CHILDREN - Lesson 1: Is a puppy art?

Child

Hi. This unit of lessons is all about definitions. It asks lots of questions like what is art? What is art for? What makes something beautiful? What is the value of something? Those questions might be almost impossible to answer to everybody’s satisfaction. In a way, the answer isn’t as important as the things you can learn by thoroughly asking the question. The first lesson has a big question for you: What is art, anyway? And it asks you to find something in your home and then ask, “Why is this valuable to you?”

Adult/Teacher

Hello. You probably never imagined that you would be leading a philosophical discussion about Aesthetics, but here we are. This unit of lessons grapples with questions that have roused artists and others for centuries in lively and productive discourse. Don’t worry, as the adult in the room, you don’t need to have the answers. Just encourage children to ask more and more questions, peeling back layers of ideas until you find the heart of an issue. We’ve provided lots of examples. Let’s start with an easy one. It’s about puppies.

Is a puppy art?

Questioning

How can we define what art is?

This is not something that young children consider when they are actually making art. For them, it’s an activity, a way to communicate and to represent graphically what they’re thinking and feeling. If you went to a three-year old and said, “That picture is great. It’s art. Let’s frame it,” she might think, “Well, ok. But it’s just something I drew.”

As we grow up, we come to value things that we can define. Let’s take art. What is art?

Sounds silly, but let’s step back and ask some questions. Is a puppy art? No? But it’s so beautiful. Isn’t everything beautiful art? Well, not really. More than that, sometimes art can be about things that aren’t beautiful. That’s an important reaction, too.

Is a puppy made by an artist? Nope. So our definition of art probably needs to remove purely natural things like puppies, clouds, and trees. It’s the artist’s transformation of a tree into something new that makes it art, right?

Do you have to like all art? That’s a good question. Maybe there’s a difference between these two: “Do I like it?” and “Is it good?”

The value of a question

All of these questions are pretty deep and philosophical. They are like a long road with many interesting side roads. Children can become frustrated when answers are not black and white—even though they delight in answering questions hazily themselves. But the processing of differences and the embrace of complexity is of great and lasting value to a child’s development. Art can be the perfect vehicle for this kind of exploration because it legitimizes their personal experience. They can say, “This makes me think of…” and it doesn’t have to be the same response that anybody else has. Children can be just as eager to find great questions as they are to find great answers. To learn that they can respond to something differently than an adult, but that both are valid, has great liberating potential. 

When talking about art, the differences of responses have to do with evaluating the art and seeing why it matters to us. That philosophical discipline is known as Aesthetics, which comes from Greek words about sensing things. When we look at art or objects, we need to determine what our reactions are—what our senses are telling us and the ideas and emotions they trigger—to know how we are sensing the experience. This is different than learning about the history of an art work or criticism of its composition or meaning. We are striving to evaluate the art, and often that is personal. Evaluation is all about value. 

Why is something valuable? A puppy is valuable for many reasons. Why is art valuable and what does it provide us that we can’t get elsewhere? Your goal as an adult talking to a child about art is to elicit responses to those exciting, if complex, issues.

No question is meaningless

As you can tell, philosophers like to ask lots of questions. In some ways, they are like the child who drives their parents crazy by asking why, why, why? “Why is the sky blue?”, “Why is my hair curly?”, “Why do I have ten toes and not twelve?” No question is meaningless, and when looking at art and objects, the same holds true. The more questions you can put before the child and the more reactions they bring, the better.

Help lead an aesthetic discussion with a child by welcoming questions, even by adding questions to their questions.

1. Find something that you are displaying in your home (call it “art” or not, the point is that you are displaying it). Sit down with it and the child and ask this question about it: Is this art? Instead of asking a second question of “why?”, which is likely to produce a noncommittal response, work your way into the discussion by presenting variables:

   Would it be art if…? For example, if you’re looking at a painting, ask “Would it be art if it were a photograph of the painting?” “Would it be art if a computer made it?” “Would it be art if instead of the things represented in the picture, the actual objects were here in the room with us?” “Would it be art if everybody disliked it?” “Would it be art if the artist never showed it to anyone?” Then ask again, “Why do you think this is art?”

2. Find an art work or an object that you think the child might like. It could be something familiar or something new. Ask this question: To you, is this valuable?

   They might immediately default to value in the sense of financial value, but broaden the discussion by adding other questions. Ask, “Have you ever liked something that other people didn’t like?” “So is there a difference between what you value and what other people might value?” “Does value mean money, or is there some other ways to value things?”

   The essence of the question is what the experience of valuing something is like. Help them get there by noting that you don’t have to own something to value it. You can see something and there’s a sensation that comes with that. “When you look at this art work, what changes in you?” Then move toward a concept of relative value. Ask, pointing to something else in your home, “Would you say that this is more valuable or meaningful to you than that?” “Why?”

3. Aesthetics has a goal of identifying why something is good. It is related to Art Criticism, but it is also interested in personal reactions, truths, and tastes. “Why does the work of art mean something to you?” As an area of academic study, it grew out of search for intellectual responses to beauty and the sublime. This final exercise will be difficult, but if you can make it work—even if it takes a while—it will be an ah-ha moment for the child.

   Help the child remember an artistic experience that was powerful. Depending on the child’s exposure to the arts, this might be a visual artwork, a movie, a performance, or book, or something else created by an artist. Relive the child’s initial experience with it in as much detail as you can recall. Take your time. Encourage the child to fill in the blanks in order to fully submerge yourselves again in the experience. You want to be transported back to the moment that was meaningful. The goal of the exercise is the realization that each of these powerful experiences is a combination of many artistic decisions.

   Ask a series of what-if questions and be as detailed as you can. If you’re talking about a book, for example, ask, “What if the character were a girl instead of a boy? How would that have changed it for you?” “What if the ending were different? (And provide your alternative ending.)” “What if the story happened in a different place entirely? (Again, give your own version.)” Maybe you’re talking about a movie, you could ask about questions of plot, characters, tone, theme, music, moral, length, language, etc. Take any of those aspects of it, shift it, and ask, “How would those changes affect your reaction to it?” If speaking about music, the changes might be different instruments, different tempos, different melodies or lyrics. If visual art, imagine change about the properties of art such as color, composition, scale, materials, etc. For example, you could ask, “In this picture, what if the main figure were off-center. How would that change your reaction to it?” You get the idea.

   Then ask, “Who made those decisions? Do you think they considered different possibilities before they selected one?” With any luck, you and the child will be able to consider that the process of making art has many steps, just like the act of experiencing art. The artist wants you to look closely at the work and feel it, think about it, and react to it. When you do those things, you are giving art value.