Artful Deceit

The brighter face of the moon is a luminary. For thousands of years it has breathed its light onto the human race. It has become a symbol of wonder, of balance, of renewal. From the ancestral drumbeats of native tribes to the fine-focusing of telescope lens at its surface, civilization worships this face in all of its glory.

The other face of the moon is not so fortunate. With a surface more jagged than its luminary counterpart, with more craters and pits, it is blemished. And without a source of light, it is a symbol of the unknown, of the extraterrestrial.

Imagine two creatures, one that resides in the light of the moon and one that resides in the dark. They live, back to back, on the same planet, yet not once do they realize that the moon has another side. For one is bathed in truth, and the other in falseness. For I was false, and she was true.

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And there you have it, murmured Ms. M to the fifth-grade art class, the moon. She gestured once more at the artist’s depiction of the far side of the moon. The artist had drawn the dark side with phantasmic swirls of black paint, complete with spider-like creatures that infested its surface.

The class stared in awe at the swirls and the creatures as if they were hypnotized. Then my painting teacher, known as Ms. M, stepped in front of the painting to break the spell. If the moon was big, then her almost spherical belly was even bigger.

But even before she obscured the painting I had already packed up my supplies and was headed out the door with my deskmate. For I didn’t find any awe at the painting, and I certainly wasn’t hypnotized by it. It’s not real, I told myself. And the artist was a dumbass who didn’t even recognize that no living thing could survive on the moon.

Such were the art classes at my middle school. The term had started out all right with simple drawings of buildings and shadow sketches, but now Ms. M was literally out of her world. She would whisk in paintings two times a week of what she coined “interpretations.” Besides the fake moon there were clocks that morphed into floppy shapes and flying cherry blossoms in the spring. But these “interpretations” were just hoaxes. The vibrant or dismal color patterns, the inhuman qualities of faces, were all meant to deceive fifth-grade children from the reality. Hence it was my duty to shatter this illusion starting with my deskmate each class. To do this, I would no doubt have to clash with the nefarious Ms. M.

For nights at end I dreamed of being attacked by “interpretation.” The headless sculptures that Ms. M kept on her desk would jerk alive and start marching toward me, armed with the miniature wooden swords that the older art students had carved out. The spiders on the moon would lift up from their place on the painting and rush at me. Art was becoming a war.

One day I found what Ms. M called “interpretation” actually was. From then on it was clear who the enemy was: modern art. I made a note to myself never to let Mother buy any of the modern garbage. We would remain with traditionalist Chinese waterfalls or brush paintings of horses.

And then there was the clash.

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The ultimate assignment of the term of painting was what I feared: our own “interpretation.” One day she ambled around the classroom on her gluttonous legs with a brainstorming question. And so she hobbled up to me as well. What hue are you? Ms. M inquired. I looked into her radiant blue eyes and then down at my worktable. What do you mean? I responded.

Ms. M swept her fat arms across the tabletop to point at the color palette. This, she gestured.

I stared into her blue eyes again. What do you mean? I said again.

She pointed at the palette again, and by this point I wanted her to go away so I just said red. Ms. M ambled out the classroom toward the bathroom.

It began.

After I was sure that Ms. M was heading toward the bathroom, I sprung to the front wall where she hung her painting of flying cherry blossoms. Making dark swirls in the black paint of my palette, I armed my fateful brush. Wedged between my supple fingers, the brush arced itself across the teacher’s handpainted blossoms. I was the conductor of a plague of black that smeared over her work. All the blossoms were poisoned black, and excess paint began to drip onto the floor.

After the last stroke I turned around to see the faces of the entire class. In awe, and hypnotized. Then Ms. M walked in.

What are you doing? She murmured, staring at me with the inquisitive blue eyes not of a hawk, but of a dove. Her stare was almost mystical. Meet me after class, she continued.

For the first time, the other students left the art room first. After class, Ms. M led me into her office, an area that probably no other student had set foot in. I couldn’t decide if it was good or bad.

Do you like art? She whispered. Everyone should like it. She stared at me with the same mystical inquisition as before. As I withered in the shadow of her looming body, her words crystallized around my mind.

Everyone should like it. Ms. M flopped onto the chair, which sagged under her weight.

If everyone did, then it was possible that my deskmate did too. I gulped. No, it could not be. Yet it had to be. If that were the case, then my hue was not the red of a liberator. It was the red of deceit.

She stood up, and I trailed her back into the classroom. She pointed at the red cherry blossoms, now black and still dripping paint. Ms. M beamed at me.

Look, she spoke, interpretation. She let the word slowly escape her mouth.

No, I retorted, it’s…

Yes, she cut me off.

This was supposed to be my war against modern art. The black paint was supposed to represent my distaste for the hoax created by dumbass artists and served no purpose.

This is art, Ms. M repeated, and you are the interpreter.

I gulped, but at the same time I realized that I was wrong. Ms. M was turning my vandalism into my masterpiece. As if fighting against modern art… was modern art itself.

I slowly gathered up my supplies and walked toward the exit. For a moment, Ms. M and I registered a silent communication, a seismographic understanding of each other. For we were both, I shuddered, creators of art. For we were two faces of the same moon.