Louis

30 Oct 2008

Having come in to the class only in week 4 I felt a bit overwhelmed at first, but that is partly my own doing and not necessarily the course itself. I’m pretty open minded about art, but have never previously studied art itself, but I think of it in the same way as contemporary classical music, of which I have a keen interest in. I’m happy to remain open minded and despite how ever wacky a piece of visual art may come across, the process of discussing a particular work is something I find more of a harder task (as with music). It’s incredibly difficult to find the words and/or the means to express just why you think a certain work is good or bad. Personal taste will probably be my biggest battle, in that I will like something I see but never really grasp the know-how of how I should go about explaining to people why I appreciate it. How do you discern between the good and the bad and then convey this to your peers?

However, after this week’s class I feel a lot more confident about how I will approach this course. Although I do echo the sentiments expressed by others in class discussion and through the journals in which a few people have said they find there is too much art to talk about and use. To deal with this I’ve come up with an idea of maybe picking three major French cities and looking at the websites or information from the Syndicat d’Initiative/Services Culturels etc and focusing on the work of artist in each city. This way I guess I’ll be able to concentrate my research in a better manner, but I know I’ll get sidetracked by other artists work from different places, but that’s not too much of a bad thing really, it is only week 5 and it’ll be beneficial to my learning to haphazardly stumble upon a previously unknown artist.

Group work has been fairly inspiring so far, everyone seems keen to explore their own personal ideas and goals for the course, with each member keeping a strong emphasis on the fact that we’re doing this collectively. We’re meeting again later as a full group so I look forward to seeing what will happen there. The blog is looking pretty good so far too.