My batch of 16 AP Art History students has been the most precious group of teenagers. I cannot gush enough about much I look forward to our class time; together and they are a family. Much of the flowering of this bond is an active font of questions and philosophical musings. This past week I taught my “Abstraction to Abstract” lesson which ends, appropriately so, with De Stijl. I tell each class that every student will be deeply, and individually challenged by at least one piece in my 20th Century Western Art Unit; I ask them to tell me when they hit “that” piece because I like to know. For some it is Fountain, for others The Portuguese, but many feel frustrated by Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow. One of my particularly chatty and philosophical students share these brief thoughts with me and I wanted to share them with you in turn:
I will come to terms with it, but I have my opinions on it. I feel as if it takes away from prior art and it upsets me. I don’t like that it has no meaning, but I understand it to an extent, I just don’t love how the art is communicated in the way it is “art”. It has made me question what art is even more than before.
JMF
P.S. controversially related to this topic is a powerful (yet disturbing) article by The Atlas Society “Why Art Became Ugly” I do a modified activity with this article but it is very much worth a full the read for adults. Note: you may not want to look up each art piece, some are really challenging…but that is the point.
