Appreciation of Artistic Genres in Children with Different Perceptual, Contextual and Analytic Intelligence

Children feel wonder and excitement while perceiving an artwork and their aesthetic responses are evident through their spontaneous expressions. During this process, children understand multiple interpretations of familiar themes. Children’s descriptions of artworks are categorised into three levels of appreciation namely, perceptual level, contextual level and analytical level. The objective of the present study is to explore children’s appreciation of art. The quantitative study investigates children’s descriptions of artworks at various levels of art appreciation. The study employs sixty grade IX children from the state of Telangana. The sample selected include equal number of boys and girls from rural and urban areas and they are in the age group of 13-15 years. The stimuli used in the study are artworks depicting landscapes selected from three artistic genres of representational, semi-representational and abstract artworks. Images of artworks are presented randomly to children to elicit their responses. The results of the study showed that representational artworks are better appreciated by children than semi-representational and abstract artworks. The analysis of children’s expressions of artworks at various levels of appreciation reveals that for all three genres of artworks, children are at the perceptual level of appreciation. Statistical analysis of the results illustrates that there are statistically significant differences in appreciation at the perceptual, contextual, and analytical levels of appreciation of three genres of artworks. The findings of the study may be used by educators in providing art learning experiences to children.