[Reprint] Illuminating Another “Me” — Interpretation of Lionel Messi’s Works

Thanks to group leader Zou Yan­fang for orga­niz­ing this post! The con­tent includes pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions, emails, and on-the-spot notes from this study ses­sion, mak­ing it quite chal­leng­ing to orga­nize. It may seem a bit messy, but as you slow­ly under­stand it, you’ll prob­a­bly find some insights. ^_^Orig­i­nal address:Illu­mi­nat­ing Anoth­er “Me”——Interpretation of Lionel Mes­si’s Worksauthor:Red Mud Study Group This study ses­sion was held after the stu­dents had sub­mit­ted their home­work enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly in the ear­ly stage.

Dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion work:

1. Yao Jingjing’s inspir­ing com­ments
Matthew’s Dream began with a chance encounter with art and music (a muse­um vis­it), where he found a home for his dreams and spir­it. The most bril­liant sen­tence in the book is the last one: “His largest paint­ing now hangs in the muse­um.” When asked about the title, Matthew smiles. “The title?” he says as if he had nev­er thought about it before. “My…”
Dream”. Indeed, Matthew’s works hang­ing in the muse­um are based on his dreams. This is one mean­ing of dream. Anoth­er mean­ing is that art is a bridge con­nect­ing Matthew’s real­i­ty and ide­al dreams.

Through­out his­to­ry, many great works of art have emerged from dreams, inspi­ra­tion, pas­sion, a rev­e­la­tion. This is the unpre­dictabil­i­ty and mys­tery of art. Art has the pow­er to pen­e­trate deeply. Once some­one falls under the spell of art, per­haps their world (as Matthew’s) becomes com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from that of ordi­nary peo­ple. This book dis­cuss­es art and music. It was the first one I picked up from a list of 18, and it res­onat­ed so well with our top­ic yes­ter­day. It seems every­thing is orches­trat­ed. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing…

2. Teacher Ajia’s Poet­ic Inter­pre­ta­tion

This is the orig­i­nal text from Lion­i’s pic­ture books, the orig­i­nal text from some of Lion­i’s books I’ve trans­lat­ed. I’m used to typ­ing out and print­ing out each pic­ture book before trans­lat­ing it. Words feel com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent when sep­a­rat­ed from the pic­tures. For exam­ple, Antho­ny Brown’s words are only par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing when paired with the pic­tures, but Lion­i’s words seem to stand alone, form­ing a poet­ic alle­go­ry.

3. Huang Jian­ping’s com­par­a­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of Afo and the Cuck­oo

In 1959, at the age of 49 and at the peak of his career, Lionel Mes­si planned to retire at 50 to pur­sue a more cre­ative life, mov­ing from New York to Italy. It was then that a serendip­i­tous event led him to his future career. Lionel Mes­si, now a grand­fa­ther, was tak­ing his two young grand­chil­dren home by train. To ease the bore­dom of the long jour­ney, he tore a few col­or­ful scraps of paper from a near­by mag­a­zine and made up a sto­ry for the chil­dren: Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low. Thus began his first pub­lished chil­dren’s book.
Over the next 35 years, Lionel Leo wrote/illustrated more than 40 chil­dren’s books, four of which won the Calde­cott Medal: *Inch by Inch* (1961 Calde­cott Hon­or book), *Swim­my* (1964 Calde­cott Hon­or book), and more.,
Fred­er­ick (1968 Calde­cott Hon­or book), Alexan­der and Wind-up Mouse (1970 Calde­cott Hon­or book).

Lionel Leo is a mas­ter sto­ry­teller. His books tell chil­dren about many seri­ous top­ics such as shar­ing, coop­er­a­tion, main­tain­ing indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, peace, human rights, etc., but there is no moral preach­ing in his books, because he always uses cute ani­mal images to impress chil­dren all over the world, mak­ing them feel that his books are first of all fun and inter­est­ing. As for the pro­found truths con­tained in the books, I believe that chil­dren will slow­ly expe­ri­ence them through­out their lives.

