Rebeccah
Undeclared Major

Contemporary and Modern Art in Britain was the class I was the most apprehensive about. However, as the class progressed and I understood more, I started to be a little more open to it. Once we got into London, I was really starting to like a good amount of the art we were looking at. When we went through the Tate Britain, I felt as though I had actually learned something. As I stood at the door of a room, I would point out the painting across the room as a Turner, Stubbs or Vortisist painting. Looking at them after having learned a bit about the artists and the world in which they lived, I felt that looking at them meant a whole lot more.

The next day, however, was a tad bit traumatizing - we went through the Tate Modern. As much as I felt I had learned the day before, I felt equally out of place in the Tate Modern. The other traumatizing thing about the Tate Modern was that as art progressed it seemed to get more and more philosophical, asking the viewer to question some of the most basic questions about exsistance and perception of the world. It isn't as though I hadn't ask myself a majority of the questions before, as much I hadn't seen them asked in such a manner, and often new ways of asking the same questions can bring new doubts in areas that previously seemed to have solidified.

After my experience in the Tate Modern, I thought a lot and came to several conclusions. The first and foremost is that no matter what the art is saying, one can always find beauty in some form. So in figuring out the universal truth of beauty, I reaffirmed a lot of the philosophical questions that had been asked. However, even if those questions arise again, it doesn't matter except to make me a stronger person. If anything was learned in this, it is the power of the image to evoke emotions and thoughts, and how important art is to a society.

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