ART
WHAT IS ART?
What is art? Few questions provoke as much debate and provide so few satisfactory answers. Art is an aesthetic object, meant to be looked at and appreciated for its intrinsic value. Its special qualities set it apart, so that it is often placed away from everyday life, in museums, caves, or churches. Art captures the imagination, creativity, originality, and self-expression of the people and cultures that produce it.
WHAT COURSES DO YOU NEED TO TAKE?
Although "art" can encompass the performing arts, most colleges and universities address the fine or visual arts within the context of the art major. If you choose to major in art, you will get hands-on studio instruction in a variety of media, honing your skills as an artist.
The broadest categories of the art major are fine art and graphic art. Fine artists pursue "art for art's sake," expressing their ideas and feelings through painting, drawing, sculpture, and other media. Graphic artists develop visual designs for use in advertising, packaging, displays, magazines, the Internet, signs—anything that uses visual expression to communicate.
Here are some classes you might take as an art major:
- Art History
- Ceramics
- Computer Aided Design
- Design
- Drawing
- Painting
- Photography
- Printmaking
- Sculpture
Art majors often participate in internships, present senior exhibitions of their own work, and study abroad.
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A DEGREE IN ART?
Though it's difficult to make a living as a full-time fine artist, it can be done. Through galleries or their own entrepreneurial efforts, painters, ceramicists, sculptors, and artists in other media sell their work to individual, corporate, and museum collectors interested in owning high-quality art work.
As an art major you are also well positioned to manage an art gallery, become an art director, teach, do graphic design, take photographs for newspapers, magazines or corporations, design clothing, make and sell jewelry, illustrate books, paint signs, or own your own floral business.