Art Five years from now, you chat with a friend about your favorite humanities class (this one, naturally). What were your favorite artworks encountered throughout the course that you will share with them? Why?

"The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali.

This is a painting by Catalonian-Spanish surrealist Dali. I could choose anything that Dali does to describe my favorite artwork, because I greatly admire his ability to create imagery and symbolism that blends nature with the supernatural. This painting is like a dream. There are elements of reality inside the painting, such as the watches and clocks, the landscape in the background, and the tree. However, there are also elements of the painting that are clearly unreal, such as the clocks melting. Dali is not too concerned about the accuracy of representation, as the perspective of the painting is wrong in terms of depth of field. However, the artist is not trying at all to represent the real world but only the inner world of human subconscious thought and memory. When we dream, we dream like this painting. There are...

Also, the animal in the middle of the canvas is unidentifiable. This corresponds with the fact that when we recall dreams, a character will be like a fusion of several people we know. Rarely are dreams linear or straightforward, which is why Dali's painting is also non-linear and not straightforward at all. Dali has helped me appreciate art, and has helped me accept art on its own terms. I am sharing this painting in the hopes that it encourages someone who does not appreciate art to see how expansive the arts can be.
2. "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch

This is one of my favorite paintings. It is a Flemish painting in "triptych" style, meaning that it has three panels. The left panel depicts heaven, the center panel depicts earth, and the right panel depicts hell. It is a colorful and chaotic painting with a lot of different elements and one must look very closely to appreciate "The Garden of Earthly Delights." The details are extraordinary, and…