Lionel Leo Lion­ni’s books cov­er a wide range of sub­jects. Hav­ing wit­nessed and per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced the rise of fas­cism in Europe, and as a mem­ber of an inter­na­tion­al anti-fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion (main­ly com­posed of intel­lec­tu­als and artists), his strong advo­ca­cy for peace and human rights is often reflect­ed in his sto­ries. For exam­ple, *The Alpha­bet Tree* was writ­ten dur­ing the Viet­nam War; *Tillie and the Wall* was pub­lished eight months before the fall of the Berlin Wall; and *Nico­las, Where Have You Been?*
It talks about over­com­ing prej­u­dice. It’s fair to say that every one of Lion­i’s books deserves dis­cus­sion, but due to time and space con­straints, I’d like to focus on the first Lioni book I read, and my favorite, about the lit­tle field mouse, Alfon­so. Before dis­cussing Alfon­so, I can’t help but praise Aji­a’s trans­la­tion. Alfon­so is tru­ly spot-on, cap­tur­ing the play­ful­ness of the field mouse while also high­light­ing the Bud­dha-like state Alfon­so has attained. The orig­i­nal name is Fred­er­ick. Could you share how you came up with the trans­la­tion?

In a pre­vi­ous email, I men­tioned the impact that Ah Fu had on me, and I’ll repeat it here to avoid a sense of inco­her­ence for first-time read­ers. I remem­ber the open­ing of the story—everyone was busy work­ing, only Ah Fu, the field mouse, was laz­ing around in the sun. It imme­di­ate­ly remind­ed me of a text I learned as a child, “The Cuck­oo.” The cuck­oo in the sto­ry, like Ah Fu, leisure­ly enjoyed the sun­shine while every­one else worked in the sum­mer. How­ev­er, because it had no food stored for the win­ter, it froze and starved to death in the cold win­ter. I thought, just like our Chi­nese teach­ers, for­eign writ­ers teach chil­dren to study hard from a young age to avoid freez­ing or star­va­tion when they grow up (this is how my teacher sum­ma­rized the main idea). How­ev­er, the sto­ry’s end­ing was com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed, leav­ing me filled with envy and resent­ment: enjoy­ing the sun­shine and beau­ti­ful scenery in Chi­na would lead to star­va­tion, but in Amer­i­ca, you could become an artist! From then on, this new con­cept of pre­serv­ing sun­light and col­or was deeply engraved in my mind and had a pro­found impact on my life.

By com­par­ing Fred­er­ick the Cold-Weath­er Bird to Fred­er­ick, I’m not say­ing that all Chi­nese peo­ple think like the Cold-Weath­er Bird, or that all Amer­i­cans or West­ern­ers think like Fred­er­ick. Nor am I say­ing that most peo­ple in the sub­sis­tence stage are like the Cold-Weath­er Bird, or that most peo­ple in the afflu­ent stage are like Fred­er­ick. In fact, every coun­try and every social class has both types of peo­ple. Dur­ing a gath­er­ing at the Nation­al Day hol­i­day, I talked to my Ger­man friend about Fred­er­ick, and she said that it was also her favorite. I then told her the sto­ry of the Cold-Weath­er Bird, and she imme­di­ate­ly said that she was a Cold-Weath­er Bird type. She said that the food stored in her refrig­er­a­tor was enough for her whole fam­i­ly to eat for a week at any time. She could­n’t stand hav­ing enough food at home for only one or two days, and she always had to make full prepa­ra­tions in advance. There­fore, dif­fer­ent coun­tries and dif­fer­ent social class­es have both the “Cold-weath­er bird” and “Afoeti­da,” which actu­al­ly rep­re­sent two dif­fer­ent ways of life, name­ly, From­m’s “pos­ses­sive” and “sur­vival” ways of life. The pos­ses­sive way of life wants to pos­sess everything—to get every­thing in advance and have every­thing under their con­trol, the so-called “Pre­pare the future” (a phrase that Tiger Mom always uses); while the sur­vival-ori­ent­ed way of life is more con­tent with what they have. They val­ue the present and try to enjoy the moment as much as pos­si­ble, rather than turn­ing every moment into prepa­ra­tion for the future and los­ing its inher­ent mean­ing.

