My belief is that anyone can appreciate art. To me it doesn't matter if you have mastered stick people or make 8 foot oil portraits. Nor does your profession, age, or education level keep you from developing this skill.
Over the years several people have asked me, "Why do you like art history?" (Most of these being students.) Art Appreciation is a great class to teach, it gives me the opportunity to show my students why out of all my choices, I choose to specialize in art history. You might wonder what I tell my students, it goes a little something like this:
I like art history because it's subjective. Everyone can have a different opinion and that's ok! I strongly encourage opinions, the more the merrier. Textbooks are vast wells of knowledge, nonetheless they do not poses the only interpretations.
Then I give an example to help illustrate my point: Math has always been a difficult subject for me. Having those basic skills like adding in your head, knowing how to move decimal points and long division all prove important for daily life. However, I always felt that math put me in a box, right or wrong, answer or no answer, understanding or confusion.
Art history is no cake walk, but it is more than reaching the right conclusion or plugging numbers into a formula. The history is just as important as the art. Knowing the facts behind the artist's motivation are as significant as analyzing the colors used. Context, the social climate, the economy, the artist's background are all aspects to be studied in addition to the formal analysis of the piece.
I do not expect my students to fall madly in love with art after taking my class. Not only is that totally unrealistic, it's the opposite of my goal. I want students to be more open to artwork. I want them to look at a work of art, to discover what draws them in or why they dislike it. To instead of glancing and deciding they have no interest, to instead take 30 seconds and give it a second look. Then reading the wall text for further information, and you guessed it, to look once more.
This clip summarizes my teaching philosophy towards art appreciation and by extension art history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHCUoDf7KGA
Do me a favor, watch this video. ~Samantha
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