Understanding

       It's amazing what you can learn when you read between the lines. Right now, I'm taking an Art class at my University, and I learned a thing or two in that class that I never thought I would. As one of our first assignments, I was supposed to read the first chapter in a big, boring looking textbook called "The Visual Dialogue". I just about started falling asleep from hearing the title. The first chapter was titled "Art Appreciation and the Aesthetic Experience". It went on and on about mankind's drive to create images and such, from architecture to cave paintings and so on.

        Eventually, I came upon a part of the text that discussed ways that people react to art. Sometimes artists use methods, images or things that are unfamiliar or unorthodox to us to try and communicate their ideas. It discussed that oftentimes, when viewing art, people were much more comfortable looking at pieces that were more traditional or that used methods that didn't seem wild or crazy or foreign to them.

        As part of the assignment, after the readings I was supposed to go to the University's museum of art. While there, I was supposed to pick out two different art pieces--one that I was comfortable with, and one that I was uncomfortable with or just didn't quite get, and I was supposed to do a critique on them. Basically write about my thoughts, feelings, observations, etc. on the piece. Bear with me here, I'm getting to my point.

        While I was meandering through the museum, I was actually a bit surprised. Very much like the textbook had discussed, when there was an art piece that I didn't really understand or that used techniques that were foreign/weird to me, I was much less comfortable with it. Often times I would even just walk past such pieces, not even giving them a second glance. The thought came to mind--do I ever do this on a greater scale? If there are people, ideas or simply new things that I don't understand or are foreign to me, do I simply ignore them? Walk past them, metaphorically speaking, without looking any deeper?

        When I did the second part of the assignment, and actually went to a piece that I didn't understand (even just wanted to walk away from). I sat in front of this piece for a while, and looked long and hard at it, trying desperately to understand. I found that after some time, the piece started to make sense to me--I didn't feel the urge to ignore it anymore.

        Could the same apply to, for example, people? I firmly believe so. People, ideas, anything that is different or foreign to us. And a lot of times, when we sit down and just try to understand someone instead of making hasty judgments, we'll find that we're not all that different after all.

        Amazing what you can learn from an Art class, isn't it?





Images from 
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/textbooks.jpg
http://attackofthecute.com/on/?i=1902