Why Art History Matters.

It seems the last exam board offering Art History as an A level is dropping it, which might not seem to be a big deal to many people, especially with so many other things going on in the world right now, but I think it's worth talking about.

My degree is in History of Art so I have opinions about this, starting with the way I've seen the subject characterised over the last few days; too soft, too dry, too elitist - all of which I take issue with. My state school didn't offer Art History as an A level, though I wish it had, but it did form a significant part of the Art A level. This turned out to be a very good thing for me, without that portion of the course I wouldn't have got the result I did, and couldn't have gone to the university I wanted.

I didn't do this because it looked like an easier option, but because it was the more interesting one. To understand what you're looking at when you look at a picture it really helps if you have a decent grasp of the historical context it sits within. That means a decent working knowledge of the politics of the time, it's philosophies, the politics of artists and patrons, and religious upheavals. You can't help but become familiar with Greek and Roman mythology, plenty of the bible, and quite a bit of the apocrypha as well. A passing knowledge of contemporary books, poetry, and drama also helps, as does some understanding of scientific thinking. There is iconography to be decoded, maths and colour theories to be understood, and always the people who created the art, and paid for its creation, to be thought of. It's many things, but not soft.

In fact what it offers is a good all round education in the arts, encourages excellent academic discipline, useful transferable skills, the pleasure to be found in looking at really beautiful things, and a better understanding of who we are and where we come from. The history of art is the history of human creativity. What the canon celebrates may well be (is) flawed, but dig about a bit - we're all there somewhere.

What really bothers me however is the perception that it's an elitist subject, the preserve of posh white people. My school was lucky in that we had an enthusiastic, enlightened, and open minded teacher who shared his love of the subject with us and made it accessible. Making us say why we liked or didn't like the images we looked at in each lesson was arguably one of the most useful thing I learnt to do at school.

The difference a dedicated A level would have made comes down to awareness, and that can improve accessibility too. We choose the subjects that will shape the course of our education at a ridiculously young age, encouraged down whatever path seems likely to yield the best exam results, and with (at least in my experience) very little idea of what else might be out there. Studying a subject that encourages the exploration of so many other disciplines can only be helpful. It's also a chance to look, to really look, at our shared cultural history.

It's also worth thinking about just how much art we own as a nation, much of it free to view, in galleries up and down the country. It's there for all of us, or at least it is until public funding cuts go to deep, and a lot of it is there thanks to Victorian ideas of self improvement. It's quite a legacy, and again makes me question why we encourage this idea of elitism.

History of Art. It might always have been a fairly marginal A level in terms of the number of schools offering it, or students taking it. Not being able to sit it is no bar to taking a degree in the subject, and yet I can't help but feel we're all a little poorer for this decision.