2024 was so topsy-turvy I honestly haven’t really put my mind to reflecting on what I have achieved or experienced this year. To celebrate the end of 2024, new beginnings, and 10 years of Wording Art, I should acknowledge my major milestone of 2024, which was completing my PhD in art history!

I have shared at different points about my experience pursuing a PhD at NTU Singapore. It’s funny how time flies and I graduated in July 2024. Yet with all of the strange feels of post-submission, post-defence, and post-graduation, and moving on to a new chapter in life, it felt like I needed more time to finally share about being PhDone.

| Cover picture: Me staring at the wonderful shelves of books on British Art in Hatchards, Piccadilly, London |

My PhD Research on Angelica Kauffman: The Last Stages

Over the last 5 years, I have spent many hours thinking, researching, and writing about the Swiss-Austrian artist Angelica Kauffman. My PhD research focused on Kauffman’s self-portraits from her London period (1766–1781), considering how these images tell us about the ways she viewed herself as a professional female artist in late eighteenth-century London. That’s the one-line summary!

Writing up my dissertation in 2022-23 was both enlightening and frustrating. But that, to me, is really what writing is all about. Figuring out how to structure my chapters, subheadings, flow, which images should go where, titles… There was a lot to learn and experiment with, and I’m so glad I had an entire year all to myself just to focus on writing. It’s a rare experience to have dedicated time for writing, and to be given feedback on my dissertation by supervisors and a panel of examiners alike.

2024 started with me working on revisions on my dissertation, before prepping for an oral defence. I had to condense years of research and hundreds of pages into a 30-minute presentation, before fielding questions by the examiners. I think the word ‘defence’ is especially apt here, because at points it did feel like I had to ‘defend’ my arguments and ideas. My defence was held online, which I did not expect! It’s funny how so many events can now be held online in a post-covid world…

Two weeks after my defence, I flew to London to see the Angelica Kauffman exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, which you can also read more about in my blog post. It felt like the most fitting way to bring my PhD chapter to a close! Other than at the Royal Academy, I saw more of Kauffman’s works at the Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920 exhibition at Tate Britain. I also visited the gorgeous, revamped National Portrait Gallery to view what is probably Kauffman’s most famous self-portrait from her London period.

Graduation and Moving On…

Luckily things went well, and I made it for graduation! It really was the best day~~

I think with the completion of the PhD, there’s a strange feeling of finding my footing again. After months of tracking my hours of writing every day, it felt like I needed to reset and find a new routine again. I’ve seen only a few people online acknowledge this post-PhD limbo — and it’s so real! At this point of writing, I’m so glad to have moved through this stage, and I have now started a new job. Perhaps a bit shockingly, it’s bittersweet to me that I might miss a bit of PhD life in some ways.

Guest Post & Podcast Episode

With that, I’m happy to bring my PhD chapter to a proper close in 2024. While I haven’t shared much of my actual research on this blog, I have had the opportunity to share about it on other platforms!

In June 2024, I wrote a guest post on Art Herstory about Angelica Kauffman and her works centred on art, music and poetry. In this post, I explore some of my new, personal favourites among Kauffman’s artworks. I didn’t discuss most of these images in my dissertation, so it was nice to have another platform to write about a different aspect of Kauffman’s oeuvre. I would love it if you go here to read my guest post Angelica Kauffman: Art, Music and Poetry.

In November 2024, I spoke on a podcast episode with High Impact Thesis, a platform that hosts a diverse selection of researchers from NTU Singapore. In this one-hour long episode, I talk about my research on Angelica Kauffman’s London self-portraits, as well as:
🏛 What led me into art history and my research topic on Kauffman
🎨 Kauffman’s motivations in moving to London in her twenties
👩‍🎨 Women artists in eighteenth-century London and how they were perceived then and now
🗽 Allegory, Muses, and the art of imitation
🖼 Kauffman’s practice of imitation in her self-portraits (like the one at the National Portrait Gallery pictured below), and the particular influence of Raphael

I would love it if you would like to listen to my podcast episode on Spotify at this link!

Certainly though, it’s not yet the end of the road for me and my research on Kauffman! After spending years reading, thinking, writing, and discussing her artworks, my interest and passion about Kauffman is still as strong as ever. Maybe this is the true sign of having completed a PhD — that you don’t really get tired of talking about a specialised subject again and again… And the best part is that I can now officially say that I’m a bona fide art historian! 😉

The post PhDone | My Research on Angelica Kauffman appeared first on Wording Art.

