DD3006_01_Why you don’t like Art History!

Watching the video again, I couldn’t help but agree with its content.

Firstly,  I also feel that Art History is really not merely a linear timeline of artworks compilation but more of the interaction and influence and lives that are happening around those artworks. And the artworks, more than being prove that they really happened in the past, serve as some kind of message for the future.

It was also true that art tend to be biased and I personally feel that I remember and have tendency to be more interested into topics that I have known before. I agree that we might have been biased sometimes hence remembered incompletely.

In my opinion, a sad truth is that our current society, who statistically more illiterate and educated, might have the habit or tendency to be taking art for granted. The accessibility and convenience in finding art might have make our generation value art less. I am not talking about those who study or like art, it just based on my personal experience, I found that when I  share to others about Art History related (project-related or just interesting facts about some artwork), many of my friends will say that they have heard about it or something similar to that instead of being curious and wanting to know more.

A significant reason I could think of might be the internet that has enable everyone to know more about literally almost everything. Not saying that it is bad, I was just feeling that the access to art which was once a privilege for those of higher social status (esp in more indigenous group), or who were wealthy and more educated (esp in more modern context) has become something that is available for everyone and that might make it being taken for granted.

I don’t know, sometimes I wonder how will the civilisation in the year of, let’s say, 2500 AC see our generation. Will the only artworks left belong to those the very famous ones and those being documented and preserved properly while actually everything around us now are the works of art? How will our generation that has been saving their own records of art (i,e. life) through internet record be seen from the future? Will there be some kind of natural selection of art? Or will there be too much information that leads to some kind of ‘reset’ of art of the mankind? Or maybe… This kind of thoughts have been thought by those in the past as well… Maybe history really repeats……….

I don’t know… Well, I guess I don’t like art history because learning it somehow forces me to explore the ‘unknown’ and to face the things that is actually important-but-covered-by-daily-mundane-things-like-money,  and the messages within the artworks….. maybe sometimes it is better to not about know it. Sometimes.. (but keep learning about anything anywhere is a good thing, supposedly).

Video link: https://www.pbs.org/video/why-you-dont-like-art-history-y5lfur/

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