Death by Boicos

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Jeunes Filles au Piano (1892) at the Musee de L'Orangerie

It's almost 4am right now and I blame this entirely on Professor Boicos, but really I should be blaming it on myself. I've finally finished all my homework, so I feel a lift off my shoulders (is that the expression or is it chest? Seriously at 21 yrs old, I am still not fluent in any language), but then I think about the myriad of things I must do and do quickly -- find summer internships, coordinate mom and Aunt Emily's trip here, and do a bunch of errands and sort things out. Oh the joys of growing up.

So we have our first paper due in Art History tmrw. Our assignment was to pick an impressionist painting from 1800-1899 and just write about it -- no research, no biographical or historical information, nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. I actually enjoyed it a lot and it didn't take me that long to write it until it hit me that this was no ordinary essay. My professor-turn-night-time-art-gallery-owner is a connoisseur of art. He regurgitates dates, the names of artists' wives and children, purges locations of birth sites and native villages, and pretty much farts art (sorry it was coming). Light is not just light, it is sunlight. Farmers are not farmers, they are peasants. He is a fountain of knowledge and for me to beat him, I would have to be... A POOL of knowledge. A Beijing Olympic Water Cube Pool. So anyway, me calling Renoir a misogynist and saying his paintings of females are subliminal messages of encouraged domesticity were simply a 'my bad!' on my part and I had to go back to cross-check everything I wrote.

Furthermore, because we weren't allowed to use any additional research, it eliminated all prospects of filler info that happily fluff up essays. No tirade on the hometown of Renoir, what his mama's mama did, or how many children he had and what they ate for dinner. Quite the blasphemy I tell you. But, in the end, I really liked my essay and hopefully Monsieur Boicos does too. The End.

The man in all his glory

P.S. There is even a Facebook group on him. It is fittingly called "Boicos- man or god?"

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