Say Yes by Kandi Steiner
The Art of Frustration
I spent the weekend trying to forget about our first project.
Angela and I took a day trip to Rome to explore, doing a tour of the Colosseum and having lunch in the courtyard of the Vatican. We got back to Florence late and spent most of Sunday lounging around the dorm room. By the time Monday rolled back around, I felt marginally better, and at the very least, I was ready to let go and “forge ahead,” as my roommate had said, to the next assignment.
“La Nascita di Venere,” Professor Beneventi said when he rolled in Monday morning, haphazardly slinging his briefcase onto his desk before he turned to face us. “The Birth of Venus. Tell me what you know about this painting.”
“It was painted by Sandro Botticelli during the Italian Renaissance,” I blurted out without thinking, without realizing that no one else was volunteering themselves to lay on the professor’s chopping block.
He nodded at me. “Indeed. What else?”
I swallowed, looking around the classroom at all the other eyes on me. I tucked my hands under my thighs before I met the professor’s gaze again. “It captures the birth of the goddess when she first emerged from the sea fully-grown,” I said.
“Is that all it captures?”
I frowned, mouth tugging to one side as I considered the question. “No. There are many interpretations, of course, but… I think Botticelli wanted the viewer to be inspired by the goddess, by her beauty and how she grew from the earth. Or rather, the sea.”
“I think it’s meant to arouse.”
All heads snapped in the opposite direction of where I sat.
To Liam Benson.
Professor Beneventi arched a brow. “Go on, Mr. Benson.”
Liam shrugged, running a hand back through his messy hair. “Well, she’s naked, for one.”
That earned him a chuckle from the class and a glare from me. I folded my arms over my chest, fighting the urge to scoff at the simple view of such a historically significant masterpiece.
“And you think the artist painted her nude to arouse his audience?” Professor asked.
“Not necessarily, but I think it’s naïve to think he had this…” Liam waved his hand in the air. “Hoity-toity, nose in the air, it’s about her earthly beauty intention.” He paused. “It was the Renaissance. Artists all over were pulling away from the Christian focus of the centuries before and returning to classical literature for their inspiration. I think Botticelli picked the goddess of love because that’s what he wanted to inspire. Love. And sure, that could mean romance or commitment, but at the very base of it, at the primal level — love is sex.”
More laughter filled the room, and I shook my head, unable to hold off any longer. “That’s a rather crude way to look at it,” I said.
Liam tilted his head. “How so?”
“To think that all love is is…” I swallowed, my cheeks aflame. “Sex.”
Liam smirked at that. “I didn’t say that was all it is.”
“She’s literally covering herself, a modest thing to do, not a sexual one,” I pointed out. “And the Hora of spring waits for her with a shawl to cover her up even more.”
“That’s one way to interpret,” Liam said.
I fumed. “That’s the way to interpret.”
“Look, I get that you’re versed in what scholars have come to say about it. But when I think about how I would feel painting that, I don’t think I’d be painting a nipple or curvy hips of a beautiful woman and thinking, ‘Wow, this is so divine!’”
The class laughed, and I pressed my tongue into my cheek to keep from saying a word.
“What I’m saying is that as a man or a woman, you see a naked person and whether you want to or not, your brain fires up all the chemicals that come with lust,” Liam continued, snapping his fingers to illustrate. “And I think Botticelli knew that when he painted this. He knew the women would wonder what it was like to have such full breasts, what they would feel like to squeeze, what the weight of them would be in each palm. What would it be like to be the goddess? And he knew the men would imagine themselves between her thighs, above her or behind her, the goddess of love crying out in their honor.”
I flushed even harder, but found my throat so dry I couldn’t argue with him this time.
“Okay, easy, Mr. Benson,” Professor Beneventi said with a smirk. “It’s an interesting viewpoint, but I challenge both of you,” he said, looking between me and Liam. “All of you,” he continued, addressing the class. “To really study the painting and think about the time in which it was created. Remember that it was rumored to have been commissioned by the Medici, so, is there a connection between the Christian ideology, as well as the myth of the goddess’s birth?”
He tapped the top of Liam’s easel as he walked past, and they shared a grin that made me fume even more. Again, it was as if they had this inside joke, as if Liam could do no wrong. We’d only completed one assignment, and already Professor Beneventi had decided Liam was a worthy student.
And I was predictable.
The professor went on to explain our next assignment, how he wanted us to go to the Uffizi and spend time with the painting, to feel it, and then to re-create our own interpretation of it.
I was too distracted to hear all of the instructions, however, because Liam was watching me with that stupid smirk on his face, like he’d won.
I glared back at him with the unspoken promise that he had not.
“Remember, this is your interpretation of the piece,” the professor said, leaning down into my line of vision as he walked by. He arched a brow. “So don’t get caught up in the urge to recreate Botticelli’s work. Make it your own.” He stood, then. “Trust me, it’s impossible to recreate, anyway. I’ve tried.”