I must admit that I’ve always been raised and thought like the cuck­oo: As a child, I dili­gent­ly exer­cised self-denial, for­go­ing sun­light and vibrant col­ors to avoid freez­ing and starv­ing in win­ter. After grad­u­at­ing from col­lege and enter­ing the work­force, I worked even hard­er to secure a bright future. As a moth­er, I pre­pared my chil­dren for their own futures to avoid a cuck­oo-like fate. It was­n’t until I turned 40 that I sud­den­ly real­ized that both the dread­ed win­ter and the bright future lie in a tomor­row I can nev­er reach. This cuck­oo-like sense of urgency led me to neglect the present, turn­ing every moment into a prepa­ra­tion for the future, com­plete­ly ignor­ing the very exis­tence of the present because I only focused on future goals. With­out today, how can there be tomor­row? If we live our entire lives for tomor­row, then we’ve nev­er tru­ly lived. We might as well learn from the lit­tle field mouse, Afu, and live as much as pos­si­ble in the present moment. If stor­ing grain and nuts seems fun, then join the effort and save them. If such labor is bor­ing and you’d rather sit qui­et­ly and admire the sun­shine and col­ors, then ful­ly enjoy the moment, with­out dwelling on whether you’ll starve in the win­ter. Afu impart­ed to me a non-cling­ing mind­set: ful­ly savor the sun­shine when you can, and embrace the cold win­ter when it arrives, com­pos­ing poet­ry for every­one. This is not the usu­al cling­ing or entan­gled mind­set: enjoy­ing the sun­shine while wor­ry­ing about star­va­tion in the win­ter, then regret­ting not work­ing hard­er to store more food and instead focus­ing sole­ly on enjoy­ing the sun­shine. In this sense, Afu was a high­ly accom­plished Zen prac­ti­tion­er. No won­der many regard this book as a yog­ic prac­tice. In fact, it’s not just for yogis, but also for Bud­dhists and all prac­ti­tion­ers of all tra­di­tions who desire to live in the present moment.

To all those who love Alfred the Field Mouse, while you’re busy “stor­ing win­ter food,” don’t for­get to take a break and enjoy the sun­shine and beau­ti­ful scenery before you. Don’t always make stor­ing sun­shine and col­or a beau­ti­ful goal, wait­ing until this job is fin­ished, until your annu­al salary reach­es a cer­tain lev­el, until the chil­dren grow up… No one knows what will hap­pen when that time comes. We always think that the good life has not yet begun, but in fact it is already fad­ing. The only thing we can grasp is the present moment.

4. Yang Qinghua’s shar­ing
Shar­ing the Eng­lish ver­sion of LEO’s pic­ture books: FREDERICK, FISH IS FISH, INCH BY INCH, PEBBLES.

5. Wang Liyan’s shar­ing
I real­ly enjoyed the inter­pre­ta­tion of “A Col­or of His Own”! These past few days, as a first-year doc­tor­al stu­dent, I’ve attend­ed sev­er­al open­ing cer­e­monies and ori­en­ta­tion activ­i­ties. With­out excep­tion, these activ­i­ties empha­sized the impor­tance of pub­lish­ing papers, espe­cial­ly in core domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al jour­nals like SSCI and SCI. It felt like the entire uni­ver­si­ty, from the depart­ment to the spe­cif­ic major, was remind­ing grad­u­ate stu­dents to focus on pub­lish­ing papers and com­plet­ing their dis­ser­ta­tions. Hear­ing this so much made me a lit­tle sad: why did­n’t any­one empha­size learn­ing to care for one­self, improv­ing self-cul­ti­va­tion; why did­n’t they empha­size learn­ing to observe soci­ety, care for oth­ers, and shoul­der respon­si­bil­i­ties to soci­ety and the coun­try? As a nor­mal uni­ver­si­ty (East Chi­na Nor­mal Uni­ver­si­ty), why did­n’t they empha­size learn­ing how to be a teacher, how to edu­cate stu­dents, and under­stand­ing the cur­rent state of edu­ca­tion in Chi­na?

