L3 Popular Culture: Feedback on classroom test, Part One

 

L3 civilisation britannique Popular Culture since 1945 : DST

 

I will be putting feedback here over the next few weeks concerning your classroom test. You will remember that it was worth 15% of the course mark, so one might say its main aim is to get you to absorb what our expectations are.

I will add to this post a few times, so do keep coming back to it once a week.

The morning class were given the following question :

How have British artists and artistic institutions tried to make sure that visual art speaks to a wider section of the population ?

Answer the question giving a number of examples of approaches by British artists or artistic programmes or institutions.

 

I will concentrate on this question for the time being. The afternoon class were given a subject about elitism, which was fairly similar in many ways.

 

Structure

Your answer needs a structure, so as to avoid you simply saying everything you know about visual art since the impressionists. It is probably best to use a simple structure. Here is an example.

Introduction : define some of the terms of the question : what is “a wider audience” in this case (an audience which is not wholly drawn from a cultural elite).

 

1.    Artistic programmes and institutions (the Tate Gallery, the Fourth Plinth, the Turner Prize…)

a.    What they have done to widen their audience (free galleries, use of internet, use of popular participation)

b.    What has made it hard to widen their audience (entrenched social codes, but also the obscure and avant-garde nature of much of the Turner prize work, for example).

 

2.    Artists

a.    What they have done to widen their audiences

i Bringing art to the people – street art in particular, but also Anthony Gormley’s beach sculptures or Andy Goldsworthy’s arch, or the outdoor sculptures of Henry Moore.

ii Treating subjects which matter to ordinary people (Lowry, Martin Parr…)

iii Public participation (Banksy’s Dismaland, Jeremy Deller)

 

b.    What has made it harder for artists to widen their audience?

 

Conclusion

 

This is just one example of a possible structure – there are many more possible. The most important thing to notice is that every paragraph is linked to the original question – you do not add things you remember from the class unless you have linked them to the idea of widening, or failing to widen, the audience.

 

Secondly, although the question asks “how did they widen their audiences?” it is a very good idea to also include the opposite – how did they NOT widen their audiences.

 

There will be many more comments here, as I go on marking your scripts.