Thursday, January 21, 2016

DIY Art History: 20th Century Art

We recently taught a 6-lesson elective on "DIY Art History" to a mixed age classroom (6-13). Each post on this blog describes one lesson.

DIY Art History: 20th Century Art (Lesson Plan) For our final lesson, we covered contemporary art generally - from cubism to expressionism to pop art. We spent a while discussing "what is art?" and discovered our kids were very contemporary in their leanings - when I threw my jacket on the floor and asked if it was art, they all enthusiastically yelled that it was indeed art. 

For the DIY time, we gave them 4 different possible projects with instructions. Most of them went for Picasso portraits, a fun one to do as a pair.
 

Presentation



Lesson Plan

  • (Slide) 20th Century Art
    • Today we’ll be talking about the last century of art, which has things that don’t necessarily look like art.
  • (Slide) Cubism lead: Is this art?
    • Violin and Candlestick
    • Q: Is this art?
  • (Slide) Cubism
    • That’s an example of a movement called cubism.
    • “Subject from different points in space and time simultaneously, i.e., the act of moving around an object to seize it from several successive angles fused into a single image (multiple viewpoints, mobile perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity).”
  • (Slide) Picasso: Bread and Fruit Dish on Table
    • This is an example of proto-cubism - the beginnings of cubism
    • Q: How does this look different from the still lifes we saw before?
    • It has a tilted perspective, geometrization, inconsistent viewpoints
    • http://www.pablopicasso.org/bread-and-fruit-dish-on-a-table.jsp
  • (Slide) Picasso: Portrait of Woman
  • (Slide) Braque: The Portuguese
  • (Slide) Abstract Expressionism Lead: Is this art?
  • (Slide) What about this?
  • (Slide) Abstract Expressionism
    • Those were examples of abstract expressionism.
    • Cubism was turning into something more abstract
    • Painting to convey the idea/feeling of a thing without necessarily looking anything like the thing.
    • Expressing their inner feelings -- universal inner feelings.
  • (Slide) Mondrian: Gray Tree
    • One expressionist was Mondrian, and we’re going to see a few of his paintings.
    • Q: What is this a painting of? What do you notice about it?
    • It looks almost cubist
    • Reduced color palette, typical of cubists
  • (Slide) Mondrian: Flowering Apple Tree
  • (Slide) Mondrian: Composition
  • (Slide) Mondrian: Composition with Gray and Light Brown
    • Eventually his paintings became grids like this, with no curved lines at all, and that is what he’s most famous for.
  • (Slide) Pollock: The Key
    • Pollock was another famous expressionist.
    • This is an early painting.
    • Q: What do you think this painting is of?
    • It was painted near a river, so that gives us some clues to interpreting the figures, but it’s hard to know for sure.
    • Notice: very gestural, dynamic composition, makes you think of motion
  • (Slide) Pollock: Convergence
    • This is a later painting, one of his famous drip paintings.
    • Q: What is this painting of? What do you think he’s expressing?
    • It’s important to know what was happening in the world then - the US was scared of communism, a type of government. We wanted to assert that we still had free speech and freedom of expression.
  • (Slide) Pop Art Lead: Is this art?
    • Campbell soup painting
  • (Slide) Pop Art
    • Started in the 1950s. What was happening then?
    • Things were starting to get manufactured.
    • Advertisements were big.
    • Conspicuous consumption - buying stuff to show it off.
    • Pop Art was a reaction to consumerism of the times.
  • (Slide) Warhol: Campbell soup can Logos
    • That Campbell soup can was one frame in 32 that Andy Warhol made.
    • Just by putting something in an art museum, it can become art - this forced you to think about something that you wouldn’t think about as art
    • Warhol used rubber stamping to speed up the process, and called his studio The Factory - like the factories of the time.
    • Warhol started having people make his paintings for him - using the same sort of assembly line process that factories used.
  • (Slide) Warhol: Marilyns
    • Q: Do you know who this is? A: The most famous movie star, from the 50s. Like as popular as Taylor Swift.
    • In the past, people made paintings of The Virgin Mary. Marilyn Monroe is the modern Virgin Mary - so idealized. Celebrities are our new idols.
  • (Slide) What is art?
    • Q: How would you define art?
    • Q: What’s your favorite art style?
  • (Slide) Conclusion:
    • We didn’t cover everything-- and we focused on europe. There’s a lot of art in Latin America, Asia, etc.
    • There’s way more art to explore! Go to museums! Go online!
  • DIY time!
    • Let them choose from each of the instructions.