Perhaps the one-line summary is this: Doing a PhD is always going to be difficult, and doing anything in a pandemic makes everything more difficult still — but I recognise how incredibly blessed I’ve been with all the people, opportunities and support I’ve been surrounded with, and I truly value all of these.

Now let’s rewind to October 2020: I’d shared that I’d passed my Qualifying Exam for my art history research master’s at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in early September that year. That was only the beginning of the gruelling process that was converting my master’s to a PhD. I’m not sure if this practice exists in other educational systems, but I’d also think that it’s not usual or easy at all. I didn’t share about any of this earlier, because there were just so many moving pieces hanging in the balance and I didn’t want to jinx anything LOL!

In October 2020, I then sat for my conversion exercise (yet another report and presentation), prepared a PhD research proposal and had an interview in November 2020 (similar to what I did when applying for my masters!), and then waited… The news came through in mid-January 2021 that my conversion was successful, and a week later, the news that I was given a NTU scholarship sent me over the moon! Took a deep breath to take it all in, before finding out that I was going to have to dash for yet another qualifying exam in April 2021. Went into a happy daze (just briefly, the PhD life waits for no one) when I was confirmed as a PhD candidate in late April!

Luckily, the timing worked out well as all of these happened when the Covid situation was doing much better, and it was a lot easier to go into campus to get my writing done. Things got more cautious from May, and flitting around many different things — classes, conference applications, assignments — to the background of restless Covid definitely takes its mental toil. I love that canvas print of Which step have you reached today, which I saw at Chapter 55 (restaurant in Tiong Bahru), up above in the cover picture. Almost every day, I go from ‘I won’t do it’ to ‘I’ll try’…

But! I’m now heading into my final fourth year of my postgraduate studies, and what a time to celebrate the good things and the breakthrough days when I get to the top three steps of that ‘do it’ staircase.

So, I think one thing I wanted to put in words (so I can remember it for posterity) is why I decided to go for a PhD and a conversion. I don’t think anyone has asked me about this in an official capacity, and what I really appreciate about postgrad interviews is that they keep the focus on research. The seed of this conversion idea was planted early on in my first semester (thanks to my professors’ foresight), and it was really in May 2020 that I fully committed to the the plan and went full-out to fulfil the crazy schedule outlined above.

Funnily enough, my main two reasons for doing the PhD conversion remained within the same two ‘categories’ that also made up my decision to take up my master’s at NTU. The first, primary reason is related to my own research: I knew I was — and still am! — in the right place to do the research I want to do (Angelica Kauffman’s self-portraits + eighteenth-century British art) as I seriously do have the best supervisor and advisory committee, and I’m comfortable in this environment and NTU’s fantastic facilities. You could say that the UK would perhaps be more fitting because the art and the archives that I need to see are located there, but the unexpected twist in the story with Covid meant that museums and archival centres had to close, and many things shifted online… And as it became more apparent that the pandemic was going to go on for longer than anyone could have expected, I was feeling uncertain about expecting to finish my MA in mid-2021.

And on my research, it only seemed that I was getting more engrossed in it all the time — and this is probably the most important factor to me in doing a PhD and sticking it out. I’d kept to the same topic throughout the MA and in converting to the PhD, but the research kept growing in many interesting ways and I wanted to keep the momentum and take my topic further by upscaling it into a PhD. I have mentioned before that there is often the initial feel to build a super-broad topic for the research proposal and the feedback you get is always to narrow, narrow it down! And then when you get accepted into the MA/PhD program and work on it further, the topic grows and changes in ways unknown yet again… It doesn’t seem to make sense, but it’s definitely what I’ve experienced!

Another thing I’ve noticed is that my research seems to be getting increasingly personal — the appeal of working on Kauffman and eighteenth-century London in the first place was that there seemed to be no relation to my actual twenty-first-century life in Singapore/Hong Kong and it was refreshing to be working on a clean slate. Yet I realise that my interest in looking at Kauffman’s London self-portraits and my approach in doing so reflects my own thoughts and feelings… I’m not too sure how to explain this, but maybe it will become clear to me when I’m finally done writing the dissertation in mid-2023?