6. Li Ling chose to share with the chil­dren

7. Dong Ying shares her thoughts after read­ing “The Alpha­bet Tree”
Yes­ter­day, I ran­dom­ly picked up this book, *The Alpha­bet Tree*, and slow­ly began to read it. The con­ver­sa­tion between two ants led to a very touch­ing, vivid, and inspir­ing story—each let­ter remind­ed me of each and every one of us, of each indi­vid­ual life. Ini­tial­ly, inde­pen­dent indi­vid­u­als could sur­vive on their own, just like peo­ple today, each liv­ing their own lives with­out the most basic equal com­mu­ni­ca­tion between peo­ple. When dis­as­ter strikes, the let­ters are blown away one by one, and what about peo­ple? Aren’t we the same? Some­times I think that human­i­ty only unites when dis­as­ter strikes. The say­ing “many hands make light work” only express­es a small part of the prob­lem. When all the let­ters hud­dle togeth­er, it still does­n’t have much effect; it’s a dis­or­ga­nized mess. Will it be eas­i­ly defeat­ed? Human­i­ty needs a mag­ic touch, and at this moment, Fun­ny Bug is the guide of these alpha­bet trees. Social groups need good lead­ers, not just those who incite; they should offer sug­ges­tions and have some orga­ni­za­tion­al skills. The let­ters formed words, and although the strong wind could­n’t blow them away, some­thing was still miss­ing. Then a cute cater­pil­lar appeared. The pink cater­pil­lar was adorable, but I don’t under­stand why Lionel Leo always used such bright col­ors when choos­ing char­ac­ters to appear. I think it’s to attract atten­tion, but there must be a deep­er mean­ing. When the cater­pil­lar appeared, it offered advice to the let­ters: “Why don’t you put your­selves togeth­er to form sen­tences to express some­thing?” The let­ters formed some sen­tences, but the cater­pil­lar said, “you…”
The cor­rect guid­ance of “must say some­thing impor­tant” allowed the scat­tered let­ters to even­tu­al­ly form the sen­tence “Peace on earth and good­will toward all men.” The cater­pil­lar car­ried the let­ters away, and when the let­ters asked where it was tak­ing them, the cater­pil­lar replied, “To the pres­i­dent.” “To the president”—this is a phrase that evokes end­less con­tem­pla­tion. I look for­ward to fur­ther inter­pre­ta­tions. After read­ing the sto­ry, and reflect­ing on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, how won­der­ful it would be if there were such a men­tor to guide the peo­ple to approach protests and patri­o­tism ratio­nal­ly. Per­haps I read the right book at the right time; I feel that Lion­ni’s image has com­plete­ly changed in my mind. I love his paint­ings, I love his expres­sion. Every work is so clas­sic. Whether mean­ing­ful or mean­ing­less, I will con­tin­ue to read his works, one by one.

8. Teacher Ajia takes the risk of shar­ing “Girl with a Brown Paint­brush”

This is tru­ly a very impor­tant book. It’s eas­i­er for adults to com­ment on Lion­i’s work, but I’ve always been curi­ous about how chil­dren actu­al­ly receive it. This book gives us a very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.

For exam­ple, in the book “Alfred the Field Mouse”, the chil­dren in the book seemed to not care at all about Alfred’s seem­ing­ly “self­ish” behav­ior, accept­ed it effort­less­ly, and main­ly viewed it from the per­spec­tive of a friend.

From an adult’s per­spec­tive, it’s inevitable to wor­ry about gains and loss­es. For exam­ple, we see that Ah Fo is an artist and a poet, and we not only accept him but also fall in love with him. But what if Ah Fo is noth­ing? He sim­ply enjoys day­dream­ing, day­dream­ing, and col­lect­ing col­ors and words, but can’t paint or com­pose poet­ry? As a friend or rel­a­tive, would I still accept him?
I love poet­ry, but I can’t write it. Do I still have the right to be as dazed and idle as Ah Fu? — In short, the log­ic of adult real­i­ty is always dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy, haha.
Chil­dren’s under­stand­ing of Leoni seems to be more inclined towards hero­ism, ide­al­ism and roman­tic feel­ings.

9. Yao Jingjing once again shared that An Extra­or­di­nary Egg depicts the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a per­son who dwells in a poet­ic way: a lon­er; full of curios­i­ty; enjoys the process of dis­cov­ery; loves to explore and loves to think qui­et­ly in pri­vate space.
– As a dis­tinc­tion, most peo­ple, like Mar­i­lyn, are self-right­eous, con­tent with the sta­tus quo, and unwill­ing or afraid to take risks.

