I love art history. I find it endlessly fascinating, because it encompasses just about every aspect of human existence. I realize that not everyone–not even, necessarily, other artists–are as enamored of art history as I am. So, it was gratifying to hear a friend mention that she’d been watching the BBC’s How Art Made the World on PBS. We had a brief discussion about human vs. animal perception, idealization (e.g. the Venus of Willendorf vs. the Kritios Boy), and the flow of artistic conventions from the Egyptians to the Greeks (Greek Kouros and Korai vs. Egyptian sculpture).
It was incredibly cool to watch her get it, and to see the sparks fly and the synapses connect. Folks, that is why art history is such an amazing thing to study. A good teacher can forever make a positive influence on the way his or her students view and interact with their world.
There are also bad teachers, who make their students want to hide under their desks and cry. Class, meet Professor StuffyPants. I managed to make it through two semesters of survey and one of Medieval before giving up on him. At the end of it, I felt like I deserved some sort of medal for perseverance. With profs like him, it’s no wonder that my fellow art students weren’t very interested in taking more than the bare minimum of art history classes.
He did a disservice to a huge number of students by disrespecting their intelligence and generally acting like a jackass. He had the opportunity to inspire hundreds of kids–art students, no less, who ought to have been an easy sell–but he wasted it. His students would have been better off with him telling them to go home and watch PBS, instead of attending his lectures.
red paper boat 
