There were a lot of things for me to worry about before leaving the country in September to study abroad in the Netherlands for three months. I could have worried about my budget. I could have worried about homesickness. I could have worried about language barriers, navigation problems and stressful travel scenarios. But what I really worried about, even dreaded, was taking an art class.
All of us took art classes in elementary school and remember our grand finger paintings and create paper mache creations. But it isn’t common to continue art education during middle or high school in the United States, especially art history. And while some liberal arts colleges do offer art history classes as an option to fulfill core requirements, students can get out of this with ease by choosing another class that will provide the same credits.
Students who attended more artistic primary and high schools may have different experiences. In my case,attending so many schools that advocated STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) studies meant that my access to and perception of art history classes was slim. I always appreciated creative expression and artistic outlets but for some reason art in the form of painting, sculpture or architecture never appealed to me. It seemed boring, overinflated and unnecessarily difficult to understand.
After a few weeks in my Post World War II art history class, I’ve realized that I only had that perception of art because I didn’t have art history education in my life. I can’t believe I’m saying this but my art class is actually my favorite class, even on Monday mornings after just returning from an exhausting weekend trip.
Prior to taking this class, a painting or sculpture could not make me feel much of anything. This kind of art couldn’t move me emotionally like a song or a poem. Now, however, a painting by Francis Bacon can make me feel pained, tortured and empathetic. A feminist piece by Niki de Saint Phalle makes me feel motivated and incited to take action. I even understand Marcel Duchamp’s famous wheel on a stool ready-made piece. I know, I hardly believe it either.
It seems to me that art history education is revered as an integral part of the school system in Europe (though I can really only speak from experience in the Netherlands). The director of the program here at Kasteel Well let students know that she believes in order to have a proper European education, we must be required to take one art history course. She explained to us that our knowledge of art history would complement our knowledge of european history. Art, we were told, helps illuminate fact and bring it to life. We may not fully understood the implications of war by reading statistics about the poor economy or number of refugees but looking at a post-wwII paintings makes the implications pretty clear.
I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I sound a bit brainwashed. Without a class explaining the context of a painting, the proper interpretation and its intended implications, it can be hard to make sense of art. While touring the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, my teacher stopped the group in front of a Barnett Newman painting called Cathedra. It’s a massive canvas painted blue, meant to engulf the viewer in a tranquil rapture. The teacher told us that one patron felt strongly that the painting was not art at all and actually felt so enraged, he physically attacked the painting. I couldn’t help but think: if this painting made someone experience emotion so intense that they would attack a mounted canvas on a wall in the middle of a famous art museum, it must be pretty damn powerful.