PDP – Constellation

During the first term of constellation, If I’m completely honest, I didn’t find particularly engaging , I’m personally a visual learner and I don’t like sitting and being talked at. My favourite lecture of the first term was definitely the ‘Reading and analysis’ lecture with Jonathan Clarkson. I like his way of teaching, he gets the class involved and keeps everyone engaged. During this session we were put in groups to do an activity which helped my learning as I enjoy listening to other people’s ideas as well as introducing my personal ideas to the group too. For the lectures I missed I went onto blackboard to catch up, I actually found it relatively easy to understand although it isn’t the same as physically being in the lecture itself, this has definitely taught me to attend every single lecture next year as using blackboard to catch up isn’t as enriching.

For my chosen lecture group, I was given my second option which was ‘After Modernism’ taught by Jonathan Clarkson. Admittedly I was gutted I didn’t get my first choice but seen as I enjoyed Jonathan Clarkson’s teaching the most I was happy to have him as my lecturer, I saw this as a positive as I was likely to learn the most in this option and be engaged to a maximum. Our group was very good at debating and I found it interesting hearing others student’s ideas of the subjects we were studying, although I am not one to talk aloud very often in lectures, I gained a great amount of information just from the other students themselves, they made me see art in a completely different light which I had never had before. All of the lectures were power point based, which usually I don’t find particularly engaging, however there were little to no words on the slides which meant that they were good for visual learners like me. In our lectures we looked at Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Fluxus and Minimalism. My favourite lecture was when we looked at fluxus; it was something which I wouldn’t ever look at as it’s very conceptual and my art doesn’t tend to be strongly like that, this meant that I found it challenging but in a positive way. What really stood out to me in the fluxus lectures was how the artists wouldn’t envision a final outcome, but the events that led up to it would mould the final piece, this meant the actually meaning of the work was the build-up rather than the outcome. After the lecture I was pretty sure that’s what I wanted to do for my constellation essay, I wanted to explore fluxus further as there is so much to it.

Overall I have found constellation a very enriching part of the course; it has opened my eyes to new concepts and ideas. I have found it very challenging as art history has never been my strongest area, I can get easily distracted and bored like I did in the first term, but during the second term this has completely changed. I feel like the second term constellation lectures have helped me in preparation for second year where we have to do more extensive research. Thanks to my lectures I want to create more conceptual art work in the future.