An Art Lesson

Lately, Bennett has been asking about the State of Liberty. I can't remember how his curiosity about her began, other than I know it started when we were sans internet for those few days. He wanted to see a picture of her so that he could figure out what a Statue was. (Sidebar: he calls her the Statue of Livery. Cute!)

We finally have internet and we showed him her picture tonight - again. This started a discussion about statues in general. Some questions: Why does a statue have a crown? What is in her hand? Where is she? What's that red thing? (Fireworks in a 4th of July shot) etc. We decided to look up photos of other famous statues. The first one that came to mind was Michaelangelo's David. Of course, "Why is he nekkid and the Statue of Livery is not?" "Where is his crown?" "Why he not holding a flame?" Okay - we decide to try another statue. This time, The Thinker. And then we needed to show him a female statue, so we pulled up Venus de Milo.

Big mistake. "Where her arms go, mama?" "Why her arms broken, mama?" We talked about Venus de Milo and her broken arms for at least an hour and a half. He was distracted through three stories, potty time AND brushing his teeth by that darn statue. GARNET! I decided to explain her broken arms with this story: You see, Bennett. Venus de Milo was created nearly two thousand years ago! That is a very long time in the past. You know how we've talked about the things we did yesterday being in the past? Venus is also from the past, but even older. Kind of like Daddy-o! (grins) Anyway, when Venus was finished, the artist needed to move her from the studio where he built her into the art gallery. They didn't have cars or fancy packaging back then, so he just loaded her into his cart and pulled her behind his horse. The road was very bumpy and they hit one bump too hard and she fell over, which broke her arms. "Didn't that hurt her mama?" No, baby squirrel, it didn't. Because remember, Venus de Milo isn't a person. She's a statue, she's made of stone. And stone sometimes breaks . . .

Anyway - I had to retell that story about twenty times, likely more. He worried himself serious over that statue and her broken arms. Unfortunately, we were trying to get him to fall asleep when he was worrying about this. He wanted and tried his darnedest to get to sleep in our bed, but I stood my ground. I'm very pleased that by being gentle but insistent, he stayed in his bed and there were NO TEARS! Hallelujah. Granted, my great idea was to talk about how Venus was really just a picture in his head and he needed to think about other pictures in his head. "Bennett, you're in control of the pictures you see in your head. Do you remember how Ernie (of Sesame Street) sings a song about imagination? Do you think we could use our imagination to think of a different picture?" "Sure, mama. Let's take Ernie to Old MacDonald's Farm." "That's a great idea, love bug."

Of course, that meant that I had to make up a seriously long and involved verbal description of what we were seeing on Old MacDonald's Farm, but it worked. Beanie fell asleep in his own bed by his own self.

Now - artsy folks: tell me how I can talk to him about art without freaking him out about the bad things in the world? He has shown us some serious empathy and we want to make sure to develop that without scaring him too much. He's curious about a lot of grown up things and I don't want to discourage the curiosity, but I want to make sure the art he experiences is age appropriate. Help!

And also - what's the real story behind Venus de Milo's arms?