Supplies

We got most of our supplies from the local SCRAP store in SF, but I've included Amazon links to similar items for convenience.


Additional reading

DIY Art History: Impressionism

We recently taught a 6-lesson elective on "DIY Art History" to a mixed age classroom (6-13). Each post on this blog describes one lesson.

DIY Art History: Impressionism (Lesson Plan) After covering the renaissance, we only had 2 lessons left and so many possible genres to cover! We decided to go into Impressionism next, because it was the first big departure from realistic painting styles - and it's also a lot of fun to do yourself. 

Some of the kids used q-tips to make pointillist-style paintings, while others went with big bold paint strokes. We held this lesson outside, so they could capture their impressions of the outdoors - and so that we had less paint mess to clean up. :)



Here's the presentation, lesson plan, supplies, and additional resources:


Presentation



Lesson Plan

  • Intro: Role play
    • PersonA: Hi, I'm Louie Leroy, an art critic and classic painter. The year is 1873. So, this is some awesome art we've been making as a society in the last few hundred years. I'm really happy with how art's been going.
    • Here are some classic scenes with images from ancient myths... some religious imagery, that's also really popular, and some still lives. AND THEN THIS! WHAT IS THIS!
    • PersonB: I'm Monet, and this is a sweet painting of a boulevard I did!
    • PersonA: What is this nonsense? Please be so good as to tell me what those innumerable black tongue-lickings in the lower part of the picture represent?
    • PersonB: Those are people, walking down the boulevard.
    • PersonA: And this is just random people walking down a boulevard?
    • PersonB: Yes, this is a scene I painted from the real world.
    • PersonA [disapproving]: This seems more like a brief impression of real art than it seems like real art itself.
    • PersonB:  This *is* real art! It’s an impression of the real world around us.
    • PersonA: Hmph! I shall write an article about these impressionists!
  • Slide: Impressionism
    • Doesn’t try to paint every detail exactly
    • Tries to capture an impression of the scene - the mood, light, color, atmosphere
    • Was rejected at first for its lack of realism and “good technique”
  • Slide: Degas, The Dance Class
    • Shows the urban lifestyle, a pleasure activity
    • Not an idealized composition - “momentary” “un-choreographed”
  • Slide: Mary Cassat, Pearl necklace
    • Set at a Paris opera house, shows off the opulence of that life
    • It was hard for Mary Cassat to practice because she was a woman
  • Slide: Monet, Water Lillies
    • Monet was very interested in outdoor light
    • There’s no clear path for the eye to follow
    • Angled perspective
    • More beautiful than reality?
  • Slide: en plein air
    • Painting outside
    • Helped them capture the atmosphere/light/movement
  • Slide: Post-Impressionism
    • A reaction to impressionism
    • More symbolic, more refined techniques
    • Different artists reacted in different directions
  • Slide: Seurat
    • Developed the technique of pointillism/divisionism/”chromo-luminarism” based on the theory of optics- combining points of color so that the eye is tricked into blending them from far away
    • Contains millions of dots
    • Took 2 years to complete -  he did *not* paint outside, he based it on sketches
  • Slide: Pointillism
  • Slide: Bathers
    • His paintings often referred to different social castes and painted a picture of modern urban life, where people had leisure time after work
  • Slide: Van Gogh
    • More symbolic - olive trees represent cycle of life
    • Some thought that there’s religious meaning as well
  • Slide: DIY time!

Supplies

We got most of our supplies from the local SCRAP store in SF, but I've included Amazon links to similar items for convenience.



Additional reading