International Journal of Arts and Humanities Studies ISSN: 2754-4311 DOI: 10.32996/bjahs Journal Homepage: www.al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/Ijahs IJAHS AL-KINDI CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Copyright: © 2022 the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Published by Al-Kindi Centre for Research and Development, London, United Kingdom. Page | 55 | RESEARCH ARTICLE Children's Appreciation of Different Artistic Genres: Representational, Non-representational, and Abstract Lilly. KV 1 and Sudhakar Venukapalli 2 ✉ 1 St. Ann’s College of Teacher Education, Secunderabad, India 2 Department of Education, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India Corresponding Author: Sudhakar Venukapalli, E-mail: sudhakarvenu.efluniversity@gmail.com | ABSTRACT Making art and appreciating art are essential human behaviours. As the idiom goes, “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder” we find diverse opinions about art and differences in the experiences elicited through art by individuals. When one perceives art, the close association between sensory and perceptual processing results in aesthetic emotions and aesthetic judgement and helps him/her build meaning. Children’s appreciation of artworks can be categorised into the perceptual level, contextual level and analytical level of appreciation. The objective of the present study is to explore children’s levels of art appreciation. The study is conducted on 60 grade IX children (equal number of boys and girls) in the age group of 13-15 years with no arts education background. They are from rural and urban backgrounds located near Hyderabad in the state of Telangana. Children’s appreciation of artworks is elicited by showing them artworks belonging to three artistic genres: representational, semi- representational and abstract artworks. The results of gender-wise analysis of children’s appreciation according to three levels of appreciation indicate that boys and girls show a statistically significant difference only at the perceptual level of appreciation among representational artworks. For semi-representational artworks, boys and girls display a statistically significant difference at the contextual level of appreciation. On the other hand, in relation to abstract artworks, boys and girls display statistically significant differences in appreciation at perceptual, contextual, and analytical levels of appreciation. The research findings are a clear indication that teachers should encourage children to engage with, reflect upon and value their experiences with artworks and their beauty. | KEYWORDS Art, art appreciation, art experiences, beauty, gender, culture | ARTICLE INFORMATION ACCEPTED: 20 February 2023 PUBLISHED: 09 March 2023 DOI: 10.32996/Ijahs.2023.3.1.8 1. Introduction Making art and appreciating art are essential human behaviours. As the idiom goes, “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder” we find diverse opinions about art and differences in the experiences elicited through art by individuals. Art appreciation is regarded as part of art criticism (Ping & Ladin, 2019), and art appreciation helps students to engage in expressing their own feelings and ideas and appreciate their own artistic creations (Subramaniam, 2017, cited in Ping & Ladin, 2019; Madrid et al., 2019 cited in Ping & Ladin, 2019). Art Appreciation helps children develop communication skills (Novaković, 2015) and generate self-confidence (Ariffin, 2010, cited in Ping & Ladin, 2019). UNESCO considers culture and arts as essential components of a comprehensive education leading to the full development of the individual (UNESCO, 2006). It is stated that children’s artistic development is not universal and is influenced by the environment and culture in which a child grows up. When one perceives art, the close association between sensory and perceptual processing results in aesthetic emotions and aesthetic judgement and helps him/her build meaning. A common finding among some of the researchers is that children’s preferences depend on two key stimuli, which are “subject matter and colour” (Gardner, 1970; Machotka, 1966; Taunton, 1980,