LCI / MoMA, Visual Arts Lessons

."hop to Music Lessons"

Transforming

Impulse

into FORM

Beacon Forum

Brian Alm, Liza Bearman, Paddy Colligan, Patti Covitch, Judith Hill, Christine Goodheart, Wanda Irizarry, Kevin Jacobs, Jerry James, DaleLally, Amy McLeod, Naomi Metzger, Jesse Pasca, Lewis Rosenbluth, Jane Royal, Clifford Schulman, Stephen Stoll, Tony Schwab, John Toth,  Heidi Upton                     please go to Beacon Forum and enter the on-line conversation on our unit of study

Some questions we asked as we planned:

What is expression?
How do we define our ability to express ourselves?
How do we use our senses to express our selves?
How do we embrace ideas about order and chaos within our daily lives?    How is energy organized?
How are systems of beliefs born and developed?
How are people affected by the things and places around them?
How do specific places effect the behavior of individuals?

 

Visual Arts Component

PEOPLE , PLACE and ACTIONS

Jack Levine,

Mark Tansey, "The Innocent Eye Test"

Roy Lichtenstien, "Stepping Out"

Kiki Smith, "Lilith"

Auguste Rodin, "Three Shades"

Jacob Lawrence, "Pool Parlor"

Eduardo Elizando,                                "Young Kafka, Dali Lama"

Lucien Freud,

Bastien-Lepage, "Joan of Ark"

How would you describe the relationships you see in these artworks?

What do you see that makes you say that?

What can you say about the relationship these people have to each other?

What does their body language suggest? Explain. Why?

How is the meaning of body language effected by the way people use their arms and legs? What do their gestures suggest? Why?

ACTIVITY #1

LCI Teaching Artists

Wire Activity

• Make a list of the "qualities of the relationships" that were discussed in the artworks. (longing, yearning, grasping, confused, thinking)
• Work in pairs to recreate the poses we saw in the sculptures and paintings from the Met. First person makes a gesture based on the qualities from the list; the second person responds with a gesture.
• Both students make a wire representation of their own gesture. Combine wire sculptures in a meaningful way.

Clay Activity

• First make a portrait , without looking. (explore intuition). Next, use clay to make a sculpture that represents your pose. (heading towards a goal)
•  
• Or make gesture drawings using sketchy lines (stick figures) to recreate poses using body language to communicate a variety of expressions and ideas.

Beacon Faculty

• From the descriptions of artworks that explore   relationships, use only your arms to transform the mood or content of each work.
• Describe the different kinds of relationships you have at:

  school?

  home?

  the street?

  nature?

  our dreams?

• Explore "open" and "closed" body language to communicate the meaning of a relationship from the above list.

REFLECTION

• WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THE WAYS IN WHICH YOU CREATE?

How do people transform their language to communicate in a more expressive way?

What is the range in which something can be transformed?

How do artists use transformation in the art works that we looked at?

How does  the transformation effect your interpretation of the artwork?

 

• From descriptions that come out of the conversations around the artworks, make a list of words ideas about "transformation" .
• In small groups, look at sculptures from Ist lesson. Use today's list of "transformation actions" to explore making new transformed gestures .
• Use Craypas and make a drawing of your   wire sculpture.  Use color and shape to call attention to a transformation of energy. 

Collage Activity

• In small groups create a tableau from everyday life that involves a group of people. (People at a bus stop, people at a store, church, post office, immigration office, museum). Everyone becomes a specific character and makes gesture that reveals who you are and where you are. Transform one of the characters in this scene so as to reveal some new meaning. Each person draws their own placement in the  tableau using simple shapes to represent the group of people or cut out figures from construction paper. Use color and shape to call attention to the transformation. 

Beacon Faculty

Collage Activity

• Explore a range of possibilities in ways to cut up a shape. Describe the qualities of several samples of cutting in terms of ideas, moods and metaphoric transformations. Use this experimenting to inform the next activity.
• Find a photograph from a magazine or newspaper that shows a group of people. Change the meaning of this work by cutting up specific people in the group and rearranging the their parts. 

