HOW DO CHILDREN RESPOND TO DIFFERENT ARTISTIC GENRES?

Art is as beautiful as sunshine and as important as nourishment to our body. Though art is a stimulating aspect, art appreciation is regarded as a highly subjective phenomenon. Art education and art appreciation is known to enrich the lives of children. Various factors including one’s experience, knowledge, and exposure to arts as well as processing fluency are known to influence one’s aesthetic appreciation. The objective of the present study is to examine children’s expressions of art appreciation. The quantitative study examines how children respond to artworks from different artistic genres. The participants in this study are sixty grade IX children in the age group of 13-15 years, from rural and urban backgrounds from the state of Telangana. The study employed equal number of boys and girls. Images of nine famous artworks depicting landscapes are used as stimuli. The images of artworks belonged to three artistic genres: representational, semi-representational, and abstract artworks. The artworks are selected from Western, Middle Eastern and Oriental paintings. Images of paintings are shown randomly to children to elicit their responses. The results of analysis of children’s descriptions of paintings indicate that children appreciated representational artworks more than semi-representational artworks and their appreciation of abstract artworks is minimum. Children’s appreciation of artworks according to the type of paintings indicate differences in appreciation among western, middle eastern and oriental paintings. The statistical analysis of overall appreciation of three genres of artworks depending on the type of paintings reveal that there exists a statistically significant difference in the appreciation of three types of artworks depending on the genre of artworks. The findings of this study can be used to enlighten the development of art education curricula. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0748/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>