How to teach a child to understand art and instill an artistic taste – an expert

Remember the last time you visited the museum? And the first one? Were you bored? For sure. Because a small child who finds himself in a museum like the Tretyakov Gallery and the Hermitage will most likely not be interested in listening to a guide. And rolling on the floor is much more enjoyable. But how to make the child interested in art? So that he doesn’t get bored even in a huge museum? We need to prepare. And very much in advance.

Anastasia Postrigai, art critic and founder of the OPPOPART School of Popular Art, shares her experience on how to study art history with her children.

– A child needs a guide to enter the world of art. It is best if you yourself become such an accompanying person, and not a nanny or a kindergarten teacher. In the first years of life, the bond between mother and child is incredibly strong – so take advantage of it! But start with yourself. In studying art history, the most important thing is a sincere interest. If you are interested in this knowledge, then the child will eventually begin to adopt the desire to learn new things.

When is the best time to start instilling artistic taste? Psychologists have an answer, but rather vague: the sooner the better. But be selective in your approach. To “load” a child with terms, dates and even names is an empty and thankless task. You run the risk of completely discouraging your child from learning art. Maybe over time he will learn where is Repin and where is Levitan, but only this will be the result not of a pleasant and useful game, but of natural training.

So where do you start? Set up a mini gallery at home. Hang prints on the walls and view them with your child. Talk to him. Use the description method, do not be afraid to ask your baby about his feelings, experiences, thoughts. Using the examples of five pictures, we will explain how to talk with children about art.

It is best to start with everyday scenes where children are depicted. So it will be easier for the baby to perceive what is happening, because he can easily take the hero on the canvas for his own. Show your child, for example, Edouard Manet’s painting The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil. Here it is important to maintain order in the story: describe the picture from the general to the particular, from the foreground to the background. First, draw the child’s attention to the woman, then move your gaze to the baby, emphasize that this is also a mother and son – just like you. Then you can talk about the man in the background (by the way, this is Claude Monet at work in the garden). And don’t be lazy to ask questions! “What do you think the boy was up to before? What was he playing? “,” What is he feeling now? “,” And what is the man doing in the corner of the picture? ” Etc.

At first glance, this approach does not seem serious. But this is exactly how, through the game “question – answer”, you involve the child in the study of art, only you do it unobtrusively. And over time, when the child comes to a large real museum, he himself will be able to describe the paintings.

Everything is simple here. Show your child a picture and say: “Meet Mika!” Works flawlessly.

Ask the child to look at the painting again. Mika is a very emotional boy, on his face you can read awe, delight, interest, embarrassment … Therefore, when describing the portrait, do not hesitate to use bright words. “Mika is awake!”, “Mika is embarrassed!”, “Mika is inspired.” So, through the game, the child will learn new and beautiful words. And over time, his vocabulary will compare favorably with his peers.

Don’t forget about the question-answer game. Invite your child to think about what exactly inspired Miku? What did the boy see? Maybe someone called him? After all, Serov managed to capture only a moment, while four-year-old Mika stopped in the middle of the game, climbed into a chair and now froze. And the artist seemed to have spied on him.

A work of art is a great material for studying counting, as well as shapes and colors. Down with boring training manuals! Let’s teach children to count on Cézanne’s apples, pears and peaches.

The French artist had a certain weakness for fruit still lifes. Choose any canvas and start counting: how many apples? How many plums? How many pears? And what color are they – yellow or maybe green?

An important point: the objects in the painting should be really different in shape, size and color. And although Cezanne can in no way be attributed to realistic artists, his apples really look like apples. In a situation when children are just beginning to form ideas about objects, this is very important.

I bet that Kustodiev’s “Merchant” is liked by all children, without exception. There are several reasons for this. For example, bright colors or a general feeling of kindness, warmth and comfort that comes from the canvas. But the main thing: Kustodiev wrote a cat! And where will you meet a child who is indifferent to animals, even if they are painted? So feel free to start your journey through the picture with the cat.

Even on the example of “The merchant’s wife at tea”, the child can be explained some spatial concepts. For example, “far – close”. Like, the cat is close, and the church is far away. And the merchant’s wife?

A special kind of pleasure is to look at The Merchant’s Wife in a large format. Just print or buy a picture as a poster and stick it on a piece of cardboard. In the nursery, homemade reproduction will definitely take pride of place – as personal experience shows, you can study this canvas a little less than endlessly.

And finally – a lesson in natural history. To do this, it is not at all necessary to go out into the street, but it is enough to show the child the landscapes. Remember, in school reading books on reading, stories about nature were always illustrated with paintings by Levitan, Repin, Shishkin? Using the paintings of Russian landscape painters, it is very easy to teach a kid to distinguish the seasons, and even describe weather phenomena.

You can complicate the task a little: show the child the impressionists. So who understood that time is fleeting! On Monet’s water lilies, you can explain how the world changes during the day: here is dawn, here is noon, and here is twilight. Who knows, maybe, after many years, your already matured son or daughter, looking at the predawn sky, will compare it with Monet’s landscapes, and not with pictures from the Internet.