My art history teacher is English. On the first day, he made a big song-and-dance about how he “doesn’t believe in learning art history from a textbook,” and thinks “midterms and final exams are crap for gauging one’s skills,” but that since both of these are required by our school, here’s the textbook I “require,” wink wink. And so on like that. You know, “I’m such an iconoclast! In England we don’t have these crazy rules! I chafe at the bridle of the American higher educational system!” Etc etc.

I’m giving you this background info on him because he does, in general, have a sort of chip on his shoulder about the fact that he currently lives here, in the US. Each class begins with a screed about the Current International Situation That We Have Caused, which, yes, I fully agree with him, but theoretically he could leave the US at any time. Which most of us cannot.

Anyway, I recently got back a paper in which I mistakenly claimed that an artist (Gauguin) was American. (It turns out that he was French. D’oh!) I don’t know why I thought/typed this; I don’t remember writing this down anywhere in my notes or reading it anywhere, so I must have just had a weird senior moment or something. (And of course my preemptory proofreading let it slip by.)

Apparently my error triggered some kind of CRAZY IRRATIONAL BRITISH HATRED in my professor, because this is what he wrote on my paper:

“Are you SERIOUS? Is this really where you think he came from? Typical! USA wasn’t even on the radar for artists at this time! Come on!”

And on the next page, when I brought up Henri Matisse, he wrote “Was he American too?!?”

Finally, on the last page, in his final comments:

“Aside from…and a HUGE GLARING HISTORICAL ERROR (sadly quite common among US students) this is a very good piece of work….BUT REALLY, Gauguin was American?! My daughter once told a friend of a friend here in the US that she was from England, which prompted the question ‘So what language do you speak there?’ Any relation of yours!?”

Ummmmm…I do believe that the man all but called me stupid. Oddly enough, I got an 88 on the paper.

Frightening what my comments would have looked like had it been a C paper, eh?

I’m so ashamed of my stupid mistake that I can’t even look him in the eye in class now, and work extra hard to ask intelligent questions. So I guess he’s actually goading me into working harder, but DAMN. It’s not just me, right? That’s pretty mean? Anyway, I had to share. It’s good for a laugh at this point.