Comparative viewing (first-year junior high school students) of Mukai Junkichi’s Shadow (In the Suzhou Sky) and Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise with art appreciation capabilities and the working of physical sensations/ability to grasp tactile materiality in mind

Abstract

When studying Shadow (In the Suzhou Sky), pupils belonging to classes with low sensitivity to aesthetic properties detected, from the motifs and personality (expression) of the scene, “a sense of the speed at which the river is flowing,” “a sense of the density of the streetscape,” and “a sense of traveling on an airplane.” In their viewing of View of Auvers-sur-Oise, a very high proportion were found to be susceptible to physical sensations and a sense of tactile materiality from the plastic features of the rendering and coloring techniques. Having the students engage in a comparative study of the two works revealed aspects that cannot be ignored, despite being disordered in terms of intuitive understanding in a wider sense, including art appreciation capability. In this paper we conceptualized this ability anew, and positioned it within intuitive understanding as a whole.