Le Risque Est Ça:

A few months ago, I was standing in front of a painting in a modern art museum. It was a simple painting, with only a few large geometric shapes scattered in a random manner across the canvas. I hated the painting. It was too simple. "Anyone can paint a few rectangles on a canvas" I said. I walked away.

Today, my opinion on how I look at "simple" works of art has changed. This wasn't just a random occurrence, though. This morning. I was sitting in French class struggling to understand the poem by Baudelaire that was placed in front of me:

L'Albatros

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipage

Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,

Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,

Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,

Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux,

Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches

Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux.

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!

Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid!

L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,

L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait!

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées

Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;

Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,

Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.

— Charles Baudelaire

I never understand a French poem completely the first time I read it. I still had to go find the translation on the internet to know everything. The poet compares an albatross among men to a poet in society. An albatross, majestic and graceful in the air above the ships at sea, gets captured and placed onto the ship's deck. On land among men, he is ugly and clumsy. His wings are trailing on the ground because of their immense size. The crew even poke at him and make fun of him. He says that the poet resembles this bird. High above, he "frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman," but when he comes down to earth, people jeer and mock him. His long wings prevent him from walking. 

I love this poem, but believe it or not, it has hardly anything to do with my changing of opinion. We began analyzing a phonetic chaismus in the poem "L'un agace son bec avec un brule-gueule". Our teacher explained to us that this line, and even this poem, took  hours and upon hours to construct. This isn't just something the poet pulled out of a hat. Someone then asked her if that was true for all works of art. She said no, but sometimes it is. It's not necessarily the amount of effort put into the work, but the thought behind it. Then, she told the class a (true) story that I never intend on forgetting.

A student walks into the testing room, ready to take his "Baccaloriate" for philosophy. The writing prompt was to explain the concept of a risk, or something of this sort. The teacher grading this student's paper was flabbergasted at first to find that the student's paper had nothing but 4 words written on it: "Le risque est ça:" ("A risk is this:"). The rest of the page was completely blank. The French teachers decided to look into his records to find out what kind of a student he was. He had an overall average of 17/20 (mid to high 90's in America) and he was particularly good in Philosophy. If he had been a bad student, the teacher would have flunked him. However, this student ended up getting an 18 on his paper. That's like getting a 5 on an AP exam.

Today, I learned a lot of things. I learned that ducks don't make good friends. I learned that Europeans respected (or at least tolerated) the social set-up of Brazilian cannibals in the 16th century. However, most importantly, I learned that an excellent artist can make simple art, and that this simple art was made for a reason. It was made to make the viewer think. Sometimes, you need to think outside of the plain, red rectangle on that canvas.