Duhfilter: How to get info stuck in my brain for good?

June 1, 2006 7:28 PM

How do I memorize 40 pictures and dates in three days?

I couldn't find anything specifically related to this question. I have to memorize 40 pieces of modern art, their dates, authors, and titles by monday. I suck at memorizing things just for the sake of memorization. This information wouldn't be unhelpful to store in my permanent memory. How do I get it there in three days?

posted by bash to Education (27 answers total)

When I had to do something similar, I did flash cards. I drew quick line sketches of the art (easier with Renaissance works!) on one side and the date and title on the other side. I think drawing them really helped.

And then I just went through those things over and over and over and over.
posted by occhiblu at 7:30 PM on June 1, 2006

The trick to memory is association. Focus on a piece of the painting. Associate it to its title with a bad pun. Further connections can be made for the artist and sometimes that will be enough to give you an idea behind the date.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:38 PM on June 1, 2006

I can't remember what it's called, but you could try the method ancient Greek oraters would use to remember speeches. Picture a route that you take often - the drive or walk to work, say. Now pick out forty specific features of that route, and associate each one with a painting. Once you've got it down, you can simply replay the route in your head and remember each thing as it comes along.

This works best for memorizing sequences, but it can be adapted for almost anything.
posted by borkingchikapa at 7:43 PM on June 1, 2006

Come up with a mnemonic aid -- find associations between the art pieces, title, artist, and date which you can reduce to phrases, or puns, associations, as has been suggested above.
posted by ericb at 7:51 PM on June 1, 2006

What dances said.

Only with visuals maybe, instead of puns?

If the picture is Whistler's mother, picture her rising up out of her chair and refereeing the superbowl. She blows her whistle for a timeout and cheerleaders chant the date, or fans hold up cards with the date on them.

The more outrageous the image the better.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:52 PM on June 1, 2006

Hey -- an idea. How about posting thte list of artworks along with their titles, artists and dates? Maybe we can help you in coming up with memorable mnemonics.
posted by ericb at 7:53 PM on June 1, 2006

Second the flash cards -- take them with you everywhere, and whenever you're on hold, standing in line, or being bored for any reason, go through them. Do you know any kids? Pay some kid a dollar to quiz you on them all; nothing amuses kids like adults making mistakes, so any kid would jump at this.

Second the drawing, instead of xeroxing, the art. For me, anything in my own handwriting gets in my brain faster than something that's not. Also color-code. Group them by date or artist -- whichever is more important to the teacher -- and write the ones with, say, dates from 1900-1920 in blue, the ones with dates from 1920-1940 in red, etc. You may not remember the exact date, but you'll remember the color, so you won't be way off.

Once you've done that, sort them the other way -- chronological order if you color-coded the artists, alphabetical if you color-coded the dates -- and always do them in that order. You'll go, oh yeah, that was after Magritte but before Neiman -- must be... Murakami!

Titles, I'm thinking, will mostly be easier. But say them aloud when you're doing the flashcards.

I was (and am again) a Biology major, so I know from rote memorization.
posted by Methylviolet at 7:56 PM on June 1, 2006

Only with visuals maybe, instead of puns?

Good point.

Some people are better at visual memory, others at auditory memory.
posted by ericb at 7:59 PM on June 1, 2006

Flashcards and mnemonics / rhymes / whatever gimmicks you find work for your brain. Definitely use flashcards.

Because it's art, maybe you can use symbols too... circle with a square = michael angelo's hair... [I'm not even sure what that means, but you get the idea]
posted by maxpower at 8:15 PM on June 1, 2006

Try doing five at a time. Do five until you really, really know them, then put them aside. Do another five, then put all ten cards together and go through those. Continue with this until you're up to forty. If you do it bit by bit instead of in one big lump, it'll be easier. Seconding what people have said about making up stupid stories to remember them. I had to memorize artists and title several times during the last year for a class, and breaking it up helped.
posted by MadamM at 8:34 PM on June 1, 2006

You need to use multiple methods of memorization to really get stuff into your brain. Flash cards, mnemonics, silly stories, drawings---pick 2 or 3 different methods to really keep your mind engaged in it. When you get tired of doing flash cards, switch to something else, and then switch back. Try drawing silly comics about the artists and their works. Or, describe them out loud. Or draw a diagram or a timeline, over and over again. Make up a song about them. Set your screensaver to be a slideshow of each painting.

