28. Holy Days - Новые Годы

I was thinking what my next page should be about, and just at the right moment Victor sent me this drawing in an e-mail with the subject "Happy New Year!" - today is the Lunar New Year. 

I hope the letters are not real, because if they are, I would need to find out what they say.

Anyway, now I have a little cycle about multi-cultural celebrations in the holiday season. I would have called it New Year's celebrations, if it were not for Hanukah, but I think it still fits this cycle.

"The Year of the Dragon"

"Год Дракона"

Although Victor drew and sent "The Year of the Dragon" recently, he claims that it was not meant for the New Year. Or maybe it was sub-conscious?

"Christmas Tree"

"Елка"

Ironically, in the Soviet Union where the Russians got used to what was called "a New Year tree," people didn't associate it with Christmas at all, because any mentioning of religion was undesirable. The star on the top of the tree was not just a star, but a Soviet red star. In America, Soviet immigrants (including some Jewish families) keep celebrating the New Year's Eve with Christmas trees.

Although neither this not the next drawing has anything to do with it, I'll add that before I moved to America, I didn't even know what Hanukah was. Or, I guess, there may be some connection: even though Hanukah is a happy holiday, there were too much grief in Jewish history, hence - tears... I don't know if that's what Victor meant though.

27. The Challenge - 6.

For a long time I have neglected our game. The challenge continues: I offer Victor "themes" which are usually based on my day's impressions and events or just come up in our conversations. It is just there are always some other ideas for my weekly posts. So here are just a few of his recent responses.  The first one he sent simply because I went to the opera.

"Opera"

"Опера"

It's winter time. And for my class' Geometry project I assigned to construct a snowflake using a compass and a straightedge. So, naturally, my "assignment" for Victor was a snowflake. Of course, he had had one already:

"Snowflake"

"Снежинка"

Since I started talking about school again, I recalled this drawing that Victor sent me awhile ago, when I complained that my students cheated on a test. In Russian, he named it with a title where he merged together two words, something that he does masterfully: one that means "writers" and another that means "to cheat" or "to copy" (if "copywriters" were not a word, I could use it, probably, as an English equivalent, but its meaning is actually different). By the way, the hair and the beards clearly hint to some very famous Russian writers...

"Writers"

"Списатели"

And finally my favorite. I don't remember why, but I offered Victor a theme "Help." It's a pretty wide concept, it can be both abstract and concrete. In any case, I never know how he will interpret my requests, I am used to receive funny responses to very serious topics and vice versa. It is definitely not what I would expect, but, yes, it is about help, and I really like it.

"Help in Nesting"

"Помощь в Гнездовании"

26. Reversed Roles

Sometimes, when I look at Victor's drawings, they group together on their own, for various reasons. Often it's obvious: a common theme, like "Love" or "Fall" or "Angels." Less frequently it's just the timing or the way they were produced, for example, based on our so called "game." Sometimes it's much more random. For example, looking at his "Robot" that he sent recently, I recalled his old drawing "Delicacy" - these two definitely belong next to each other!

"Robot"

"Робот"

"Delicacy"

"Мировой Закусон"

But then I found several more that can fit the same idea, more or less. Actually, the next one was Victor's response when I offered him a theme "conscientiousness."

"Conscientiousness"

"Добросовестность"

"A Sheep and a Shepard"

"Овца и пастух"

I just noticed that in all of these, except the last one, animals are involved. But this is not the only reason the following drawing fits the least: even though we can still see reversed roles, but here we - humans - make this choice.  

"This happens often"

"Так бывает часто"

I am pretty sure that if I look at all of these drawings on another day, with another mood, I would combine them/understand them in some different way. This makes me wonder: what about real (professional) art critics who analyze artists' work? And how about all those people who read/listen to their analyzis of how an "artist wanted to depict in his painting..."? How much of it has anything to do with real intentions of the artist?