onto the kitchen table, and let out a sigh that shook the chandelier.
“I don’t understand!” she said, completely exasperated. “I worked so hard trying to create art, and I get this minimal grade. Meanwhile, my friend just put a piece of paper on top of her binder on the way to school, and as she was riding the bus, she just let her pencil jerk around every time the bus stopped, started, and turned. She didn’t even do anything—the bus did all the work—and she got an A!”
Now, I couldn’t help Chelsea with her science, or her math, or chemistry, or Latin, or Greek. Those subjects might as well have been written in Martian as far as I was concerned. But when it came to art? Oh, this was my moment. This was finally my chance to shine and show her that her mother actually had a functioning brain cell or two.
I sat her down and gave her my grand, poetic speech. I told her that art wasn’t about creating the perfect, neat assignment. It was about being expressive, being creative, and letting it flow from you rather than being controlled by you. I explained that when you experiment with different mediums and ideas, and stop trying so hard to make something—that is when true art happens.
I felt like Picasso giving a masterclass at the kitchen table.
That night, for her next art project, Chelsea took my advice to heart. She grabbed a piece of paper, slapped a bunch of glue all over it, scribbled some random stuff across the page, and tossed some things on top. It was an absolute creative, thoughtless mess.
She turned it in and got an A.
When she came home that afternoon and tossed that graded masterpiece onto the table, she looked at me deadpan and said, “I’m sticking with math. It’s reasonable.”
I couldn’t even argue with her. After all, not everyone can appreciate the fine art of a bumpy bus ride—or a perfectly ruined piece of French brocante.
And that is why I am a hoarder of the down and out art at the brocante.
Leave a Reply