The class was a chorus of chuckles, and then with the assignment given, we moved on to the day’s study.
I found myself strolling past The Birth of Venus even more than usual during my shifts at the Uffizi. I volunteered to stand next to it and answer questions from tourists, to give unprompted tours to those who were open to it, and the more I did, the more solid I felt in my interpretation of the artwork and what it meant.
What Botticelli intended for it to mean.
I read countless studies on the work, historic documents as well as modern analyses. Then, every night when I went back to the dorm room, I’d have a quick dinner with Angela before locking myself in my room for the night to work.
I decided to work privately this time, instead of in the classroom.
I wanted zero distractions.
And zero interaction with Liam Benson.
The week flew by in a blur of class, working at the museum, and painting until my eyes burned and my body ached for sleep. But when the following Monday morning rolled around, and I carried my canvas carefully across campus into the classroom, I felt as confident as I did tired.
I made sure to get to class early, ensuring I had enough time to set up the canvas and touch up anything that might have been affected by the cloth cover or me carrying it. My parents had always emphasized that if you were fifteen minutes early, you were on time. And if you were on time, you were late.
With that mindset, I figured I’d be alone, but there hard at work at his easel was Liam.
Working until the very last minute, yet again.
I rolled my eyes when I saw him, but didn’t pay him any mind after. I focused all my energy on setting up my station and preparing for the professor.
“How’d it go, Chambers?”
I stilled at the question, rolling my lips together before I rolled my shoulders back and down. “Fantastic. And you?”
Liam laughed. “I’ll let you know in about…” He checked his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes.”
I shook my head. “I see you took the assignment seriously.”
“I didn’t realize art was meant to be taken seriously. I thought it was meant to be felt, to be lived.”
I didn’t even entertain him with a response, especially when a few more students joined us in the room with their own canvases. I said my greetings and then unveiled my painting, sitting back in my stool to admire it.
Although the original painting was in oil, I chose acrylic for mine, mostly to capture the bright colors and fine brush strokes I wanted. Since my interpretation of the original had a strong foundation in Venus’s earthly beauty, I focused my painting on just that — her tie to the earth.
The sea raged behind her, a storm receding in the distance as the waters closer to the shore were calm and glistening in the sunlight peeking through the clouds. Footprints marked the sand and led to where Venus stood in the center of the painting, still wet, her hair dripping over her breasts and cascading waterfalls down the lines of her abdomen. She stared directly at the viewer with hypnotic blue-green eyes, and vines and flowers wrapped around her feet, ankles, and up her shins, as if the earth was already claiming her as its own now that she’d been born from the ocean.
There were no other humans or divine creatures in my piece, just her and the earth around her — a dense forest to her left, the calming beach behind her, and the storm that she was born of rolling away off the right side of the canvas.
The entire piece glowed, bright oranges and pinks and golds playing off the softer, deeper colors of blue and violet. And I spent most of my effort on the goddess herself, on the curves of her magnificent body and the exquisite detail of her face. She was smiling just a bit, just at the corner of her lips, her brow slightly arched. She watched the viewer with her entire body exposed, save for the wet hair covering her nipples, and the flowers and vines shielding her most private areas from view.
She was modest but confident, aware of her power, but humbled by the earth that gave it to her.
She was free.
And she was announcing her birth to the water and the forest and the dirt before offering herself to humankind.
Pride swelled in my chest the longer I stared at it, at what I’d created, and when the professor strolled in and tossed his briefcase aside like usual, I actually wanted him to look at my work. I wanted to watch him when he did.
And I was more confident than ever that I nailed the assignment.
“Ah, the sweet sight of a room full of exhausted eyes,” Professor Beneventi said with a smile. The class chuckled in unison as he continued looking around. “I’ve seen all of you working hard this week, and I’m eager to see what you’ve been working on.”
A shift of nervous energy came over the room, and when Professor Beneventi saw Liam still working on his canvas in the corner, he arched a brow and walked over to him first.
“Working until the very last minute, Mr. Benson?”
“I work best under pressure,” Liam said, his brows furrowed deep over his eyes as he painted. He stuck his tongue out just a smidge as he made his final brush strokes, and then he dropped his brush and threw his hands up like he was a contestant on a gameshow. “Done!”
The class laughed.
I didn’t.
Professor Beneventi didn’t look too amused either, but he humored Liam with a smile before rounding the canvas to stand behind him.
For the longest time, he didn’t say a word, just let his eyes wander the length of the canvas as one hand idly stroked his salt and pepper beard. I watched him for a reaction, for a hint of what he was thinking, but nothing came.
And when I glanced at Liam, he was watching me.
