Scrolling through Instagram or Tik Tok, one notices a trend that is now rampant: that of wanting to simplify, to make everything easier, even studying: in fact, there are many content creators who have devoted themselves to simplifying school subjects, even complex ones, through short videos or reels that they post with some frequency on their social profiles. It happens with Italian grammar and literature, with history, with geography, with physics. The most famous and media case is Vincenzo Schettini, the physics professor who, through his project La fisica che ci piace (The Physics We Like), which started as a Youtube channel and then expanded to all other platforms, explains the complex concepts of the subject, with the explicitly stated idea of “transforming physics from a pure lecture to real entertainment.” Another teacher, Alessia Giandomenico, interviewed on Skytg24, had said, “I bring on Tik Tok and Instagram mini-lessons of history and geography. It’s for kids to help them with their studies but also for adults who feel like reviewing.” Not only history and geography, because on her Studio Facile with Ale they mostly talk about Italian grammar and literature.
The age group they are targeting, but probably the same could be said for much of the content creators, I assume is between 14 and 18 years old, young people attending secondary school to be clear, or at any rate the under 20s. Reflecting on this trend, one might wonder why lately there is this need to make everything easy, as if everything should be achieved without too much effort. A trend, in my opinion, quite worrying, especially if it has to do with study, which is supposed to educate and not simplify.
Even art has been touched by this trend: there are many content creators explaining it on Instagram and Tik Tok with reels and short videos (whose duration rarely exceeds one minute), moved probably by the desire to help students understand it better and to bring closer to art and art history even those who do not study the subject in school, so much so that we not infrequently come across articles suggesting, for example, the “TikTok accounts to learn art history.” In fact, not all second-grade schools provide for the teaching of art history (and here one could open a chapter on how much art history is considered in the Italian school system - evidently as an inferior subject compared to Italian literature or mathematics - and on the reasons that led to the decision to include it as a subject only in certain schools), so not all students of that age group have the opportunity to confront that discipline. Instead, with regard to students who have art history among their school subjects, one might then wonder whether there is an assumption that teachers are unable to teach it well or to stimulate an interest in their students that goes beyond the report card grade.
But can art really be explained simply? In my opinion, no: one can certainly explain art history in a comprehensible way, without taking flights of fancy, limiting convoluted expressions or overly technical language or references to critical texts and instead increasing examples to explain concepts that might otherwise be too abstract and, of course, wherever possible, supplementing theory with direct viewing of the work. Visiting museums and seeing works live to be able to grasp the way a painter has spread color on his canvas or board, the play of chiaroscuro, the use of light, the fineness of the stroke, to be able to get a better sense of the material with which a sculptor has made his work, to be able to compare the size and rendering of an installation is essential for anyone approaching or already accustomed to the world of art. Explaining art in a way that is understandable and accessible to all does not mean making it simple, reducing it to trivializations, anecdotes, a “like” or “dislike,” because otherwise the risk is to make it lose its extraordinary depth.
Art history is not a simple subject and should not be considered as such: it cannot be thought of as a set of watertight compartments; rather, it is a long concatenation of events, causes and effects. Each artist dialogues with those who came before him or her and, in turn, influences those who will come after. Movements often arise in response to others, or as a reaction to political, social or cultural transformations. Art is thus a great interwoven thread, connecting epochs, places and people in a web of cross-references. It is interwoven with historical and cultural context: a work is never isolated, but is a child of its time, of the ideas, tensions and innovations of a society. It carries with it a plurality of meanings and levels of reading that can coexist within a single work. There is also a rich variety of languages, and each of these forms of expression has its own rules, tools and visual codes. In order to explain a work, an artist, or an artistic movement, it is necessary first of all to contextualize, to make it clear what period we are referring to both from a historical and cultural point of view; to the context then, depending on the degree of detail, we add various aspects such as iconography, technique, biographical events, and anything else that can be useful in effectively understanding the subject we are dealing with. Often in its subjects a work of art calls into play literature, mythology, biblical episodes, music, and then it becomes necessary to clarify that reference; and again, the art of an artist is sometimes influenced by his life, and it therefore becomes necessary to make people understand the personal and psychological vicissitudes of that artist (to be considered that recounting a single episode of his life is extremely limiting if one wants to give an idea of his life). The same applies to an artistic movement, which may arise as a rejection to the previous artistic movement or to a certain ideology, and it becomes necessary to make that transition and change understood. It is a subject therefore that inevitably takes time to explain, which cannot be dismissed in a few words; it goes without saying that the time of a scroll on a cell phone cannot be materially effective in explaining it. A reel or a video of less than a minute on social media can be a cue(here an article with some good examples) to then go on to elaborate elsewhere or at best a first gateway, a first contact with the subject.
Moreover, are we really sure that in order to explain art to young people it is necessary to comment with sensationalist adjectives, to accompany the explanation with facial expressions of astonishment or contrariety, to use throwaway quotes without adding anything else, to throw anecdotes and isolated episodes without saying anything more? I think all this simplification is worrisome: when talking about young people everything should be lighter, more fun, easier, more accessible without too much effort. Since the attention threshold has drastically lowered, it is believed that it is useful to shorten the time, to simplify the content as much as possible without requiring too much effort. But is this really the right path? If we simply reduce everything to quick and immediately accessible content, the risk is that we will lower the bar more and more and make young people unable to reflect, to reason, to delve deeper to go beyond the surface of things, to develop critical thinking. One can, instead, explain clearly without trivializing. One can intrigue without oversimplification.
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