Teaching Philisophy, Part I
I have decided to republish posts on my teaching philosophy, which informs everything that you read on this site, from my first site, Early Medieval Art.
Text-based disciplines develop close reading skills, but only a student who ventures into an art history class chances upon an opportunity to develop his or her close looking skills. These close looking skills include: the careful observation of detail; the precise recall of images no longer before the eye; the awareness of the scale of objects and monuments and their relation to the beholder through space; and the recognition of patterns and of differences. These skills form the foundation for art historical study and should therefore inform the teaching of the traditional art history survey.
One develops attention to detail simply by slowing down the looking of the students and developing their patience with visual material. Practice in visual recall may be incorporated into a class by naming a previously-studied image and asking the students what they remember about it before showing it for comparison purposes. A tape measure provides the best tool for the development of the appreciation of scale. The careful selection of images – for example, showing corners, floor-to-ceiling views, and people standing within a space - and the presentation of an image in a church with the image’s location highlighted on a plan of the church or a detail alongside an image of the whole with its location highlighted cultivate spatial awareness.
Slide: Image and Location and Spatial Awareness
Slide: Relation of Detail to Whole and Spatial Awareness
Finally, the traditional slide comparison enables the recognition of pattern and difference. Power Point reduces the scale of two projected images; details therefore become essential.