Those dark eyes of his stopped my heart in my chest, the silence deafening in my ears. He tilted his head, like he was trying to figure me out and was coming up empty handed.
And then, the bastard winked at me.
I cleared my throat, tearing my eyes away and looking at my own canvas until the professor clapped his hand on Liam’s shoulder.
“Well done, Mr. Benson,” he said simply, to which I couldn’t help but react to with a dramatic drop of my jaw. Then, Professor Beneventi leaned down to where only Liam could hear, but since I was watching so intensely, I read his lips. “Now, imagine what you could do if you actually applied yourself.”
He squeezed Liam’s shoulder, and Liam nodded in understanding, and then the professor stood and walked to the next student as Liam turned back to his work. His smile had slipped, though, and the way his brows furrowed, he almost looked disappointed rather than relieved.
I managed to pick my jaw up off the floor, and when I did, I felt my heartbeat come back to life in my chest, in my ears, and all the confidence I’d had before blew out the window on a warm summer breeze. Nerves rushed in to fill its place, and I stared at my painting, trying to see what I’d seen in it just moments before.
Now, I only saw everything it lacked.
I saw the imperfect brushstrokes on the clouds, the way I’d misinterpreted the lighting in one corner of the canvas, the way Venus stood a little too close to the foreground, the way I hadn’t really done anything different than Botticelli, other than change up the scenery and take away the other people who surrounded her.
I knew before the professor even got to me that I’d failed.
And all I could do was sit and wait for him to confirm it.
“Ms. Chambers,” the professor said when he was standing in front of me. He offered one of his rare, warm, genuine smiles, clasping his hands behind his back. “How do you feel about the piece you’ve created?”
I swallowed, but did my best to hold my head as high as I had when I first walked in that morning. “Proud. I think I captured my interpretation with elegance.”
“Well, then, let’s see it,” he said, rounding the canvas to stand next to me.
Everything inside me wanted to squeeze my eyes shut and shield myself from his critique, but I forced myself to watch him, instead. I wanted to see how he looked when he viewed what I’d created.
Just like he did with Liam’s, he took a long time dissecting, rubbing his chin and letting his eyes wander in every direction. I watched eagerly, hope filling my chest the longer he examined. Maybe it wasn’t terrible. Maybe I was right. Maybe I’d done it.
But after a long while, the professor sighed, looking around the room before he angled his back to the rest of the class and leveled his gaze with mine.
“This is exquisite work, Ms. Chambers.”
I blinked several times, wondering if I’d heard him right, but the biggest smile bloomed on my face of its own accord. “Thank you, Professor.”
He nodded, and then lowered his voice. “It’s exquisite, but it’s lacking in everything your first assignment was.”
My smile melted like an ice cream cone under the August sun.
“I understand the approach you took, the earthly beauty you were discussing with Mr. Benson last week. And as I said, the color, the brushwork, the lines and the detail… truly beautiful. But I don’t feel anything other than admiration for your talent, which, as contradicting as it might seem, is not the purpose of art.”
I frowned.
“It’s not about what you can do, how perfect your skills are. It’s about what you felt when you created, and what the viewer feels when they lay eyes on it. There have been millions of perfectly executed pieces of art over the centuries that we’ve been walking this earth, but only the great ones stick with us long after the artist passes. Only the ones that sink its teeth into us and hold us captive, that stay with us long after we view it, that we can recall just by closing our eyes and remembering the way it felt to stand in front of it.”
As he spoke, I had a dozen images come to mind, photographs and paintings and sculptures that I knew I’d never forget no matter how long I lived. I remembered the first pieces to inspire me, and the hidden gems I’d discovered on my own.
And he was right.
I couldn’t recall the line work or the use of light or the blending or the consistency.
I could only recall the big look.
The whole painting — and not as it was executed, but as it made me feel when I studied it.
“I want you to give this another shot,” Professor Beneventi said as he stood, tapping the corner of my canvas. “Take your time, and try to look at this from another perspective. It’s the birth of Venus, Ms. Chambers. It’s your view of that momentous event. I want you to really think about that. I want you to tap into how it makes you feel, and how you would want others to feel, if you were the sole artist responsible for capturing the moment to live on in history. And if I may offer some advice?” he added. “You need to get out and live in order to understand the emotions you’re trying to create. Let go of this desire to be perfect.” He shrugged. “In art, that hinders success more than it contributes to it.”
I could barely manage a nod to let him know I’d heard him before tears pricked the corner of my eyes. I knew I shouldn’t feel ashamed, but I did. I knew crying wouldn’t do anything but embarrass me further, but I couldn’t stop the emotion strangling my throat.
I was nothing short of numb for the duration of our lesson, and as soon as the professor dismissed us, I gathered all my belongings and fled the room before anyone else.
I left my painting and Liam Benson’s questioning gaze behind.