Art History and Appreciation

EDIT Gets a bit ranty.

So I just got home from my Art History and Appreciation exam and thought I’d talk about it, not how I screwed it up but the thought itself. Basically I have no idea how other country’s education system compares to Ireland’s and was wondering what the differences are. [if the link doesn’t work the exam hasn’t been uploaded yet]

In Ireland you enter secondary school ( I assume Middle School equivalent, really no idea ) at around 12/13 and spend 5/6 years studying your choice of subjects. Naturally I chose Art as one of my subjects. For the first 3 years it’s basically drawing practice and you have to make a project for your Junior Certificate exam ( a piece of paper that holds no real value (I got a B :D) ). Then for 5th and 6th year you start studying Art History and Appreciation once a week along with project work. Then you have the Leaving Certificate exam which earns you points based on grades and is what you use to apply for college/university.

The 3 sections on the art exam are Irish Art, European Art and Art Appreciation and you have to write one essay ( roughly 3-4+ A4 ) with illustrations ( sketches of what you’re talking about ) on each section. Each section has 6 specific questions and 1 vague question. You are usually expected to know 2 paintings by several artists, at least 2 Irish crosses, manuscripts, tombs, named metalworks etc. and for the Art Appreciation section a visit to an exhibition is the main topic studied although film can be studied along with architecture and design stuffs.

I want to know what you guys’ opinion is on teaching art, specifically history to students. Do you think it’s beneficial or a waste of time. Should it be mandatory as it is here or optional? Obviously I have no idea what kind of final exam the USA have or if it even focuses on specific subjects. I think it’s a really interesting subject and am glad to have had the opportunity to visit an exhibition, it was my first time and I thought it would be terribly boring. It was Gabriel Metsu BTW. Aside from making a complete balls of the exam I enjoyed the subject through the past 2 years.

If anyone’s interested I answered a question on the Metsu exhibition, the actual question was along the lines of “Do you think since so many images of artwork are available online that a visit to an exhibition is necessary to fully appreciate art. Describe 2 works by an artist to support your answer.” I was torn between a Masaccio and a Da Vinci question on European art but chose Da Vinci in the end since I only knew The Tribute Money by Masaccio and that was the work named in the question so I was stuck for a second. I wrote about Virgin on the Rocks and a Self Portrait by Da Vinci, the question was about his contribution to the development of painting so I bullsh*t about sfumato and triangular composition for three pages. For the Irish Art section I hadn’t a clue since our teacher went on maternity leave and left us with the densest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. The question was basically to describe 2 named metalwork pieces which I screwed up and talk about 2 more of our choice. I named one of them wrong and didn’t even bother attempting to name the second piece, just referred to it as “the second piece”. How I even get a fibula mixed up with the Broighter f**king collar I’ll never know but what’s done is done. I just realised I’ve rambled for too long. XD

So art history as a subject. Ya.

I was really hit and miss with my art history classes in college. I have an absolutely terrible memory for names and dates, so I tended to test extremely poorly. I don’t remember many specific dates or whatnot, which tended to be what they focused on, but have a pretty decent understanding for general trends and whatnot, which I find valuable. The courses, especially my modern art history course, introduced me to what are now some of my favorite artists, and I consider that the best thing classes like that can do for you.

Given my penchant for pissing off mods and not playing by their rules, this will probably get deleted or locked, but here’s my 2¢ on it.

There’s a company called Innocentive that crowd-sources scientific problems and provides cash incentives to those that provide breakthrough approaches or solutions. The company was started by a medicinal company that was spending millions of dollars on medical inventions that weren’t really panning out. The were stuck. They needed help. Common corporate philosophy was, and still is often, VERY proprietary when it comes to technological breakthroughs. When they reached out to the internet for a solution, they were taking a large risk by revealing their current work and the likelihood of having some random scientist come up with a solution seemed unlikely.

What happened was exactly the opposite. They received dozens of feasible solutions! The program was so successful that they used it for other problems, then eventually broke off into their own company. They still operate today, and lots of companies use them.

Why does it work? How is it that an outsider could come in and provide a fresh perspective to a problem that a company had dedicated millions of dollars to, recruiting the world’s top scientists?

The answer is that sometimes it takes a fresh perspective to create a breakthrough. It’s why traveling is so important for artists, for example. You need to be an outsider… or, at least, be able to invoke that way of thinking.

That’s a long preamble to say that Art History can be bad and good, depending on how you study it. If you don’t enjoy it but memorize the facts in order to nail your grades, it’s not going to help you. However, you can learn why the pieces you’re studying were significant… why they were breakthroughs… and what kind of person created them. That can provide you with insight into the type of person it takes to create those works.

Of course, no artist knows that they’re creating a masterpiece while they’re doing it. They’re just doing what they’re doing. Leonardo DaVinci wasn’t the DaVinci we know today while he was alive… he was just “Leonardo, that weird dude that lives down the way with all the junk in the yard.”

If you open yourself to the ideas you see, whether or not you fully appreciate it for its artistic merit, you will strengthen your ability to see and think about ideas.

Diversity is the source of inspiration and greatness; uniformity and order is creativity’s nemesis.

(Okay, mods, now you can flag/delete/lock this for not being appropriate or whatever.)