Throughout unit one of art, we talked about the introduction and the basics of art. We started off with the banking model. The idea that education is an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor is very much a true concept today. The teacher lectures and makes deposits and the students’ extent of learning is receiving and memorizing in order to get a decent grade. Therefore, thinking and creativity declines, and we simply become depositories for information without analyzing and discussing the data we are given. This is “banking” design of education, where all the students extend only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. This topic was significant to me because I aligned with what Paolo Friere discussed in “The Banking Model” because I experienced it first hand in high school and thought it was a horrible method of learning. I enjoyed the realization that this is a universal issue and not something that I alone disagree with.
Another topic I learned and internalized in class was the concept of formal analysis. I believe this is an integral part of understanding art. By using formal analysis, you are describing what is depicted in art not by simply looking at a structure or painting, but by interpreting and evaluating it. You would not understand the true meaning of what the artist is representing in his artwork if not for formal analysis. This idea is important to me because now I see art differently, and it makes me appreciate and understand it more.
In class, we used this to analyze paintings like the “Venus of Urbino” and the “Olympia.” We started off by looking at line, color, and focus. The lines on the woman’s body in “Venus of Urbino” are soft with dark outlines. The main color theme is red and brown. The background consists of vertical lines, which give the illusion of distance, making you notice the nude woman in the foreground of the painting. Before learning about analysis, I would have never looked at any of these components of the painting. I would have looked for a few seconds and moved on. However, all these components are the artist’s choice. Everything is intentional, and no detail is insignificant or not worth mentioning. In one of the readings we were given, the author used formal analysis for an ad for Dior handbags. The ad shows a well-dressed, pretty, and young woman holding the handbag. The background shows many large buildings in an upper-class neighborhood. The fact that they used a famous, gorgeous young woman in an area that looks quite rich makes the bag quite appealing. After seeing that not only art pieces can be analyzed, but everything around us can, I changed the way I look at the art in my environment.
Formal analysis and the “banking model” are two things we learned this semester that I really internalized. The “banking model” is very relevant to my life because it is something that I went through, so it’s a concept I am able to connect to. Formal analysis has given me a newfound appreciation of art and has shown me that all different components of art are connected and come together to portray the artist’s message.
