Testing, Testing

By the time I reached my first class in university, I was quite familiar - too familiar, in fact - with exams. But a new adversary was waiting for me in ARTH 1200 - the first-year course, a requisite for the following four years of art history classes. That was the slide test. In a darkened room, with a slide projector facing a screen, we were barraged with images, sometimes dozens of them, and asked to identify the image, its maker, its material, date, and two or three points of significance. This was rounded off with a few images paired together to prompt the essay portion of the test. We did these a handful of times per semester, the worst cases being when the tests were cumulative, and we had to keep the prehistoric cave paintings firmly in mind even as we juggled early Renaissance painters.

Some of these tests felt fair, reasonable, even. Even those cumulative tests in the first year felt doable, because it’s fairly straightforward to differentiate an Archaic Greek kouros sculpture from a Golden Age Islamic mosque in Cordoba. Were there moments when I forgot who painted The Raft of the Medusa and stared, unblinkingly, eye twitching, at the projected image, willing it with all my being to give up the answer? Yes, of course. It’s Gericault, by the way. But, generally speaking, slide tests in the first year were okay.

When I got to upper-level classes that were more specific, things got trickier. There is an in-between period in an art history degree where you have moved beyond the general, buffet-style first-year course wherein you cover dozens of cultures and several millennia in a term. Still, you have not yet made it to the research-and-paper-heavy fourth-year classes, where endless essays replace slide tests. These were the years of ARTH 1320 (Medieval Art) and ARTH 1450 (Chinese Landscape Painting) and, perhaps most difficult of all, CLAS 1340 and 1350. You’ll notice that those course codes are not in the Art History department, but in Classics - a new field, and one to which I did not have an immediate attachment. I like textiles, and those are pretty thin on the ground in the study of Ancient Greece and Rome. Instead of chitons and togas, we studied kylix after kylix, amphora after amphora. Were they distinguishable? Barely, and only by the figures painted on their surfaces. To make matters worse, the professor of CLAS 1340 (Greek Art), a man with an impressive moustache and a complete disdain for students, did not provide us with the slides to study. Instead, we were expected to memorize the images after a single viewing during class time. I hastily scribbled little sketches of each piece of art alongside my notes, hoping against hope that I would remember that the kantharos decorated with Hercules fighting the Nemean lion was from the 3rd century BC, while the kantharos painted with Hercules fighting the Lernean hydra was from the 2nd century BC—maddening stuff. The following section was Roman Art (CLAS 1350), taught by a different professor who was a bit more forgiving but completely obsessed with slipper lamps. Not a class went by that we did not spend some time, usually, quite a long time, talking about slipper lamps. They are small, palm-sized oil lamps made of clay and resemble a slipper, with one pointed end and one rounded end. I remember very little from the rest of that class.

I have now been on the other side of this equation, as it were, teaching first and second-year courses to students who similarly do not relish slide tests. I have tried to be a bit kinder to them, offering them the slides to study from beyond class hours, and avoiding tricksy questions such as those in my ARTH 1420 course (Byzantine Art), where I had to differentiate the Church of St. Demetrius in Vladimir patronised by Tzar Dimitri, or the Church of St. Vladimir in Dimitri patronised by Tsar Vladimir, who was Tzar Dimitri’s eldest son. I jest, but only just. And I offer them the same mnemonics I developed to survive these tests, such as the parts of a cruciform cathedral set to the tune of “Head and Shoulders” or to memorise the artworks in order so they know that Sofonisba Anguissola’s Self-Portrait definitely comes before Sonia Delauney’s Rythme (1556 and 1938, respectively). I will admit that, while marking is not generally a joyful experience, sometimes the desperate attempts at answers or go-for-broke responses become highlights in the drudgery of grading. I will also confess that I am not totally convinced that slide tests (and exams more generally) are the best tools for adjudicating a student’s work or progress, but here we are. To all those art history students who are in the process of plowing through their own slide tests, I can only promise that this too shall pass - slide tests will eventually become a nostalgic experience about which you will wax poetic, as I have just done.

Jennifer