Читать книгу What Adults Don’t Know About Art - Группа авторов - Страница 4

You might not know it, but you have probably been interested in art for a long time.

Perhaps it began one afternoon when you were in the kitchen. You got some coloured pens and a big sheet of paper and you drew something like this:

Drawing by Stacey, aged 6

You really enjoyed colouring the clouds blue and you were pleased with the yellow house. Dad stuck it up on the fridge door. He said he liked his hairstyle in the picture.

Or maybe the first art you really liked was a picture in a book, like this one:

Judith Kerr, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, 1968

You thought it would be fun to be there with a big friendly tiger drinking from a teapot.

Probably no one told you these were art.

That is a pity, because they are art — and they are fun, interesting and important to you. Instead, when you first heard about art it was probably about things that seemed very different to these: more complicated and not really connected to you.

Maybe you went to a museum or gallery when you were on holiday or on a school trip.

A visit to an art gallery

The museum was huge and there were lots of people — you kept worrying someone was going to bump into you. Nobody said very much and when they talked they spoke quietly, as if this was a very special place where you had to be on your best behaviour. You were told you weren’t allowed to run about or make a noise.

There might have been lots of different pictures on the walls that you couldn’t make much sense of.

Maybe you saw one like this:

Andrea del Sarto, Madonna of the Harpies, 1517

Looking at this picture, you might wonder why that little boy’s mum is standing on a carved stone, or why the children with wings are holding her legs. Is she going to fall off?

Or perhaps you saw something a bit like this:

Constantin Brancusi, Fish, 1926

It sort of looks like a table… but don’t try putting a glass of orange juice on it or else an alarm will ring and the guards will be very angry!

Though it looks like furniture, this is art, too. A lot of art is pictures and paintings, but there are plenty of other kinds of art too, like sculpture and textiles and installation.

Most of the time, though, when you were in the museum, you just saw the backs of people who were standing in the way.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c.1503–1519 At the Louvre, Paris

Grown-ups want you to go to art galleries and museums — even if they do not go to them very often themselves. They like it if your school organises a trip to a museum.