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.

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