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What is the phrase du jour today? Maybe there isn’t one. But today I felt this sense of importance that I wasn’t quite used to. I suppose it comes from feeling exceptionally inferior most of the time. It happened in my theory lecture. I was sat there and I realised I felt completely at home with what was being discussed. I recessed back to the time of A Levels and exhibitions and discovering the ‘great’ artists of our time. The lecture was on Installation Art. Before entering the lecture theatre, I had a deep seated dread as I was never interested or cared for installation; or video art; or performances. This was clearly going to be a very boring hour. But, when my lecturer had been talking for about 15 minutes or so I realised I was listening intently and actually enjoying myself. I wasn’t exactly sure why at first. There’s something about the fine arts that calms me down, and switches my brain onto a different level of thinking. I was being shown artists, pictures of their work, galleries, and the why and how of what they were trying to achieve. And it made perfect sense. I remember we were always going to galleries and researching fine artists in my time studying art at high school. Take a picture, put a title and an artist to it. Stick it in your sketch book. Today, I realised how valuable that practise was. I underestimate my knowledge of the fine arts - I recognised a lot of the artists and works my lecturer was exampling. I had studied them in depth years before. It’s such a sense of achievement when you actually understand what your lecturer is harking on about. Judy Chicago’s ‘The Dinner Party’, Olafur Eliasson, and the Sump Oil room! So much installation I have crossed paths with, without even realising! I went into the lecture doubting my knowledge of Installation Art; I walked out remembering that I did actually know more than I gave myself credit for.

And that was really nice.  

So I suppose, the phrase du jour is: Don’t underestimate yourself.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Uni, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.