- After answer­ing what kind of per­son an artist is, the author also answers the ques­tion of what is the use of art: Jes­si­ca hap­pi­ly goes out to explore every day, enrich­ing her expe­ri­ences every day: she likes to pick up peb­bles that her oth­er two com­pan­ions think are noth­ing spe­cial, which led to her bring­ing back a croc­o­dile egg; she was play­ing under the water and was tripped by water plants, which led to a croc­o­dile sav­ing her life and the two of them becom­ing extra­or­di­nary friends; she likes to explore places she has nev­er been to, which led to her meet­ing the red and blue bird, and under the guid­ance of the bird, she slept in the open air and trav­eled under the stars all the way to find the croc­o­dile moth­er; she likes the process of dis­cov­ery rather than the result of pos­sess­ing her friends, so she does not feel lost when she leaves the croc­o­dile, but rush­es home to share her new dis­cov­ery with her com­pan­ions.

In her poet­ic habi­tat, the pro­tag­o­nist Jes­si­ca lives a rich and extra­or­di­nary life. Jes­si­ca pos­sess­es an artis­tic heart. What ordi­nary peo­ple con­sid­er ordi­nary peb­bles, to her, are beau­ti­ful in shape, tex­ture, and col­or. While ordi­nary frogs freak out at the sight of move­ment in the water, Jes­si­ca, drown­ing, remains unfazed, say­ing, “I’m fine.” When I read about Jes­si­ca and the alli­ga­tor’s breakup, I won­dered if Jes­si­ca was a lit­tle sad about her friend’s depar­ture. No, she was­n’t. She hap­pi­ly ran home, eager to share her dis­cov­ery with her friends. Heart­less artists nev­er have time for sad­ness or loss, their gaze and pace nev­er lin­ger­ing on new goals. Jes­si­ca’s life is ele­vat­ed by art, and the lit­tle alli­ga­tor, through a strange twist of fate, finds a home (per­haps a sec­u­lar pur­pose, too).
There are still some pre­pared mate­ri­als for you guys that I haven’t sort­ed out yet. When we get togeth­er at Red Mud, we can share about Lionel Mes­si and his works.

The study ses­sion began with a ques­tion from a child: “The sto­ry in Lit­tle Yel­low and Lit­tle Blue is so con­cise, and oth­er works by Leo Lion­ni, while telling sto­ries from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, why is he so cap­ti­vat­ing and has influ­enced so many peo­ple to cre­ate pic­ture books? How can we appre­ci­ate his work?”

