Art Appreciation Class: What is Art? Aesthetics Intro, Discussion & Activity for Middle, High School Art

Do you teach an art appreciation class? The question "what is art" is a question of aesthetics that has been discussed by philosophers and should be discussed by your middle and high school art students. Introduce your students to aesthetics and help them develop their own opinion of what art is with this one-day art activity for a visual arts course.

This PowerPoint was used in my Introduction to Art class to help discuss art history and the philosophy of aesthetics. It takes the very complicated idea of aesthetics and simplifies four main theories for them to compare to their own understanding of art. 

During this art appreciation class, the students start by writing down their definitions of art. We then look at a PowerPoint of 16 art examples, with a variety of types and styles of art, to see if they fit into the definition they created.

After a class discussion on the students' definitions, we look at four theories of art: mimetic, expression, formalist, and institutional. The students complete the activity by determining whether or not they are satisfied with the definition they originally came up with, or if they want to revise it. This activity will create student success across your whole group of students as they develop an appreciation of art.

Included in this zip file for an art appreciation class:

• PowerPoint presentation, 57 slides, 4 art theories, and 16 art examples
• Lesson plan
• Student worksheet
• In-depth teacher notes that follow the PowerPoint and provide background information on the works of art and their visual elements.

This lesson is great for advanced 8th-grade art students and 9th-12th grade students.

• Check out my Introduction to Art curriculum. You won't have to plan a single day of the year in your Intro class.
• Check out an aesthetic based project using Adobe CC Express here and a vision board project using Canva here.
• Check out my other products here.