National Gallery Art Appreciation

On 21 November the Lower Sixth art pupils engaged in a day of art appreciation and contextual studies in London. After a whistle stop tour of the key eras in art at the National Gallery the pupils were taken through a series of exercises in stretching their personal opinion of artworks at Tate Britain. For example one pupil led a pupil, who had their eyes closed, to stand with their back to an artwork and have it described to them as they wrote down the description. Afterwards they were allowed to turn and look at the work and read about it and note their new impressions. The pupils also worked in pairs to consider all the questions the artwork might ask them from the banal to the deep – this is a technique to enable pupils be more intuitive about their responses and less concerned about being ‘right or wrong’ about art.
The pupils chose works that fitted with their personal direction for their studies and extended their written opinion about the work using the exercises they had practised.