The second main reason, on unavoidable, pragmatic terms, is related to costs and financial matters. Any postgraduate degree is pricey in one way or another (plus opportunity costs), and I was hoping to leverage on ‘saving’ a year in completing a PhD by converting my MA. In any case, receiving the news of my scholarship made it the best night of my life and it’s really been life-changing, and I don’t take it for granted at all. So, so thankful.

Now that I’m doing a PhD — which still feels surreal — what other highlights then? Turning things online has been so helpful in opening up access to hearing more talks, participating in events, etc. across the world for free — although I openly profess I’m still a Zoom noob (I like MS Teams more).

The biggest highlight of 2022 would definitely be finally making it to London to get my hands on the archives in May! I’m also (slowly) sharing more of all the art and museums I saw and visited during my time there on the blog, which was just such an immersive experience.

Ah, so now it’s a matter of writing and completing the dissertation, putting my thoughts together… Let’s see what other thoughts I’ll have about the writing process in the coming academic year!

The post PhD in a Pandemic appeared first on Wording Art.

On that cover picture: I was finalising edits of my QE report at the very lovely Little House of Dreams café in Tiong Bahru post-circuit breaker, when I could finally work outside of home! That’s the title page on my laptop, and I’d definitely like to share more about my research soon!

So what is this Qualifying Examination? Different programmes might have another term for it, but the purpose of this exam is similar across the board. For MA (Research) / PhD programmes, the qualifying examination is held after the completion of courses. There’s a written component in the form of a report, and an oral component in the form of a presentation. It’s a means for determining your progress in your research, or just to determine if you are fit enough to keep going — like ‘passing probation’, if you will! At NTU, where I’m doing my MA (Research) programme in Art History at ADM, the Qualifying Examination is held a year in. That’s what was happening with me in early September.

I have to say — writing the report was hard. It appears straightforward: it includes a listing of your literature review, aims and objectives, methodologies, chapter outline, bibliography, etc. (to sum up the main sections). Sometimes I feel like I can envision my actual, final thesis — certain points I want to make; specific images and comparisons I want to look at. But suddenly, when I was forced to think about my methodology and chapter titles, I realised that I hadn’t given a thought to it at all! I suppose in research, you always feel the initial need to build up a big, wide topic to show that you have something important to study, then you begin working on it and have to break it down again to the specifics. I struggled with writing my literature review, methodology and outline of chapters — which pretty much makes up the whole report! After multiple drafts and lots of random googling (like what’s the difference between aims and objectives??), things somehow miraculously came together. I’m now glad I have a working structure of how the whole thesis is going to look like!

In a normal world, the presentation of the QE is always held in person. With this ‘new normal’ though, I had my exam over Microsoft Teams — which I was not expecting! Funny to think that I didn’t even know how to use Teams until May this year, and it’s now become somewhat familiar (I prefer it to Zoom).

I’ve seen so many articles and posts where people say that they hate having virtual meetings, and I’m definitely in that group of people who dislike meeting virtually, much less for an exam! While presenting, it felt like I was talking to myself (especially as everyone else had turned off their cameras), and I had to keep reminding myself that people were still watching and listening! It feels strange not to see people’s reactions as you’re presenting — your education has trained you to present in front of people, but when that’s taken away in a virtual space, it feels like a whole other ball game.

Though on the flip side, the advantage of presenting virtually is having more privacy — after all, everyone only sees your head and shoulders on screen, and I could have my notes scattered everywhere around me without anyone seeing it, haha! I could hang up on my Teams call after my presentation and immediately slump over and breathe a big sigh of relief.

In any case, I’m happy to say that I passed! Now, having had time to process what has happened, I’m glad to have had this experience. It’s a good opportunity to present my research, a clear way to see how my research has developed, and to hear the ideas, feedback, or perspectives that others (i.e. the examiners) bring to the table. It’s also a major milestone to clear, and completing it comes with a sense of accomplishment. These little moments are really much needed along the path of graduate school, especially when things get busy, difficult and overwhelming. Yet at the same time, I’m realising that I’m becoming more of a nerd, and I’m enjoying my research! All the work though — it’s time to get back to it…

The post I Passed My Qualifying Exam! | Master’s Updates appeared first on Wording Art.

