Toddlers and Modern Art

The Dancers by Henri Matisse

For Christmas, I bought B and M a set of art books, which I saw when we went to the Baltimore Art Museum last month. We started reading the Matisse book at bedtime yesterday. In case you’re wondering how 24-month-olds react to Matisse, here’s what happened.

As we’re flipping through the book and talking about each of the pictures, we came upon The Dancers. Mackenzie comments first. “Naked,” she said. B starts pointing out and naming body parts: “foot,” “belly-button,” “butt.”

And then M gets up and starts wiggling her little behind. B follows. Next thing I know, they are holding hands, jumping up and down and dancing on the bed for the next 5 minutes! 

What I love about this scene is just how natural and LOGICAL their responses were. If we allowed ourselves to follow our deepest instincts, wouldn’t we all be holding hands and dancing in front of this painting at the museum?

Here’s the lovely set of art books we’ve been reading: