Arts/Art History (HS 328)
Learning Goals
The Waldorf curriculum spans twelve years. In the final four years of high school the arts are no longer integrated into the main lesson material but nevertheless play an integral role in confirming and balancing the adolescent’s development. Art becomes the mediator between the physical, etheric, astral bodies, and incoming ego as the awakening adolescent develops an increasingly individualized relationship to the world. Art classes have the subtle task of touching the high school student’s sacred dreams. They can help set in motion impulses that stir the unfolding of individual destiny.
Course Content
In these sessions we will continue our studies and hands-on experience of the arts curriculum appropriate to the adolescent. This year the emphasis will be on group and individualized drawing and sculpture exercises. Linear, gesture, charcoal, and black and white shaded drawing will be explored. In the realm of sculpture we will work with the language of form, both in abstract and in the human form. For those interested, we will have an introduction to wood carving.
We will utilize slide presentations, discussions, and independent reading. We will continue to follow the development of human consciousness in art from the Renaissance to modern times. With observation of works and images, we will practice, along with this general survey of art history, the objectifying of our perceptions and training of our aesthetic sensibilities.
By means of this practice we will see how the ideal of beauty changes over time along with the experience of Self.