The point is to use different styles of learning, so that you use different parts of your brain. Just beware that not to try so many different methods that you don't do enough repetitions. Repetition is essential.
posted by hooray at 9:13 PM on June 1, 2006

The thing about flash cards--make sure you can do them front to back and back to front (match drawings with dates and dates to drawings). Being able to do that was helpful in ruling out answers when I was in a psych class where I had to know all the authors to articles. I did do the whole associate name with subject thing, but flash cards helped the most. I'd run through them, set aside the ones I knew, memorize the rest, and then start with the whole deck again. As you see the pile of "known" ones get bigger, its kind of rewarding to see the progress.
posted by gilsonal at 9:25 PM on June 1, 2006

I had to do the same with but with architecture just a few weeks ago. I got together a study group (mostly for other parts of the exam) and we made a powerpoint. After two or three times through, I knew everything a bit, and by six times, I had it cold. You could memorize this in a night if you had to; three days should be a piece of cake.
posted by awesomebrad at 9:37 PM on June 1, 2006

Is it possible that on some of them you might be able to actually learn them, rather than just memorizing them? If there are particularly distinctive artists, or paintings whose titles are interesting, or obvious given the subject, maybe you could remember them because you learned them. You might still have to memorize dates, since those are not really so easy to learn, but, say, recognizing Van Gogh and knowing it's called, like, "the Peach Orchard" or something that's clearly in the painting might not be so hard.
Then you could learn the ones you actually like, and reduce the number you'd have to strictly memorize.

Unless you don't like any of them, in which case, just do strictly flash cards.
posted by librarina at 10:41 PM on June 1, 2006

Actually I've just remembered something I once read which is that in order to learn something particularly well, you should

1. learn it
2. learn it again an hour later
3. learn it again a day later

This may of course be an old wives' urban legend, but, comments anyone?

The rationale was that this method fixed it in short-term memory, then transferred it to long-term.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:44 PM on June 1, 2006

I've usually done flash cards with anything I've had to memorize (which have admittedly been more often stuff like verb conjugations than pictures). Quizzing yourself is much more useful than just looking at stuff, and you can take the flash cards everywhere.... boring classes... commutes (assuming you don't drive) ... commercial breaks...
posted by dagnyscott at 5:22 AM on June 2, 2006

Find 40 things that taste different.
- carrot
- gummi bear
- bread
- lettuce
- chips
- etc.
Assign each item to a picture.
Whilst memorizing each picture, chew on the assigned item.

I'm not sure why that works, or if it'll work in this context, but people can learn the names of foods quicker if they taste them whilst learning. I guess it makes more sense for the brain to remember things about the things that we need for survival.
posted by seanyboy at 5:25 AM on June 2, 2006

When my roommate and I took art history, we tacked up photocopies of the paintings all over our living room where we spent most of the 48 hours before our final studying.

The fact that you have only three days is not terrible -- cramming does work, and starting to memorize sooner might have been a waste of time. Of course, you'll forget it all the day after the test, but so it goes.

Good luck!
posted by footnote at 5:40 AM on June 2, 2006

Ambrose chapel is correct, this approach was suggested by either Edward deBono or Tony Buzan (can't remember which) who are both experts in thinking. Combine this approach with the mnemonics suggested and you're gold!
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:59 AM on June 2, 2006

Flashcards are how I worked my way through my art history intro courses - and it was my major. This is how it worked best for me: make a set with photocopied images on one side and the info on the other. When you look at each image, write down the title, artist, and date on a scrap of paper (rather than just saying it to yourself in your head) because that's what you'll be doing on the exam. Also go through them looking at the side with artist, title, and date info, and sketch a rough drawing of the work. That really solidified it for me.
posted by saffron at 6:51 AM on June 2, 2006