Chil­dren imme­di­ate­ly rushed to answer. Some spoke from their own read­ing expe­ri­ences, say­ing that Leonie’s works encom­pass every aspect of life, like a fish being a fish, and Leonie being the eye. Through him, he has brought togeth­er a com­mu­ni­ty of “fish” chil­dren’s book cre­ators, who, under his lead­er­ship, brave­ly forge ahead. Oth­ers approached the top­ic from an artis­tic per­spec­tive, stat­ing that he was the first to incor­po­rate col­lages into chil­dren’s book cre­ation. He took every­day ele­ments and, while tran­scend­ing the mate­r­i­al, offered read­ers a fresh expe­ri­ence. Teacher Ajia recount­ed the sto­ry of Leonie’s cre­ation of Lit­tle Yel­low and Lit­tle Blue. Dur­ing a short train trip, Leonie used blocks of col­or torn from mag­a­zines to tell a sto­ry to his five-year-old grand­son and three-year-old grand­daugh­ter. The cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry cap­ti­vat­ed the chil­dren, and after care­ful edit­ing and pro­duc­tion, it became the clas­sic “Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low.” Leonie thus acquired a new iden­ti­ty: a mas­ter of chil­dren’s pic­ture books. Although not a pro­fes­sion­al chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture writer, this out­sider brings a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to those with­in the field. Leonie’s pic­ture book cre­ations appear unin­flu­enced by the tra­di­tion­al chil­dren’s book indus­try, and his rela­tion­ship with edi­tors is unique. Lioni is nat­u­ral­ly hap­py to tell the edi­tor what his next book might be based on, but no one knows the spe­cif­ic con­tent of the book until he takes the fin­ished book to the pub­lish­er. Lioni is very con­fi­dent that his almost per­fect cre­ations can sur­prise every­one, and in fact, it is always the case. The artist and design mas­ter even designed the font, and he always chose a very old-fash­ioned font (Cen­tu­ry).
(School­book), because he felt this type of print­ing font was the eas­i­est for chil­dren to read. The design­er had also metic­u­lous­ly planned the font size and pre­cise place­ment on the page. Peo­ple often talk more about Lion­ni’s paint­ings, but he was equal­ly metic­u­lous about his text. Edi­tors hailed him as the “Aesop of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” prais­ing not only the pro­found mean­ing of his sto­ries but also the con­cise, clear, and poet­ic nature of his writ­ing. While his pic­ture book text is eas­i­ly under­stood by chil­dren, it’s not in a tone specif­i­cal­ly for chil­dren; his sto­ries are for every­one. Reflect­ing on Lion­ni’s seem­ing­ly sim­ple words, I some­times feel they are quite old-fash­ioned, more like Euro­pean Eng­lish than Amer­i­can Eng­lish. His gram­mat­i­cal rig­or is exem­plary, while his word choic­es are high­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. He does­n’t seem to auto­mat­i­cal­ly choose com­mon words, but rather prefers words with a more pri­mal charm and sym­bol­ic mean­ing. Some stu­dents com­bined Leo Lion­ni’s biog­ra­phy with an over­all inter­pre­ta­tion of his works. Lion­ni him­self was a per­son with very broad inter­ests, enjoy­ing archi­tec­ture, sculp­ture, music, and dance. He drew inspi­ra­tion from var­i­ous fields and applied it to his chil­dren’s book cre­ations, result­ing in a diverse range of styles. Stu­dent Li Ling shared her expe­ri­ence of shar­ing his works with dif­fer­ent chil­dren. In a rur­al school in Yun­nan, Matthew’s Dream instant­ly moved all the chil­dren. Among the hear­ing-impaired chil­dren, they want­ed to touch the promi­nent col­ored blocks, espe­cial­ly when the beau­ti­ful dream was inter­rupt­ed, return­ing to the bleak real­i­ty, and then real­i­ty became beau­ti­ful again, due to the effect of tears and famil­iar music. Group leader Huang Jian­ping talked about her read­ing expe­ri­ence, say­ing it was relat­ed to her own expe­ri­ences, inter­pret­ing her­self, and dis­cov­er­ing anoth­er “self” in the book. Teach­ers at Hai­jia School said that after read­ing Fred­er­ick the Mouse in sec­ond grade, the chil­dren also cre­at­ed their own sto­ries, the most amaz­ing being “The Lit­tle Mouse Prac­tic­ing Mar­tial Arts.” Lion­ni’s nar­ra­tive is not con­tin­u­ous; even with­in a sin­gle work, the sto­ries, themes, and char­ac­ters are inter­con­nect­ed. Beyond cre­at­ing clas­sic books, Leo Lion­ni’s works also evoked famil­iar sym­bols in our lives, such as Fred­er­ick the field mouse col­lect­ing sun­light and “Lit­tle Black Fish.” While Lion­ni’s pic­ture books seemed avant-garde at the time, they now appear some­what old-fash­ioned. Yet, his work is mag­i­cal; each piece reflects him, a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of him­self at dif­fer­ent stages. For exam­ple, Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low can be seen as the dis­ap­pear­ance and recon­struc­tion of the self; Lit­tle Black Fish is the leader of the group; Cor­nelius is a trend­set­ter; Fred­er­ick is a mag­i­cal poet; and Matthew is an artist who dis­cov­ers him­self while dis­cov­er­ing the world. Works like *Alexan­der and the Wind-up Mouse*, *One’s Own Col­or*, and *Fish Is Fish* all tell a sto­ry of self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion… Upon clos­er reflec­tion, they are, to vary­ing degrees, reflec­tions of Lion­ni him­self. A stu­dent then dis­cussed the role of art: artists bet­ter under­stand the world, observ­ing it from an artist’s per­spec­tive. Chil­dren are nat­ur­al artists, able to see fall­en flow­ers trans­formed into “stars scat­tered on the ground” under the light. In dis­cussing “Let’s make rab­bits,” besides appre­ci­at­ing the move­ment and still­ness in the imagery, we also dis­cussed the role of shad­ows. For exam­ple, a real car­rot casts a shad­ow, and the rab­bit becomes a real rab­bit because of its shad­ow. Per­haps this is a metaphor, a point of tran­si­tion from one world to anoth­er.

The top­ic of the next study is the works of Hiro­masa Anno.