Why Study Art History?

Art is used to describing beauty, skill, or value, which produces an aesthetic result.

There is no specific definition of art. However, between a unique piece of handmade sculpture, and a mass-produced, there's no clear line rather visually attractive item.

In this regard, it's essential to consider art as a means of pleasure and consider it one of the conditions of human life.

Thus, we can't fail to observe that art is a means of intercourse among human beings.

Art history is how we understand our past generations and their relationship to our present activities.

Art is one of humanity's most ubiquitous activities. As a historian, you will know about the precious and fundamental strand of human culture.

You'll able to talk and write about works of art from different periods and places.

You'll know how different generations had lived and told their stories.

Art history will widen your critical thinking and enhance your inner instinct. It helps you learn skills unique to art historians and visual arguments.

You will train your eyes in the skills of critical looking.

Art history is a unique course, and as a degree, it will prepare you for life and work in a way that no other course of study can.

It's merely an opportunity to look at 'beautiful pictures.'

As many people like to imagine, Art history is the study of all available subjects; all rolled into one. Art history is the broadest education you could get. It gears you with a vast array of transferrable skills.

However, composition, chemical, and technique analysis provide priceless information about the work of historical artists, architects, and sculptors.

To understand a work of art, beyond how it's mad, you've got to see it within its cultural context.

Understanding art history necessitates the study of philosophy, anthropology, politics, poetry, literature, design, fashion, anatomy, astronomy, chemistry, economics, and many more. In consequence, art historians are inter-disciplinarians.

Art history is ultimately the study of civilization.

Critical and necessary exercise in the preservation of human activity, with its mistakes and wisdom, defines art history.

Thus, without it, we're all blind to the path of human progress. We are in the era of ever-multiplying images that confront us daily. As a result, we are, in different ways, the most visually literate people to have ever existed on Earth.

Yet, while all of us "LOOK," few of us really "SEE." Anyway, looking and seeing are different activities. Looking is a permanent part of daily life.

Seeing is not only the eye but the mind and the heart. It encapsulates the body system.

Surprisingly, few of us are taught how to "SEE" to examine the images and spaces around us, define us, and manipulate us.

Art historians are the luckiest ones who get to learn these crucial acts of "SEEING." They sit in a darkened lecture hall or seminar room to learn.

Studying Art history challenge you to understand some basics of life.

It makes you consider time and space, the most important questions like 'What is art?' which means 'What does it mean to be human?' — Joyfully unanswerable.

Even, each question is worth asking, another part of the issue is this: what is it that unite all people, across cultures and centuries? Love certainly, but also struggle.

Today, art is the universal struggle to understand the pains and joys of life and death. It's the rite of living and reconciliation with the dead.

Across time and space are strikingly diverse; the human desire to explore, create, and the challenge is universal.

All in all, generation after generation, we struggle, and we create.

Admiring the creativity is the toss towards understanding one another. Art history provides space for all voices to be heard, including your own.

Here are five compelling reasons to study Art History.

1. Every image tells a story.

One of the most fun reasons to study art history is about the past. It doesn't apply to the image alone.

All artists work under a unique set of circumstances that affect their work.

Thus, illiterate cultures had to appease their gods, ensure family, and frighten their enemies through art.

Korean artists had powerful nationalistic ways to classify their art from Chinese art. Italian artists had to please either the wealthy patron, the Catholic Church, or both.

Modern artists strive to find new ways of seeing even during catastrophic wars and economic depression coils around them.

2. Art History Is More Than Your Imagination.

Art history is not about painting, drawing, and sculpture alone.

You'll be working across calligraphy, photography, architecture, mass media, performance art, video art, installation, and decorative arts like woodworking, arms and armor, furniture, ceramics, and many more.

3. Art History Hones Your Ability.

There's more to Art History than memorizing titles, names, and dates. Art History requires your critical thinking skill, ability to write well, and analyze.

Little paragraph essay will rear its head with alarming frequency. Grammar and spelling will become your best friend. You can't escape from citing sources.

These are excellent skills to have irrespective of your profession, and no matter where you want to go.

4. The world is Becoming More Visual.

There's much (visual) than stimulation upload on the internet every day.

If you're reading this on your computer, smartphones, tablets, or iPad, you own all there in reality.

In your pleasure, you can watch television, or video on the internet or play a video game. Most time, we put our brains to process immense amounts of images from when we wake till we fall asleep.

5. Art history is your history.

It's high time this generation know about our ancestors, the people who made us.

How did they look like?

How did they dress?

Where did they live and work?

Which god did they worship?

Who did they fight, and rituals did they observe?

Photography has been existed for over a hundred years. Films are not recent; digital images are newcomers.

If we want to see people that existed before this age (technologies), we must rely on an artist.