Reflections On Fundamentals of Art Inquiry

This week I reflected on my Fundamentals of Art Inquiry class and the progress I have made since the beginning of the semester. I expected this course to teach me about art history, which I really did not know much about before taking this class—even though I took many art history courses in my undergraduate years at UB, over thirteen years ago. I thought that I would learn about art history in this class and I am happy to say that I definitely have, mostly through the thorough textbook that was required for this course.

I still believe that “art is the expression of ideas, emotions, and experiences, in a way that other people can experience,” though now I say it more succinctly by saying “the visual arts are the meaningful expressions of ideas in forms that multiple people can experience.” All throughout the history of art, as I learned in this class, people have been expressing their ideas meaningfully in ways that other people can interact with, and it continues today.

I still appreciate Norman Rockwell’s realism and optimistic—if untrue—view of Americana during his lifetime, but this class has helped me to appreciate many other artists, especially conceptual artists like Marcel Duchamp and abstract expressionists like Mark Rothko. I think Mark Rothko is my “new” favorite artist because only in this semester have I been awoken to how he tried to evoke a spiritual experience beyond the physical paint on a canvas. Also, it has been very interesting for me to read about famous works of art and then walk into the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and see them there, like Rothko’s Orange and Yellow. Learning about the ideas behind the art movements like abstract expressionism—abandoning form in order to express ideas purely through color—has given me a genuine appreciation for them, which I did not have prior to this class. My other courses have also helped develop my appreciation for art that I did not understand before, but the textbook and videos for this class taught me the most out of all of the other classes I took.

Now that this class is over, I can say that I have had a wonderful experience taking an online course, I would do so again, and I would recommend this course to other people as well. Some people would choose not to read the textbook, but I would emphasize to them, as I suggest this course to them, that reading the textbook is crucial to learning from this course. I did not know what to expect from an online course when I first started taking this one, but I have been pleasantly surprised and as I mentioned above, I would happily take one again!

Until next time!