How does the artist make your eyes move through the painting?   

How do attitudes and actions change as you go from place to place?
Contrast activity where you are going with a "flow" as opposed to going against the "flow"?

How would you describe the rhythm of people and place, within these art works?

Beacon Faculty: writing

Describe the different kinds of activities you do at:

school?

home?

the street?

nature?

dreams?

How does your attitude effect and change your behavior?

LCI Teaching Artists

• Make a list of "action" words that come out of the conversations around the artworks.
• Small groups present poses as tableaus from list of actions.  Enact group poses that combine these actions. Compose each group in ways that explore rhythmic variations. Use angular or curvy lines in body gestures to effect meaning . Larger group draws simple shapes to represent tableau. Use digital camera to freeze pose.
• Draw shapes using craypas on large paper.

Stuart Davis

Charles Sheeler

Charles Sheeler, "Americana"

Thomas Hart Benton, "July Hay"

What is the attitude of your city?

What attitude do artists reveal about the way the places they represent?

Describe the places you see in these paintings. How does the artist give these places a sense of character? describe the "attitudes" of these places?

Beacon Faculty

• Write a police report about a place in your neighborhood as if accurate details were your goal.
• Write a poem about this place.
• Write a eulogy about this place.

LCI Teaching Artists

• We will construct several images of our world using different tools and techniques. (scissors, cutting, gluing, tearing)
• How we create the shapes my say something about how we feel about our world.
• Use construction paper to recreate a corner of the world we live in:
  • the view from the front of Beacon
  • a room in your house
  • the corner of your street
• Make shapes of buildings, objects and people. Cut out images using scissors.
• Make a second image of the world only tear your shapes this time.

REFLECTION:

How do these different techniques effect the meaning of the image?

Compare:

Do you find one to be more like the real word? Explain.

Do you find one to be more unreal? Why?

 

Where is the "point of view" that these art works are seen from? How does this "point of view" effect the meaning your interpretation?

What do you discovery when you look at something from "up close" as compared to " far away"?

ACTIVITY #5

LCI Teaching Artists

Make drawings from different places or   "points-of-view" around Beacon.

Make a drawing of what you can see from Beacon.

Beacon Faculty

Make a drawing of the relationship of your home TO Beacon.

How Do You Sense Order And Chaos In Our World?

How would you describe the order and chaos in these paintings?

What makes something seem "organized" or "chaotic"?

LCI Teaching Artists

• Describe journeys where something repeats over and over.
• How could you map or visually describe this change over time?

  ... the cars driving past the front of Beacon

  ... the sun moving from east to west casting shadows in the windows....

Beacon Faculty

• Make a visual representation of something that repeats many times through history; economics; astronomy.

 

REFLECTION:

Compare:

Do you find one to be more ordered? Explain.

Do you find one to be more chaotic? Why?

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Impulse To Create Form

Over riding Questions:

How does the Jazz of Louis Nash explore improvisation?

What are the elements of improvisation?

Desire to be different

Unexpected combinations

How does Abstract Expressionism connect to Jazz improvisation?

What is American?

What are the attributes and attitudes associated with American through time and history?

How do VISUAL artists define and portray America?

Thomas Hart Benton / Jackson Pollock / Wide open Spaces

ART WORKS <---click Here.

AREAS OF EXPLORATION

• Transformation

Moving from established paths to uncharted territory

Fredrick Church

Thomas Hart Benton

• Pattern

Narrative of form

• Ad Rhinehart
• Jackson Pollock

Structure and proportions

• Charles Sheller

Religious patterns

• Tibet

Social patterns

• Chiwara headdress, Nigeria

Traditional patterns

• African Art

Nature

Order & Chaos

Form & Function

Defining Essence

FOCUS PLANNING:Nov 3rd

LCI   / MoMA
Team A project           1998-99

at the Met

VISIONS

Patti Covich, Heather McCartney, Sam Laybourne

WORLD FASHION

Internship with John Toth