With its ambient, interesting and dynamic use of materials, alternative views of materials and objects, with its playfulness and affecting different senses contemporary fine art can be very interesting for art-educational work. Due to its complexity, however, it suffers from misunderstanding, retreat, and last but not least also fears both among teachers and learners. With the present article we wish to present a broader view of basic school pupils of fine art both historically and contemporarily. We wished to determine what views students have of contemporary artistic practices and to what extent they know fine art. The results obtained with guided interviews and worksheets indicate that students are not well informed about contemporary and historical artistic practices. They nevertheless demonstrate great openness, curiosity and relaxation, willingness to get to know these practices deeper under proper guidance of the teacher and also to become enthusiastic about them.