So far, in ART 1010, I have garnered a significant amount of knowledge in the history of art, the conceptual side of art, and even theories by other artists/philosophical thinkers of art. Nevertheless, one of the concepts we were introduced to so far is the Banking Model. The Banking Model is a theory/term created by Pablo Friere, a 20th century educator and philosophical thinker. This term, seen depicted in Friere’s work, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, basically envisions students as containers in which knowledge is stored by the teachers in the classroom. Friere uses the Banking Model in order to critique the approach used in the educational system, in that students should be able to express themselves within a classroom just as much as the teacher should, being that they would be able to use the knowledge attained from the teacher and mix it with their own knowledge in order to gather a better understanding of a certain concept. That brings us to Friere’s concept of Critical Pedagogy.

Critical Pedagogy is a concept that builds itself hand-in-hand with the Banking Model. However, the slight difference is that Critical Pedagogy critiques classrooms and pushes for students to have a tenfold increase in their own independence within a classroom. Furthermore, Critical Pedagogy inspires students to question and challenge “domination” within the classroom. The reason for this is because Friere believed that students do not have freedom of thinking, and are even oppressed within the classroom. So much so, that in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Paulo Friere stated, “Education is suffering from narration sickness…”.

Formal Analysis is a type of visual description of Art that we learned about in class. Specifically, formal analysis is not only about describing what one sees in and of the artwork, but it is also about getting down to the nitty and gritty parts of the artwork, and describing specific traits within it. To elaborate, there are 7 traits we look for when using Formal Analysis: historical context, line, space, mass, scale, color, and composition. The last mentioned trait, composition, deals with how the artist combines all aforementioned traits within their artwork and then produces a beautiful, finalized version of it. In fact, Formal Analysis is what I used when visualizing the works of art that were spoken about in class.

In specific, when analyzing Manet, Olympia, 1863/5, I noticed that a lot of dark and warm colors were used. Furthermore I have noticed that in terms of historical context, the older, black woman seems to be the maid of the younger, white woman. This is synchronous with the time period (1863) at that time. Finally, based on how eminent and bright the lights in the painting were, as well as the texture of the painting, it is easy for me to come to the conclusion that this must have been an oil painting. Nevertheless, Unit 1 has taught me a plethora of knowledge concerning art and its history, and has truly broadened my perspective/horizons when it comes to the philosophical eminence of art, as well.