Give an account of your own visit to a picture gallery.

13. Communication Work:

a) Get your fellow-student to give you information about his/ her favourite museum. Try to get as many details as you can.

b) You are a novice teacher getting ready to take your charges to the Tretyakov Gallery/the Russian Museum/the Hermitage. Ask for advice and suggestions from an expert.

c) Persuade your partner to agree with your opinion that life is made much more colourful if you regularly visit art exhibitions.

d) One of you has recently returned from England. The other is questioning him/her on the impressions of the National Gallery/ the Tate Gallery.

e) The great value of visiting a museum and studying works of art first-hand is that one becomes aware of the qualitative difference between original art and photographic reproductions. Work in pairs and enlarge on this statement.

 

14. Read the following dialogues. The expressions in bold type show the WAYS ENGLISH PEOPLE EXPRESS LIKES AND DISLIKES. Note them down. Be ready to act out the dialogues in class:

— Isn't that lovely?

— What a dull picture! Why, there's no colour in it.

— That a dull picture! Why, it's beautiful, it's perfect, if it had

any more colour it would be wrong.

— But 1 don't think so. Each to our own opinion, dear Simon.

— …Forgive me, darling. To lose my temper because you didn't like that picture, how childish!

— Yes, you were funny; I have never seen you like that before, quite a baby, Simon. If I really thought you liked that thing, Simon, I'd begin to wonder at your taste.

— But I did like it. I haven't seen a picture for years I have liked so much.

 

***

They paused before the prizewinner.

— I think that one's got something. For once I believe that I'd agree with the judges.

— I hate it like hell.

— What don't you like about it?

— Everything. To me it's just phoney. No pilot in his senses would be flying as low as that with thermo-nuclear bombs going off all around.

— It's got good composition and good colouring.

— Oh, sure. But the subject's phoney.

 

Discussing and evaluating things often involves stating your preference. Here are some ways of expressing likes and dislikes. Notice that you need to be very polite when criticizing things in English — even speaking to someone you know quite well.

Expressing likes

I like... very much indeed.45

I (really) enjoy...

I've always liked/loved...

There's nothing I like/enjoy more than...

I'm (really) very fond of...

... is (really) terrific/great, etc.

It's too lovely for words.

 

Expressing dislikes

(I'm afraid) I don't like...

I've never liked..., I'm afraid.

... is not one of my favourite...

I (really) hate...

I think... is pretty awful/really unpleasant.

I'm not (really) very⁷ keen on...

... is ghastly/rubbish.

I can't say... appeals to me very much.

I must say I'm not too fond of...

 

16. Work in pairs, a) Find out each other's feelings about these subjects. Use the clichés of likes and dislikes:

1. An art book for a birthday present. 2. Snapshots from a family album. 3. Pupils' drawings for the school exhibition. 4. Your grandma's picture postcards. 5. A guided tour of a museum. 6. Landscape painting. 7. Impressionism. 8. Genre painting. 9. Animals in art. 10. Still life.

 

b) Report your partner's opinion to the students in another group.

 

17. Read the following text. Find in it arguments for including popular arts in the art curriculum and against it. Copy them out into two columns (I — "for", II — "against"):

A new issue in aesthetic education today has to do with the choice of art examples to use in the classroom, specifically, whether they should be restricted to recognized works of fine art or allowed to include such art forms as posters, album covers, billboards, and particularly cinema and television.

Since the popular arts are a reflection and product of popular culture, exploring the popular culture should be a valid method of inquiry. Popular arts are already a part of the children's lives and they enable the teacher to "start where the kids are". Further, they facilitate the responses the children are already having with their preferred art forms rather than imposing adult middle class standards on them. We know also that art which students encounter in schools — the official or high art embodied in the official curriculum — stands in an adversary relation to the media of popular entertainment. A critical analysis of the forms reflected in popular art is imperative if we want to elicit meaningful dialogue about art.

Not all writers in art education have taken a positive position in regard to the popular arts. An opinion exists that fine art objects are the only objects with the power to impart a markedly aesthetic aspect to human experience. Certain scholars "refuse to cheapen art's magnificent and supreme excellence by comparing it to comic strips and other essentially vulgar commodities", claiming that popular culture was the result of the public's inability to appreciate high art. Even those who recognize popular arts as art forms suggest that the schools should go beyond them, because "serious art" makes more demands on the viewer.

Some art educators argue that concepts of fine art and popular art are relative and that the distinction between the two is slight if not illusory. What we see in art museums and art galleries includes a lot of different things from all over the world, from cultures and periods of time in which the concept of art, as we know it, did not exist. In their original contexts, such objects often served a variety of functions, such as magical, ritualistic, narrative, or utilitarian but almost never aesthetic.

It is well known that many of the things we regard so highly today, such as Gothic cathedrals, El Grecos, Rembrandts, Goyas or Cezannes, were ignored or scorned at different periods of time. Many things we ignore or scorn today, such as the work of the ' French or Royal Academies in the 19th century, were at one time highly regarded. A work's reputation can be affected precipitously by the accident of reattribution. A highly regarded Rembrandt subsequently discovered to be not by Rembrandt drops in value immediately. The same thing can happen in reverse. Finally, there are cases in which objects have lost not only their monetary and intrinsic value, but also their status as art objects because they are fakes.

 

Discuss the text in pairs. One partner will take the optimistic view and insist that popular arts should be included in the art curriculum. The other will defend the opposite point of view.

Consider the following:

 

For:	Against:
1. The differences between popular and fine art are often matters of classification.	1. Fine arts in each epoch supplied the models from which the rules and principles were derived.
2. Popular art facilitates the aesthetic experience and therefore is appropriate for study in the field of art education.	2. Fine arts are more noble, more worthy than all the other opportunities available for visual aesthetic experience around us.
3. The content of the popular arts is of relevance to the students and, through art criticism, can lead to a more penetrating analysis of these and other art forms.	3. Tastes should be developed through images of high artistic culture, whereas works of popular culture as a rule meet consumer's tastes.
4. The popular arts allow students to talk about emotionally meaningful experiences.	4. Excellent or fine art is better than poor art for providing students with a strong personal and cultural awareness.
5. They can aid the student's understanding of his culture as well as the cultures of other peoples.	5. A lot of popular art is debased and meretricious.
6. Once the teacher is able to establish a trusting relationship and a rapport with his students, the students might be more responsive to the forms of art which the teacher wishes to introduce.	6. We have no right to "condemn" students to the easily comprehensible forms of popular art. Any student can develop an appreciation of the fine arts.
	7. The habit of looking at good pictures is in itself a means by which taste can be formed.

 

 

Part 2

Texts on art

I

Unit 19

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