Month: January 2019

This post is not about an artistic moment, function, or artist but about their contribution to the youth and the importance of art history in a high school and college curriculum. As you begin to take art history courses, you begin to gain knowledge of the political, cultural , and economic context of the time the piece was created and sold. Just imagine how much knowledge you gain from knowing the background of one single artwork.

This helps students understand the why’s of today and how humanity has evolved, knowing where you come from and the roots of things are key for being a cultivated and exquisite person. This helps you analyze and see the world in a new light, to be introspective and extrospective. See the world from one’s point of view and understand and learn to see it outside our minds and in someone else’s view. I know this sounds as a skill that you can know or learn with out needing the specific subject of art history in your curriculum, but the subject develops a mindset that we create with all the background knowledge that is provided to us, you can develop a political stance to changing your artistic point of view.

Art history not only allows you to create a new mindset toward social, political, and economic issues, but teaches you to appreciate history in the right way. By right way I mean in the context in which it is supposed to be appreciated, for example, A professor at Brown University, taught Roman Art, and he took the students to chapels where they could appreciate the art pieces, these pieces are to be appreciated in the somber light of these chapels, how they were supposed to be in the past when they were created and sold, the chapel allowed you to add coins to turn on the light, but none of his students did because they knew better that that type of art should be appreciated in the darkness, just as it was in its time.

This is a quality that must be preserved and passed on through generations, but if the amount of students taking this subject subsides, since most are being pushed into STEM fields given the funding and scholarships available by Republican entities, then there is not going to be anyone that translates and passes on this beautiful knowledge that is the history of art and everything that has influenced its making, its location, and style.

Link:

Charney, Noah. “The Art of Learning: Why Art History Might Be the Most Important Subject You Could Study Today.” Salon, Salon.com, 16 Jan. 2017, www.salon.com/2017/01/15/the-art-of-learning-why-art-history-might-be-the-most-important-subject-you-could-study-today/.

My passion for art, has led me places where you see the unbelievable, this weekend where I went to Philadelphia, I found a place, called The Barnes Foundation, where its sole purpose is to demonstrate how Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who was a chemist, a writer, a businessman, teacher, and most importantly an art collector, arranged an array of early modernist paintings, his collection contains pieces mainly from Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and it is arranged with items that are Native American, Pennsylvania German, and paintings.

The most amazing part of The Barnes Foundation is that each room is not arranged by the movement, or by artist, you could find a room with a painting of El Greco which belonged to the Spanish renaissance right next to a painting by Cézanne, belonging to the Post-Impressionism movement; every room interlaced every art piece together, it was kind of like solving a puzzle you had to sit there and find a way the pieces were related, either by shape, content, function, context, or perspective, even themes played a role in the organization of these rooms.

What captivated me the most was the proximity to which you could admire and take in what the painting or the art piece had to offer, you could see the intricate brushstrokes by Vincent Van Gogh, in the Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin, or in his Portrait of Still Life. These iconic pieces are close enough for you to transport back in time, submerge in the world that the such renowned painter used to live in, experience what he or she was experiencing and see something that with his or her own hands and eyes have interacted with the piece, in times unimaginable and unreachable to the human being now a days.

From an “art history junkie’s” point of view, this place is the pit of wonders, the opportunity to appreciate the house of a man with such a passion for art and such an understanding stirs up feelings inside that are impossible to describe, this foundation is not only a demonstration of the largest European art collection in the United States, but an inspiration for the youth to seek cultural and artistic understanding, art speaks politics, art speaks science, art is everything and it should be in the lives of the youth, which why it is amazing that this collection is available to everyone in there Lower Merion Township in Philadelphia.

I can say this was definitely an experience of a lifetime, to be surrounded by art pieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Goya, Monet, and many more renowned artists that have spoken through their art that has surpassed the test of time.

 Here is a panoramic view of one of the rooms, you can see a painting by Pierre- Auguste Renoir(Impressionist) and Paul Cézanne (Post Modernist) next to a Spanish Renaissance painting by El Greco.