I’m amazed that time has passed so seemingly quickly — notwithstanding this Covid-19 season, I’ve spent the last few months reading, writing, and trying to keep myself together as I prepare for my Qualifying Exam coming up in September. For now though, I’m thinking about how things have been one year in, and what to expect if you’re heading back to school for postgraduate study!

I write this as I find it funny how things were so different just a year ago. I was both nervous and excited to start my master’s at NTU ADM, which was new to me since I did my undergrad at HKU. I had no idea what to expect at all, so I went in with my eyes wide open…

Here goes a list of things I’ve learned:

1. ‘Where does the time go?’

I say this all the time, but honestly, I don’t think I have even been so conscious of my time and hours as I’ve been since starting postgrad. Amid classes, meetings, working on research project(s), and trying to upkeep a social life, it’s difficult to maintain a regular Monday to Friday working schedule, clock out at the end of the day and have weekends off.

I’m still working on that time management skill, but I’ve found it increasingly important to take breaks from all the academic things and just make time for leisure, like how I’m writing this post now!

2. You have to do those readings.

No more getting away with it like in the good ole undergrad days! You will be expected to discuss the assigned readings in every class and contribute to the discussion with your classmates. Although it’s time-consuming, it’s actually quite fun to hear what everyone thinks about the readings though!

3. Coursework vs. Research

When applying for a master’s, I’d looked into both coursework and research-based programmes. I was leaning towards coursework programmes, because I thought it would feel ‘closer’ to what I’d done during my undergrad degree. I eventually chose to take up my research master’s at NTU ADM because I was so flattered that they were willing to take me on with my research, haha!

With that said, postgrad classes are actually quite different from the undergrad experience (see: readings). As a research student, I also have to take a few classes. Some are specific to research students — a standard one across all fields being the methods class — and I’ve also taken a couple of classes from NTU ADM’s MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices.

Yet also as a research student, it’s easy to get involved in classes and leave my own research on the wayside… So I try to do what I can to keep up with all the work!

4. Having a work desk on campus is the best.

From what I’ve heard or read on the internet, it seems that only Singapore universities provide work desks for both Master’s by Research and PhD students for their entire candidature. That means this desk and that fancy iMac is mine to use for however long I spend at NTU. Such a privilege!

Since I studied in Hong Kong previously — where space is a luxury — I’ve just been so in awe of the space and facilities that NTU has. I love having a space of my own to get work done, to stack my books, and to take a break when going between classes, seminars, meetings and all.

5. It’s been going better than I ever expected.

Postgrad life gets busy, tiring, frustrating, difficult, and it’s hard for most people to understand what you do — but really, I not-so-secretly embrace it and enjoy it all.

No one ever said doing a master’s or PhD was going to be easy, but it’s a choice I decided to pursue. My mood and feelings towards my work, writing and research fluctuates all the time — sometimes I think it’s going just great, and in the next hour, I’m thinking someone send help — but in the end, it’s a joy to be able to pursue my passion and to work on a topic that I really want to know more about.

I think it’s always good to get a sense of perspective about how things are, especially when I become too absorbed in my work. So I guess this is also a reminder to myself and to whoever needs it: keep going, and enjoy the process!

The post Postgrad Expectations | One Year On appeared first on Wording Art.

‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.

‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’

‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’

I was thinking about this quote to sum up my feelings of these crazy times of staying home, but things have gotten so much better since Phase 2 began in Singapore, and I’m able to venture out again! Then, I realised this quote is perfect (as a joke, or maybe quite real) for talking about what I’m up to doing my master’s degree!

This post is a kind of follow-up to my May 2018 post, Prospect and Refuge | In Architecture, Art, and In Life, which I wrote to ground myself among all the things in my life that were happening. What’s happened since then? In the same month, I was rejected from the master’s programme I’d applied to, and continued on my job-hunting process as I was between jobs. In June 2018, I decided to apply for a master’s again — this time round, with a better sense of preparedness, since my first application was a bit of a spontaneous decision. Somehow through the months, I managed to land my next job after many applications, apply for three master’s programmes… and then, had to make my decision on where I wanted to go.

So, here I am now — I’m almost a year into my master’s by research (research-based master’s / MPhil / whatever term exists for this) in art history at the very beautiful architectural marvel that is the School of Art, Design and Media, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. To be honest, this was the most unexpected option that I would have thought to have gone on, for so many reasons.

