The Schools Art Department provides students with scope to develop creative and cultural interests.  The standards achieved by students in these departments show consistently high performance benchmarks – many of our boys are award winners in National competitions.

The greater aim of art is to improve the quality and living of life, the way we see and react to our environment and as a means of putting man in a state of balance with the world. Students need to be made aware of the significance of the aesthetic dimension in life. Art education is about teaching these values.

There are many vocations open to the art pupil. These include: the industrial technician; the commercial artist; the fashion designer; the interior and textile designer; the fine artist; the architect to name a few. These people can be found in all facets of our society, but the art pupil is not obliged to fulfill a vocation in art. Art at RBHS is taught as a conceptual-based, which emphasizes creative thinking and is a full matric exemption subject. This means that the 'art' pupil when leaving school may study any other profession, but with the added advantage of a sensitivity to his environment; a creative response to problems; a better understanding of his and other cultures and a sense of the aesthetic dimension.

Art constitutes and contests the wide range of beliefs, values and meanings held and applied in societies. It is a significant means of understanding, transmitting and transforming cultures.

People make artworks to interpret, respond to and communicate their experiences. Through art, people give visual form to thoughts, feelings ideas and beliefs. They evaluate, modify and express cultural practices and personal experiences. Such forms may reflect, challenge or invent new cultural values, beliefs and customs. This can enrich and even change perceptions of the world and of art itself. As a consequence, the boundaries of art are constantly shifting.

Visual images such as diagrams, pictures and symbols represent a powerful and pervasive form of communication. Through studying art, students learn to be visually literate. Visual Literacy enhances students' capacities to think, create and question and provides skills to interpret and express ideas. Active visual literacy requires a shift in focus from teaching to learning and to a view of knowledge as being actively constructed by the learner.

The Art Department at RBHS aims to promote critical, cultural and aesthetic understandings through participation in the process involved in the whole art experience.

• Experience art through their personal perspectives related to social, community, cultural, economic, political, environmental and vocational contexts.
• Understand the diverse roles of artists in cultures past and present
• Pursue an active aesthetic literacy to meet their ever changing, ever widening personal and social needs.
• Pursue, value and develop interests, philosophies and methodologies through increasingly individual and empowering curricula.
• Develop flexibility in defining and considering solutions and problems
• Explore, manipulate and exploit with confidence the potential of materials, techniques, and processes essential in a rapidly changing world.
• Make and appraise artworks - including their own - with originality, confidence and sensitivity to forms.

The art course for (Grades 8 - 10) aims at achieving 3 levels of thinking:
1. Conceptual
2. Abstract
3. Creative

The aim is not to teach the techniques of Art directly, as is so often the case in secondary education. The course has been developed to facilitate specific intellectual processes. Likewise, the aim is not to teach skills but to develop problem solving, not to make fine artists of the students but to introduce the students to the kinds of mental processes that are needed in any investigative endeavour. At the same time the students are given opportunities to experience a wide range of materials and art related techniques.

At these levels, History of Art plays a small part. History of Art is treated as an integrated discipline, although exercises require the students to refer to historical examples of artworks and artists thematically.
The processes begun in Grade 8 are further developed with a greater emphasis on creative thinking and the personal approach to problem solving.

Pupil's work can be seen as 'art', at this level an emphasis is placed on the development of experimentation skills, with the history of art integrated into course objectives. They experiment in a wider range of materials and techniques, but the educational focus is on creative thinking and time management. Although the traditional art disciplines are covered, it is compulsory for the students to do Computer Art. This activity exposes the students to an array of problem solving and conceptual skills that traditional art does not offer in a single discipline.

PART 1: SCULPTURE - portraiture
This is a concept-based exercise where the students are given an opportunity to develop motor skills.
The level of problem solving is high.

PART 2: PAINTING - theme work
Emphasis is on creative thinking and problem solving.
The students are taught to visually brain storm
Assessment and evaluation are skills that are emphasised

PART 3: DRAWING - theme work
Emphasis is on creative thinking and problem solving.
The students develop their visual brain storm techniques
Assessment and evaluation are skills that are emphasised

PART 4: COMPUTER ART - theme work
Emphasise is on creative thinking and problem solving.
The students develop their visual brain storm techniques
Assessment and evaluation are skills that are emphasised

PART 5: THEME BASED RESEARCH EXERSISES

Materials
A wide range of materials and mediums are available for selection

Testing
The emphasis of examinations is to test the level of progress the pupil has achieved in the synthesis of information. The examinations involve a two-thirds practical mark (part 4) and one-third-theory mark (a written examination).

The course aims to provide a wide range of experiences applicable to the student at this particular level with the emphasis being on the breadth of experience. It is very important at this stage to create the situation where students feel a high level of involvement in studio activities and that they are made fully aware of its functions.
Thus the course aims to achieve the following:

• " To introduce the students to the art room facilities and materials
• " To begin to develop creativity, imagination, interpretation and craftsmanship in the visual arts
• " To introduce students to both 2D and 3D activities using a variety of approaches, materials and techniques
  

Grades 11 & 12 Syllabus

The Senior Art course aims to assist students to develop creativity in the visual art process; to acquire knowledge and understanding of the visual arts; to acquire skills appropriate to the production and understanding of art; to develop discrimination and appreciation of the visual world. As such it may be seen as an extension and synthesis of any or all previous studies in both practical and theoretical components.

The major aim at this level in practical work is for students to develop a personal aesthetic which is both original and challenging. The conceptual development is as important as the skill level in approaching, developing and resolving problems.

The Art History component covers both South African and European Art from the beginning of the nineteenth century up until the art and architecture of today.
View the Artworks in our GALLERY.