Wednesday, April 7, 2010

One of those Thinking days

Today was one of those thinking days; when you just can't stop thinking about, or maybe even analyzing, everything and anything.  But one of the things that came to mind was directly related to classes.

I have two majors - Spanish, and history of art.  I noticed today that I have an completely different attitude towards the two subjects.  And let me generalize Spanish to languages in general.  When I learn languages, I enjoy the process of learning, grasping, and understanding it like no other.  I learn a word and I want to repeat it a million times.  I hear a word, and I love the anticipation of looking through a dictionary, about to find out the meaning.  I am fascinated by every new tense.  And even though, the ultimate goal is fluency, knowing a fourth of a language or half a language is no less exciting.

With art history it is different.  Art history is a subject that I want to know as a whole, with all its intricacies and implications.  I want to look at a painting and be able to tell all of its influences, imitations, purposes, ETC.  With every new artist, I want to compare it to all related artists.  There is always a discussion going back and forth between artists, and I want to be able to enter the conversation at any point.  Maybe that's just a characteristic of studying any history; you cannot understand all of it untill you know all of it...

No comments:

Post a Comment