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It was a figure painting class, where you had a model, and [Robert von Neumann ] would wander around and he'd come up behind someone and say, "Well, what are you trying to do?" And if you told him what you were trying to do, he would then proceed to discuss this with you and suggest things that you might look at and ways in which you could improve what you were attempting to do, etc - never worked on your painting, never touched your painting but talked extensively about what you were trying to do.

Source: www.aaa.si.edu
It was a figure painting class, where you had a model, and [Robert von Neumann ] would wander around and he'd come up behind someone and say, Well, what are you trying to do? And if you told him what you were trying to