Reflective Essay: Art History And Impressionism

In my point of view people often separate academics and the arts, believing that people often lean towards one or the other. I was among those people until I enrolled myself in AP Art History, where just its name itself disproves the statement above. It’s a common misconception that in order to truly understand art you must be an artist yourself. However, Art History fulfills the analytical side of an individual along with the admiration of artworks. With Art History’s unique combination I believe that teaching this subject would fulfill the intellectual mind by giving satisfaction both academically and artistically.
Because Paideia is only a week long it would be impossible to teach the whole course of Art History within its time span therefore, I would use my time to educate students on my favorite art history time period, Impressionism. I believe teaching Impressionism specifically is beneficial to the Reed community because most artworks around this time require much analytical thinking due to its high use of symbolism.

Also, many artists at this time based their artworks on Parisian lifestyle in the 19th century. The students would then be exposed to a specific moment and place in time, allowing them to use the artworks to better understand the culture.
While enrolled in AP Art History I found that all artworks required 5 main components in order to truly understand the artwork: subject matter, function, context, meaning, and style/visual analysis.

By analyzing an artwork through this lenses the students would be exposed to their perspective, their classmates’ perspective, and the artist’s perspective. As intellectuals it is essential for an individual to explore many perspectives and I believe Art History allows people to do so. When teaching about an artwork I would inform the students of all the artwork’s components, leaving meaning last. Students would be given enough information for them to create their own meaning for the artwork, therefore creating many different perspectives for them to analyze. Only after sharing their perspectives I would expose them to the artwork’s meaning according to actual art historians. Through this method students would be able to gain multiple

perspectives.
What would separate my Art History Impressionism class from any other is my style; I hope to make it more interactive instead of the more common lecture style. History can be thought of as a very factual subject where the point is to memorize facts but with art history not everything is certain because no one can put himself or herself in the same mindset as the artist. Paideia is all about fulfilling the mind, body, and spirit and I believe that by teaching Impressionism students would be able to achieve the goal of Paideia. The multiple perspectives exposed would enrich the mind. Exploring the variety of anatomy and body form through different artworks will satisfy the body. Lastly, by allowing students to truly admire the beauty of an artwork with an overall understanding of it would fulfill the spirit.