Second Draft of Lesson 11
Choose three Masters and compare and contrast their style of art, medium, content, this lesson was constructed so that you could identify different traits, and reflect on what makes a certain artist stand out from the others.
Write up three lessons comparing and contrasting artist, illustrators, anime, or different styles of art. Then just write up how that may play out with your students.
Write up three lessons comparing and contrasting artist, illustrators, anime, or different styles of art. Then just write up how that may play out with your students.
Lesson 1: Checkerboards
Lesson Title: Checkerboard: Celtic Art, Maurits Escher, and Bridgit Riley
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Content Standards: Students use aesthetic criteria to present and reflect upon artwork. They become visually literate thinkers and creators as they analyze and respond to art and make connections across disciplines, cultures, place, and time.
Key Vocabulary: Checkerboard, contrast, optical illusion.
Visuals/Resources: "St Matthew" from the Book of Durrow, Escher's "Sky and Water," and Riley's "Movement in Squares." See below.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: Actual checkerboards. Bathroom floors. Picnic tablecloths
Content Objectives: 1. Name and date the pieces. 2. Identify checkerboard patterns in the three pieces. 3. Understand the purpose of the artist in using checkerboard patterns.
HOTS: Explain what's the same and what's different in how the checkerboard pattern is used in these three examples. Explain what the purpose of using checkers is.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Lecture and discussion (see below). 2. Concentration game with various checkerboard card pairs.
Supplies: Teacher-made Concentration game using copies of Escher's "Day and Night," "Sky and Water I," "Metamorphosis;" Riley's "Pause," "Shadow," "To Midsummer;" Celtic art's "David Victor" from the Durham Cassiodorus, and a gold-and-red carpet page from the Lindisfarne Gospels.
Review/Assessment: Class discussion.
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when discussing artwork.
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Content Standards: Students use aesthetic criteria to present and reflect upon artwork. They become visually literate thinkers and creators as they analyze and respond to art and make connections across disciplines, cultures, place, and time.
Key Vocabulary: Checkerboard, contrast, optical illusion.
Visuals/Resources: "St Matthew" from the Book of Durrow, Escher's "Sky and Water," and Riley's "Movement in Squares." See below.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: Actual checkerboards. Bathroom floors. Picnic tablecloths
Content Objectives: 1. Name and date the pieces. 2. Identify checkerboard patterns in the three pieces. 3. Understand the purpose of the artist in using checkerboard patterns.
HOTS: Explain what's the same and what's different in how the checkerboard pattern is used in these three examples. Explain what the purpose of using checkers is.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Lecture and discussion (see below). 2. Concentration game with various checkerboard card pairs.
Supplies: Teacher-made Concentration game using copies of Escher's "Day and Night," "Sky and Water I," "Metamorphosis;" Riley's "Pause," "Shadow," "To Midsummer;" Celtic art's "David Victor" from the Durham Cassiodorus, and a gold-and-red carpet page from the Lindisfarne Gospels.
Review/Assessment: Class discussion.
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when discussing artwork.
Lesson 1: Checkerboard Lecture
This lecture will be mostly in the form of questions, asking students to make the observations that are outlined below:
The checkerboard patterns used in Celtic Art use vivid colors. The artists used imported pigments such as lapis lazuli mixed with glair (egg white) or yolk and gum arabic to make their artwork reflect the richness and sumptuousness of their topics. While many of the figures had a religious meaning (the ox was Luke, the eagle was John), the patterns used to decorate them probably did not have a symbolic meaning. They were purely decorative, meant to fill space in a delightful way. Can you think of examples of using designs in a purely decorative way?
Escher's checkerboard patterns are black and white because he made them from a woodcut. The checkerboard came about as a side effect. What he was trying to do was show the fascinating world of tesselations, creating objects or creatures that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. One of the many ways you can tesselate objects is by using quadrilaterals. The tesselations that Escher made using quadrilaterals look like checkerboards if you squint your eyes.
