The passage that stuck out to me the most was Lesson 16: Learn The Difference Between Subject Matter and Content under Step Three: Learn to Think Like an Artist. Although seemingly obvious, art is not just what you see in front of you; the shapes, colors, and forms all work together to evoke some kind of emotion that the artist is trying to convey. There is a lot of discourse around art. People often wonder if certain pieces of work can be deemed art, spouting criticisms like “What is that supposed to mean?” or “Pfft, I could make that too”, but I believe they are just too focused on the surface level. Like Saltz said, ‘make subject matter the first thing you see — and then stop seeing it.’ While it is definitely important to take note of surface-level details in the art, it is more important to dig a little deeper and try to figure out why those details were made. Art is almost always intentional. From the medium/materials to the colors and even considering the period of time that the artist lived in, every detail of an artist’s work is intentional.

One thing that popped into my head after reading this section was the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). It is made up of four letters that represent some aspect of our personality: I (Introverted) & E (Extroverted), N (Intuition) & S (Sensing), F (Feeling) & T (Thinking), J (Judging) & P (Perceiving). There is a trend going around on some parts of social media that compares those with the F and T categorizations in their personality type. To sum it up simply, those with an F tend to be more emotional and can empathize with others easily, whereas those with a T tend to keep things more surface-level. It reminded me of the idea that to be able to understand art you need to look beyond the surface and somewhat empathize with the artist themselves. In this case, those with an F would be able to draw conclusions and interpret the art more easily than those with a T. Of course, this is not a fool-proof categorization, but the comparison made it easier for me to understand.