As my academic study increasingly consumes my life, I’ve been wanting to share more about the process of applying for postgraduate programmes, and in actually doing one. This blog has always been a great outlet for me to talk about anything art-related that interests me, but I’ve never talked much about academia on this space. How is it like studying art history in Asia? How is it like doing a master’s in Singapore? How did I go into research? These are questions that I’ve been reflecting on, and I think writing about it is a good way to balance out my academic work.

I want to give a more personal view into the course of doing postgraduate studies, specifically in art history. There’s a lot that I want to talk about, and I will be sharing more in upcoming posts — see the new ‘Academia’ category! If you’re an art history student, and looking to go into this rabbit hole of postgrad life, or you’re already in it (!), I hope that these posts will be helpful or insightful to you in some way.

And since a large part of postgraduate life is about reading, the cover picture is a candid picture taken by my sister of me at The Moon, a bookstore-cum-cafe, back in November 2019 when they dedicated their front display to art books, and I happened to be engrossed in a book about methods in art history, I kid you not. More to come!

The post Down the Rabbit Hole | Into Postgrad Life appeared first on Wording Art.

I currently find myself in a spot of free time that inadvertently came along unplanned, which leaves me feeling a little unsettled since I always want to know what direction I’m moving in. But, for now, I am enjoying this break, and I’m trying to make time to pursue my interests, and it feels nice to have this pause to think back on the past year.

But to go back to what ‘Prospect and Refuge’ is in the first place, it is a theory coined by the geographer and academic Jay Appleton in 1975 relating to architecture and how we perceive our spaces by looking to fulfil two desires of prospect (opportunity) and refuge (safety). A simple idea is like how I like to hang out in cosy cafe corners yet have a view of the outdoors while I blog, right about now!

Under the giant awning at South Beach.

Thinking further on it, I just thought it was a perfect way to sum up the feeling of having big dreams and wanting to keep moving forward but also wanting to stay comfortable. Last June, it felt really difficult to move away from Hong Kong because it was letting go of an amazing experience that I didn’t feel ready to move on from, though it is necessary for practicalities to come first (sometimes).

Though, of course, moving back to Singapore isn’t a bad thing at all! I spent a lot of time at first wandering around this sparkling, beautiful city.

Made my first stop of my exploring at the Apple Store which opened last May in Knightsbridge Mall (what a fancy name). I’m so grateful for it now because I sent my very precious Macbook there for repair when it broke down last month and the service was so good!! Just sharing my appreciation. :D

I also caught art exhibitions – like the massive Yayoi Kusama exhibition at National Gallery Singapore that I completely forgot to share on any platform whatsoever – that I plan to share here later as a way of catching up with everything over the last year. Art museums here are mostly housed in old, grand, colonial buildings with a touch of contemporary glass and chrome elements which Singapore is so good at at adding to old buildings.

When the polka dot phenomenon took over Singapore last summer.

A good mix of old and new in the National Museum of Singapore.

But geez, that transition between graduation and full-on ‘adulting’ is a tricky one! Despite all the well-meaning ‘advice’ you hear, you don’t really know what to expect until you start the job application grind, and thankfully, land your first interview and then the job (!!) after months of seemingly unending waiting time. But that’s if you decide to enter the workforce – making the decision to continue in postgraduate studies or to go out to work was even tricker to me.

Oh, the dilemma.

Revisited this gem The Thinker by Rodin at OUE Bayfront except it’s now politely barricaded. And I’ve got a much better-working phone camera with me now compared to the last time I captured this in Sculptures on the Street which I worked on 3 years ago now and I’m still so proud of!

Also saw this crazy hyperrealistic figure of a security guard by Marc Sijan at OUE Bayfront. Almost thought ‘he’ was real but it’s on a podium so it’s a piece of art, see!

I always took my (tertiary) education seriously, so I wouldn’t want to pursue postgraduate studies only for the purpose of ‘escaping reality’, but really to expand my knowledge and pursue my academic interest in a specific field (art history, of course!). That’s all and well, but then also comes the deciding factors of where I wanted to enter, funding matters, and the unavoidable point of your age matched to your amount of work experience (hi, real job, what internship?).

Another new photo of an old favourite: Sky Mirror by Anish Kapoor outside Artscience Museum.

