Goal:
We will determine what beauty is and whether it can be objective. We will also explore what it means to be an artist and discuss the intentionality of art.
Materials:
Pictures of art
Index cards
Lesson Plan
35 min total
5 min: Have students write on index card their definition of art on one side and their definition of beauty on the other
5 min: share definitions, discuss similarities and differences
10 min: pull images out of a hat and discuss each one (Include some famous paintings, some pictures of nature, ordinary objects)
Is each image art? Is each image beautiful?
What is art? What is beauty?
Can something be art and not be beautiful? Can something be beautiful and not art?
Is anything objectively beautiful or is it all about perception? Could there be beauty if there were no people to observe the beauty?
10 min: Discuss intentionality of art
Can something be art without the intention to be?
Computer generated art
5 min: Look back at the definition of art and beauty, has your definition changed?
If extra time: Ask students to name one song that is beautiful and one song that is not. Play some of them and discuss
What is an artist?
Can someone playing a musical piece they didn’t write be an artist of that piece?
Pictures:
Traditional art-
Nature:
Computer generated art:
Murals and graffiti:
Sculpture:
Traffic cone:
Banana:
Nail art:
Food art:
This was an awesome lesson and continues to be one of my favorite philosophical discussions I've had. It was so interesting to listen to students' thoughts about art and beauty. The students all seemed incredibly passionate about art and expression which was an extra treat. I decided to take notes during the lesson to just keep track of what was being said so I'd remember after, but it turned out to be a good tool to challenge students on contradictions to their opinions and overall to engage students by being able to clearly point out what a particular student had said.
The students seemed to mainly define art as something that evokes emotion in the audience. There was also a fairly strong sense that the creator needed to have some sort of artistic intent. This definition became a very interesting thing to challenge when we brought up computer generated art, and the students seemed to respond really well to that challenge and to some extent revise their definition, or otherwise seem that they were much less confident in the correctness of their original definition, and were more open to other ideas.
I had such a great time in this discussion, and I think art is something particularly impactful for high school students which made it an interesting discussion all around.