Art appreciation class difficult?

Question

I'm taking a college art appreciation class this summer. Is the class difficult? What's involved in the class?

Answer 1

Well, fortunately, I have not only taken Art Appreciation and Art History classes, I have also taught them!

There are various techniques that instructors use; however, one thing that is universal among them is that you must memorize artworks by name, artist, year of work, movement (if asked), and style. While this may sound difficult, you can alleviate this by getting a few good books on art (that is covered in this class, for instance) so that you can use your in-class notes to get the images listed and on hand for better memorization. Fortunately, you have the internet (which I did not when I studied art and had to buy lots of books that were quite expensive; I even broke down and bought the complete "Encyclopedia of Art" for $750 for all 15 volumes! Yes, $50 each which was a lot in 1975.).

You can set up, if your works of art are rather historical and not too modern (older than 5-10 years), a nice bookmark folder to save as many of the images used in your class so that you can quickly get to them. As a matter of fact, were I you, I would set them up as parts of the class that were used toward a test and have a number of bookmark folders beginning with Art I, Art II, . . . Art VI and such. This will help you to quickly organize your images and then go through them for each test and then quickly go through all of them for the final.

SUGGESTION: If you have a Macintosh, you can actually click on MOST of the image files themselves and save them to your iPhoto program. Then you can group the photos as well as write notes for each one in the lower left-hand corner. This is a GREAT way to see them as a whole ad then to look at each one by one as you do a slide show of each photo folder for each section of the class. You could print out the pictures with the notes (if you can afford the cost of ink!) as well.

SUGGESTION: Windows users must have some sort of inexpensive photo cataloging program like iPhoto and, if you do, let us know.

I really wish that I were studying Art Appreciation or History from the start as I would have a lovely collection in an iPhoto catalog right now. I actually bought color slides of artwork that have turned a hue of red. (Sniff!)

Anyse