Byzantium Fail.
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My medieval art history teacher is a lovely woman. She is a graduate student, and appears to be very knowledgeable in her field (secular medieval art, which promises to be delightful, once we come to it). Sure, she's a bit of a snooze, and the class is three hours and long and late at night and full of people who ask questions about why there are "lines coming out of Jesus' head", but it's medieval art! I get happy and shivery when I hear those two words together, no matter what the context. I was more than prepared to love the hell out of this class.
THEN CAME THIS WEDNESDAY.
Teacher, you fucked up. You fucked up badly. I understand that we only have this class once a week. I do. But gosh, I thought that that might, I don't know, urge you to make the most of the time you have. Apparently not! Apparently I am supposed to sit there in the dark while you spoon-feed me answers for the test, as opposed to providing, as your class description read, a survey of medieval art. This is a 500-level course. If I cannot pass the tests on my own, I deserve to fail.
So we spent the entire class on early Christian and Byzantine art.
...take a look at that sentence. Tell me what is wrong with it.
If you answered, "My goodness, Emily, it appears that your teacher, in a misguided attempt to conserve time, has lumped together two entirely different periods and attempted to pass them off as ~kind of sort of the same thing~", you are right, and please take a gold star from the box to my right. You cannot push these two eras together. You can certainly look back at early Christian art through the lens of Byzantium, or Byzantine art through the lens of early Christianity, but it is a huge mistake to say that because they both have holy things in, and are, as a rule, faintly Romanesque (in the classical sense), you can teach them together.
You know what happens when you do that? You get bogged down by fucking stupid questions from the class in the early Christian era (yes the Edict of Milan was kind of an important thing, kid four rows ahead of me in the stupid baseball cap), and end up blazing through Byzantium as though those icons are going to jump out and bite you.
Here, let me tell you a not-so-secret thing about me: if I was not so ridiculously in love with monsters and hideousness and the vague unhingedness of medieval British sensibilities, I would be specializing in Byzantine art so fast it would make your head spin. Because it is as close to God, as close to heaven, as art has ever come.
And out of three hours--three hours--guess how long we spent on it?
Ninety minutes. Yeah. I was livid.
But wait, it gets worse! In those ninety minutes, we studied two things: the Theodosian Wall, and Hagia Sophia. Both of which are glorious things in their own right! But, uh. Here is a note for all future art history students, teachers, and PHD candidates: Sometimes things happened in Byzantine art that were not a direct result of Justinian I, or Theodosius II. I know your mind is blown right now, but bear with me.
The Byzantine empire lasted for kind of a long time. Art had a lot of space to flourish! And flourish it did. But you wouldn't know it, would you? No, because every art history class you have ever taken covers the two architectural wonders I have just mentioned, plus the mosaics in the Basillica of San Vitale, if you are lucky. Usually, you are not lucky.
And we spent ages talking about the Hagia Sophia's structure and not about what any of it meant and ldkhglshfldd.
Yeah hi, I am kind of frustrated right now. Why am I not a grad student yet, I would do this right--
EDIT: This gives me very little faith for the rest of the semester. I know it is early to be getting all DO NOT WANT about a course, but we have neglected an era that forms a cornerstone of medieval art. A cornerstone that I happen to love, thank you very much. I just-- I swear, if I find that we did this so we could save time for the ~cusp of the Rennisance~, I am going to give everything up forever and become a hermit. Because that is the moment that the world will stop making sense.
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My medieval art history teacher is a lovely woman. She is a graduate student, and appears to be very knowledgeable in her field (secular medieval art, which promises to be delightful, once we come to it). Sure, she's a bit of a snooze, and the class is three hours and long and late at night and full of people who ask questions about why there are "lines coming out of Jesus' head", but it's medieval art! I get happy and shivery when I hear those two words together, no matter what the context. I was more than prepared to love the hell out of this class.
THEN CAME THIS WEDNESDAY.
Teacher, you fucked up. You fucked up badly. I understand that we only have this class once a week. I do. But gosh, I thought that that might, I don't know, urge you to make the most of the time you have. Apparently not! Apparently I am supposed to sit there in the dark while you spoon-feed me answers for the test, as opposed to providing, as your class description read, a survey of medieval art. This is a 500-level course. If I cannot pass the tests on my own, I deserve to fail.
So we spent the entire class on early Christian and Byzantine art.
...take a look at that sentence. Tell me what is wrong with it.
If you answered, "My goodness, Emily, it appears that your teacher, in a misguided attempt to conserve time, has lumped together two entirely different periods and attempted to pass them off as ~kind of sort of the same thing~", you are right, and please take a gold star from the box to my right. You cannot push these two eras together. You can certainly look back at early Christian art through the lens of Byzantium, or Byzantine art through the lens of early Christianity, but it is a huge mistake to say that because they both have holy things in, and are, as a rule, faintly Romanesque (in the classical sense), you can teach them together.
You know what happens when you do that? You get bogged down by fucking stupid questions from the class in the early Christian era (yes the Edict of Milan was kind of an important thing, kid four rows ahead of me in the stupid baseball cap), and end up blazing through Byzantium as though those icons are going to jump out and bite you.
Here, let me tell you a not-so-secret thing about me: if I was not so ridiculously in love with monsters and hideousness and the vague unhingedness of medieval British sensibilities, I would be specializing in Byzantine art so fast it would make your head spin. Because it is as close to God, as close to heaven, as art has ever come.
And out of three hours--three hours--guess how long we spent on it?
Ninety minutes. Yeah. I was livid.
But wait, it gets worse! In those ninety minutes, we studied two things: the Theodosian Wall, and Hagia Sophia. Both of which are glorious things in their own right! But, uh. Here is a note for all future art history students, teachers, and PHD candidates: Sometimes things happened in Byzantine art that were not a direct result of Justinian I, or Theodosius II. I know your mind is blown right now, but bear with me.
The Byzantine empire lasted for kind of a long time. Art had a lot of space to flourish! And flourish it did. But you wouldn't know it, would you? No, because every art history class you have ever taken covers the two architectural wonders I have just mentioned, plus the mosaics in the Basillica of San Vitale, if you are lucky. Usually, you are not lucky.
And we spent ages talking about the Hagia Sophia's structure and not about what any of it meant and ldkhglshfldd.
Yeah hi, I am kind of frustrated right now. Why am I not a grad student yet, I would do this right--
EDIT: This gives me very little faith for the rest of the semester. I know it is early to be getting all DO NOT WANT about a course, but we have neglected an era that forms a cornerstone of medieval art. A cornerstone that I happen to love, thank you very much. I just-- I swear, if I find that we did this so we could save time for the ~cusp of the Rennisance~, I am going to give everything up forever and become a hermit. Because that is the moment that the world will stop making sense.
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