I studied memory development in humans for a few years. You certainly can do it, and flashcards are a great way to go. Reinstating is important, which is really just repetition. The more you go over them the better, but be sure you are actually focusing each time. Speak aloud and create associations in any way you can. Especially with a large number of items, association might get you the 15 that you can't freely memorize. So far as keeping it short term, that's a vague term and you should be treating this as long term memory. You're not memorizing a phone number for 15 seconds while you dial it, your retaining information over the course of several days.
posted by abee at 7:20 AM on June 2, 2006

When you look at each image, write down the title, artist, and date on a scrap of paper (rather than just saying it to yourself in your head) because that's what you'll be doing on the exam.

I think this is excellent advice, and I'll add two more reasons why: (1) by forcing yourself to write it down, you're avoiding the temptation to cheat ("Oh, I know that one. Next"), and (2) our brain often works in shorthand, and the physical act of converting thoughts into the written word tends to solidify the knowledge in a way that thinking alone can't accomplish.
posted by pardonyou? at 7:20 AM on June 2, 2006

I'm not sure if you have to, but I found it was very helpful to group the works by their movement. I would then spend a while focusing on small sets of 6 or 7 cards together, I found this helped me memorize the different movements almost subconsciously. Make sure you do test yourself randomly though, so that you're able to pick them out from larger groups of cards though. I found it helped me work into going through so many at once, maybe try memorizing 4 together with 10 separate piles and then cut that in half? Just an idea. I had an art history course this semester and I was in the same boat for my final. I suck at memorizing as well and I managed to get 60 slides with 5 points of information each into my head so you can do a meager 40, I promise. Oh, I also did it in about the same amount of time.
posted by SteveFlamingo at 7:34 AM on June 2, 2006

Second the "pun association" idea. I use this when helping actors cram lines (a skill I developed back when I was an amateur actor and was the slowest study imaginable), and it even works in getting the text of an opera libretto into the head of a singer who's not fluent in the language.

Dates are something more of a hassle, though since it's modern art, the century part should be easy. That leaves you only a 2 digit number to associate.

So for Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," you could imagine the nekkid lady saying, "Oops, I dropped all my eggs while I was walking down this damn staircase." Eggs = a dozen = 1912. (And if you need to associate the artist's name, you can expand the scenario a bit... the reason she dropped the eggs was because she was startled by Muhammad Ali, who was jumping up and down on the landing, yelling, "I am the champ!")
posted by La Cieca at 7:45 AM on June 2, 2006

I think the key to memorising stuff is making it your own. So, for example, at University, if I want to learn a large chunk of information, I would make my own notes from the lecture notes. This serves to a) condense the information b) put it into your own words and c) form associations implicitly.

In your situation, I would try and put each piece of art into some sort of context. That way, it actually means something to you. Look at it, think about how it makes you feel, find out a bit about the artist so that memories of them will trigger thoughts about their contemporaries, the age in which they worked, their style and so forth. Therefore, when you think 'Matisse', you'll think of his style and that might make you recall his art, you'll think of his date of birth which might remind you of when he did the piece of art and so forth.
posted by pollystark at 7:51 AM on June 2, 2006

I have heard that the more senses through which you experience something, the more likely it is to stick in your memory. The less often the sense is used, the stronger effect it will have. So, while you can't exactly smell each piece, you can look at it, say it aloud, write a list of tiles and dates(visualizing the picture while you do so), etc.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 8:17 AM on June 2, 2006

TEACH someone else what you need to know.

The simple act of teaching someone causes you to learn it in a much deeper way that just rote memorization.
Sit your girlfriend (lots of assumption there) down, beg her to bear with you for the next few hours, and go one image at a time. With each image, describe the essential elements of the image out loud to her. Out loud, take turns repeating the title of the painting a few times, then do the same for the artist.

Then quiz her on it. She doesn't have to get ANYTHING right. Just the act of going through this will magically ingrain it in your grey matter.

Tried, tested and true.
posted by UnclePlayground at 10:43 AM on June 2, 2006