How to put the nation’s pupils off great art for ever
14 March 2009
Olivia Cole eavesdrops on the dreary guidance given to comatose teenagers in the National Gallery. We have forgotten the true function of art
‘Bathers at Asnières’ is a dreamily double-edged impressionist painting: an idyll as tricksy as the tiny dots, instead of brushstrokes, that Seurat used to paint. Young Parisian workers are stretched out like cats in the sun, or swimming in water so cool that you can almost feel it, and yet in the background the chimneys puff away, calling them back to work. At the National Gallery the other day, I overheard an official gallery guide addressing a heap of near-comatose teenagers: ‘This is a very large painting,’ she said, ‘and it was painted about 100 years ago.’
In an escape from the shackles of the classroom, as opposed to the factory floor, 80,000 schoolchildren pass through the doors of the National Gallery every year — that’s one potentially excitable child every 15 minutes. But if it is made this much fun, how many of them will return? Why would they? A few rooms away from Seurat, at a cost of £50 million, come September, will be ‘Diana and Actaeon’, the proverbial ‘saved for the nation’ Titian. Perhaps this will be presented as a medium-sized painting, done by an Italian.
Everywhere I looked younger school parties were trussed up like luminous lemmings in small yellow cycling jackets to make them visible (glowing in fact) even inside the gallery. When wonks send out Health and Safety officers to pull down snowmen, it’s no surprise that more rigorous investigations (A Good Childhood, published last month, the Kids in Museums campaign fronted by Mariella Frostrup, and the damning Cambridge Review of Primary Education) have concluded that it’s not much fun growing up these days.
Near Seurat, next to an endlessly mysterious (and sexy) Tintoretto, I found a baffling direction to consider the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of the Species. ‘Tintoretto’s painting represents a fantastical legend in which the milk of the goddess Juno forms the stars of the Milky Way. But what other origin myths are suggested or concealed in this painting?’ Who cares? Forget getting ‘cross-curricular’ — the reverberating buzz word in museums’ education packs — look at that exploding constellation of stars. Look at the colour of the sky! Do you think Juno is, dare we say the word, beautiful?
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Amanda Craig
March 12th, 2009 10:16am Report this commentVery good article. There is an exact equivalent to the teaching of English - a "how many swans were there at Coole" approach.
But the sad truth is that if these children aren't trotted round museums then they are unlikely to encounter great art at all. I took my children to the NG from the age of 3 (armed with Lucy Micklethwaite's A Child's First Book of Art.) They love it, and one is now doing History of Art A-level because it is NOT school. Education kills almost everything it touches unless imparted by an inspirational teacher. However, I'd still rather they saw Monet's Waterlilies than not.
William Dunn
March 12th, 2009 11:33am Report this commentTwo years ago, between meetings nearby, I made a quick visit to the National Gallery where I overheard similar inanities about Vermeer. Having studied many years ago under Lawrence Gowing, who knew something about Vermeer and wrote a wonderful book on the artist, I made a comment to a couple of students, who seemed interested. But their teacher accused me of molesting her students and called for two security guards who very pompously ordered me to leave the room because I was "disturbing" the public. A very sad day...
A. MacAulay
March 13th, 2009 7:27am Report this commentJuno makes cellulitis or otherwise aesthetically challenged Goddesses feel bad about themselves.
JohnAnt
March 14th, 2009 1:31am Report this comment"like luminous lemmings in small yellow cycling jackets"
Someone should send them down to the Tate and put them in for the Turner Prize.
Angela Stewart
March 15th, 2009 10:58pm Report this commentIn the National Gallery why not just tell children that they are about to see much beauty and extraordinary colour in the paintings and simply request that they should feel free to share their experiences after the excursion. I know I find a visit there always fills my eyes with beauty and inspiration - but I never I use an audio guide: you cannot listen and LOOK at the same time. Interpretation should follow appreciation not the other way around.
I have often observed school groups in the NG when I am visiting London and have pitied them the dry, "fact-based" talk about inessentials. What does a discussion about bridge-building practice have to tell us about the beauty both in execution and content of Monet's painting of the Japanese bridge at Giverny?
A. MacAulay
March 16th, 2009 9:48am Report this commentPutting the "luminous lemmings" up for the Turner Prize is apt because this is the type of (post) modern art that so many (post) modern artists construct in order to "make people think".
That the purpose of art is to make people feel is lost on the dull witted, emotionally retarded knowledge administrators who teach and inform.
To wonder at Juno's beauty is to experience the same feeling as every human who has ever or will ever look upon this masterpiece.
Angela Stewart is right. Children (and adults) should be encouraged to open their hearts to great art. If they do that they will have found something to think about too.
Laura A. Macaluso
March 20th, 2009 3:49pm Report this commentGood article and comments. There are so many ways to "use" art (for inspiration, to feel, for knowledge, for experience). What, for me, is the worst of all of this, is the fact that those of us who love art cannot do more to make "believers" out of those who do not yet know or understand the multiple layers/levels of power art can provide. I do not see, at least in the U.S.A. things getting any better for the arts. It just gets harder and harder. How can we convince those outside of our small "art circle" that art is worthy of our time, attention, energy and funding?
Judy Prince
May 30th, 2009 5:52pm Report this commentOlivia Cole, what a marvelous essay you've written---profound, sweeping, rousing, convincingly-exampled, witty! You need to let us know the title of your book of essays. No matter the subject; it'd guaranteedly draw readers' inspiration.
My favourite-of-all phrasing--and I think the heart--in this piece: "Learning to find favourites, not just gathering a string of visually aided facts..."
Moreover, your comment-posters seem well-spoken, bright, reasonable, caring folk---oh my goodness, there's a right odd turn of events.
We USAmericans get all of the Official Museumfolk Boredom you describe so beautifully-painfully---and we get, as well, less money [than UKers] from our government for arts' support. Sad, that.
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