In my final year of undergraduate studies, I asked a few professors about choosing between work and studies and I realised that there wasn’t one answer that could solve it all for me. After choosing to work first, when talking to colleagues about postgraduate studies, everyone also has varying ideas about how many years you should work first before studying further.

So, to anyone who happens to be stuck in this dilemma, weighing the pros and cons, considering the weight of what you might be losing out on or gaining in return, all I can say is: funnily enough, the quite unpleasant application process would help clear up whether or not you are ready for it, so plan ahead and give it a shot if you really want to do it!

Open call-out to SMU: please add a didactic next to this! It’s Bright Idea by Sir Michael Craig-Martin, isn’t it? I think it fits this university campus setting much better than the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, doesn’t it?

With that said, going out to work was great in propelling me out of my ‘refuge’ zone and in seeing what my prospects are. Identifying those prospects also gave me goals to look toward, one such as the ideal yet probably not very reachable ‘work-life balance’ (hahaha, in Singapore/Hong Kong, the ultimate dream).

Stopped for a photo break while cycling from East Coast Park to the Marina Bay area on a sweltering hot day last June.

Half-joking aside, work gave me a literal case of expectations vs. reality. For many of us art history students, the career goal is always to become a curator. Same goes for me! We might get student curating projects, and some people might remind students that to become an curator at the point of actually curating exhibitions takes a long time.

Side note: it’s funny and ridiculous how everything is ‘curated’ these days. Let me give an example: Reader, you are currently on Wording Art, a blog of curated art posts! Okay, but enough of that – curating is way far more than putting objects together in an exhibition and writing about it. It was only after beginning work in the field that I realised how wide the job of being a curator really is, which I think is great for managing my expectations of the job and seeing how I would like to keep moving forward in work.

Loving these boards for a store that is coming soon at Wisma Atria… What is it?? A fantastically themed cafe or retail concept? I’m just dying to know!

I suppose I’m writing this to ground myself somehow in my current stage of in-between-ness. The very wise words by Lewis Carroll couldn’t be more fitting for what I’m thinking about right now. And right now, I’m also really glad to have this little digital space of my own here that in one way, I see as a record of all the art things I’d seen and where I was at, and in the same way, this post serves the same purpose too.

Looking down from the 8th floor of the Central Public Library, where I discovered their fantastic reference section of art history books!

With all that said, here’s to new opportunities and good things ahead! And to more posts overcrowded with pretty pictures, as per usual, hahaha!

The post Prospect and Refuge | In Architecture, Art and in Life appeared first on Wording Art.

This illustration was the first image I saw in my first Fine Arts class. Western art history – made simple! Back then, my professor said we would know all about the various artists and their smiley face representations by the end of the class. I hadn’t even heard of almost all of the artists stated here, but I’m happy to say that I’m familiar with most of the artists now, except Rembrandt. My bad.

A lot of my friends, when they find out what I’m studying, like to ask, “So what do you do exactly?” or they exclaim, “Really?! I did art in high school, and I did so badly!” I never have a good response to the first question, I just don’t know what to say, and when I hear the second statement, I always think I wished I had the option to take art in high school, since I wasn’t enjoying math and science much anyway…

So it got me thinking about why I like what I do, or why should people study art history? Everyone has their own reasons, and I wanted to share about mine.

| Cover picture: Donald Seitz, History of Art, 1991, illustration |

I’ve always loved stories. And they come in all shapes and forms, in books, TV, and a good history story. History is interesting that way, when my dad tells me stories of his dad going through the war. It’s just not that fun when you’re reading about the same war in a history textbook. And having to memorize dates and names and titles and places and go to exams to spill it all out. Not for me.

The great thing about art is how history is incorporated into it. Art can be identified by the century, the region, the movement, the style. For example, I could be looking at a painting of a couple in a vast field, but I could tell you that it was painted by the French artist Millet in 1859 during the nineteenth century, in the style of Realism when the reflection of nature in art continued, but new ideas of what constituted beauty emerged. That’s history right there.

Jean-François Millet, The Angelus, 1859, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

For contemporary art too, one day someone is going to look at an artwork and go, that was painted in 2015 in that style back then. With time, the numerous artworks in the various mediums and styles we see today are going to be neatly categorized by century and movement and a new art term that people come up with to explain the period.

