The Idiot

“‘Well, look,’ said the visiting artist finally. ‘Your composition in the drawings is…okay. I can be honest with you, right? But these paintings seem to me…sort of little-girlish? Do you see what I’m saying?’

I looked at the pictures he had spread out on the table. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see what he meant. ‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t so long ago that I was a little girl.’” 

Selin is faced with direct criticism for the first time since coming to Harvard. Ironically, the older man, a visiting artist, is teaching a class about recognizing and opposing social norms and systems that impose certain ideas of what good art is. However, it seems that he, too, is part of the system as he judges Selin’s work by the generally white and male canon of “good” art, which has no space for a young girl’s worldview. Selin, however, despite her desire to be liked by others, can easily look through the criticism and see that it is nonsensical. Students come to college to learn, and if she were already an experienced artist, she would not need to take the class. Furthermore, it is unclear what is innately wrong with a “girlish” painting, aside from not conforming to the canon.

“I didn’t have a religion, and I didn’t do team sports, and for a long time orchestra had been the only place where I felt like part of something bigger than I was, where I was able to strive and at the same time to forget myself. The loss of that feeling was extremely painful.” 

This quote explains, to an extent, why Selin often agrees to go along with other people’s suggestions even if she does not agree with them. As an only child growing up in a one-parent household, it is important for her to feel part of something bigger. For many people, such a sense of belonging is achieved through religion or sports.