Art is informative and it’s so much easier to absorb history stories when looking at works of art, rather than going through long, dry passages of history text. (Though books of any topic are winners in their own right.) But that’s only the background information. What you see in an artwork itself contains other stories, unique to our own interpretations.

You could argue that fine arts is in the same way made up of the boring bits like memorising titles of artworks, artists’ names, years, centuries and mediums. All that is true but having a picture to go along with it makes all the difference. I really like how we get to somewhat see how things were like back then. The way people looked, dressed, their jobs, their social activities, their interiors, and so on.

One thing that I was curious about was art in wartime. When you learn about wars in the typical history fashion, it’s always about aggressors and victims, people fighting, people suffering and all that. But what about the people left at home? It’s like an entire period of the war solely belongs to the battlefield. And it turns out, art still goes on, though not far from the topic of war.

Unknown artist, Entry of Marshal Oyama, Commander-in-Chief, into Mukden; Mukden Railway Station after the Battle, 1905, color lithograph, collotype and letterpress; ink on card stock (postcard), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

I think that studying Fine Arts has made me look at things differently, too. There is always a conception that art is supposed to be beautiful, show delightful things to viewers. And that was probably the norm in a time long past, but it certainly isn’t now. Art can reveal the bad, ugly stuff, too. And it makes for an interesting way of looking at things, that I can somehow see things in an alternative way, even in real life.

Like when I was in Shanghai at the Free Trade Zone, and large blouts of dark gray fumes were coming out of giant factory buildings, released into the clear blue sky. Yes, pollution and industralization and I’m not discounting any of that, but I was weirdly encaptured by it. Maybe because it was the first time seeing it so close and so clearly, and maybe it was the color contrast, the tubular gray slowly moving into the clear blue and dissipating into thin air. I couldn’t take my eyes off it for a while. It sounds weird, I know. But it was just interesting.

Art is, in a sense, interdisciplinary to me. There are so many topics in art expressed in different ways and approached from different angles. A large part of studying art involves considering the socio-historical context, meaning social issues present in a historical period that influences the art made then. There could be politics involved as well. Paintings of war or battles are definitely political, but artworks could be interpreted as political even if the artist did not have the intention to do so. Not all artworks necessarily contain all of these factors, but there is always more than one thing going on in an artwork.

Technology also brings about new styles and mediums, such as photography. The combination of mediums also creates a new kind of visual. Entry of Marshal Oyama, Commander-in-Chief, into Mukden; Mukden Railway Station after the Battle is a mix of a painting and a photograph of the same Mukden location printed on a postcard, like a before and after of the Russo-Japanese War, but the after is painted instead of photographed to make it seem less real, maybe? And it certainly looks and feels very different from an oil painting made from a different culture though made in the same year.

WIth (oil) paintings, I find it interesting to think how the layers of paint applied can determine the style of the work and how it would look like. When I first learned about Monet’s paintings, I was wondering how the different colors used could manage to make the reflection of sunlight in the water look so natural in a digital image. Seeing his works in real life though, the reflections still look very naturalistic when the artwork is viewed at a distance, but when you go up close, you can see the many almost random dabs of paint in different colors that somehow cohesively form the effect of reflection. Monet totally won me over with that. My favourite Western artist ever!

Claude Monet, Parliament, Reflections on the Thames, 1905, oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan, Paris, France.

Monet’s work comes along only a few decades after Millet, and the style has moved on from Realism to Impressionism. What I find so fascinating is that an artwork can be analyzed on its own, or within the historical period it belongs to, or within the entire history of that particular art type (Western art, for example).

I could keep going on, but I guess the idea is that art can be viewed and thought about in so many different directions, and there are many other parts to it that I’m still discovering. Fine Arts, Art History, or anything to do with the word Art, is always discounted as “impractical,” and “not useful for a job” in a school context. It’s sadly underrated, but I strongly believe that art is of value and learning about it is of value, too.

My sister always reminds me that university is the best time to learn whatever you want. The things I learnt in school before university were out of necessity, though still important, but I didn’t have the liberty to choose what I wanted to do. University is great for that reason, and I think that every subject taught matters.

I just hope to let others see why I like Fine Arts so much. Outside of school too, I think everyone can learn about and appreciate art and I’m hoping to do that for a long, long time.

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