Riley used oil paint to make her checkerboards. Because oil paint comes in many colors and not just black and white, we know she chose to limit her colors on purpose. Riley's checkerboard patterns are neither decorations nor side effects. They are the subject itself. Riley was exploring what happens to your eye and mind when she used simple, high-contrast patterns like checkerboards. If you look at "Movement in Squares," you can see that she only uses straight lines, yet there is a strong illusion of curviness and depth. Also, your eyes get bored by looking at shapes that are that simple, so they jump around, which creates the illusion that the pattern itself is jumping around. Compare this with the checkerboard pattern on Matthew's robe, or the checkerboard pattern made by Escher's fish and geese. These patterns are more interesting and so they don't jump around in the same way that Riley's do. We will see this strange and fascinating effect of complexity vs simplicity on what the eye chooses to see in Lesson 3 as well.
The checkerboard patterns used in Celtic Art use vivid colors. The artists used imported pigments such as lapis lazuli mixed with glair (egg white) or yolk and gum arabic to make their artwork reflect the richness and sumptuousness of their topics. While many of the figures had a religious meaning (the ox was Luke, the eagle was John), the patterns used to decorate them probably did not have a symbolic meaning. They were purely decorative, meant to fill space in a delightful way. Can you think of examples of using designs in a purely decorative way?
Escher's checkerboard patterns are black and white because he made them from a woodcut. The checkerboard came about as a side effect. What he was trying to do was show the fascinating world of tesselations, creating objects or creatures that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. One of the many ways you can tesselate objects is by using quadrilaterals. The tesselations that Escher made using quadrilaterals look like checkerboards if you squint your eyes.
Riley used oil paint to make her checkerboards. Because oil paint comes in many colors and not just black and white, we know she chose to limit her colors on purpose. Riley's checkerboard patterns are neither decorations nor side effects. They are the subject itself. Riley was exploring what happens to your eye and mind when she used simple, high-contrast patterns like checkerboards. If you look at "Movement in Squares," you can see that she only uses straight lines, yet there is a strong illusion of curviness and depth. Also, your eyes get bored by looking at shapes that are that simple, so they jump around, which creates the illusion that the pattern itself is jumping around. Compare this with the checkerboard pattern on Matthew's robe, or the checkerboard pattern made by Escher's fish and geese. These patterns are more interesting and so they don't jump around in the same way that Riley's do. We will see this strange and fascinating effect of complexity vs simplicity on what the eye chooses to see in Lesson 3 as well.
Lesson 2: Mood
Lesson Title: Mood: Celtic Art, Maurits Escher, and Bridgit Riley
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Content Standards: Students use aesthetic criteria to present and reflect upon artwork. They become visually literate thinkers and creators as they analyze and respond to art and make connections across disciplines, cultures, place, and time.
Key Vocabulary: Mood, plastic, sensation, simplicity, complexity, stylization, cartoon.
Visuals/Resources: "Beast" from the Book of Kells, Escher's "Reptiles," and Riley's "From Here." See images below.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: The difference in mood between black and white TV and color TV. The difference in mood between a cartoon and a live show.
Content Objectives: 1. Name and date the pieces. 2. Describe the technique used to make the pieces. 3. Identify the mood(s) of each piece and how the style affects the mood.
HOTS: Explain what's the same and what's different in how mood is evoked in these three examples.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Lecture and discussion (see below).
Supplies: The three pieces of art below.
Review/Assessment: Class discussion.
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when discussing artwork.
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Content Standards: Students use aesthetic criteria to present and reflect upon artwork. They become visually literate thinkers and creators as they analyze and respond to art and make connections across disciplines, cultures, place, and time.
Key Vocabulary: Mood, plastic, sensation, simplicity, complexity, stylization, cartoon.
Visuals/Resources: "Beast" from the Book of Kells, Escher's "Reptiles," and Riley's "From Here." See images below.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: The difference in mood between black and white TV and color TV. The difference in mood between a cartoon and a live show.
Content Objectives: 1. Name and date the pieces. 2. Describe the technique used to make the pieces. 3. Identify the mood(s) of each piece and how the style affects the mood.
HOTS: Explain what's the same and what's different in how mood is evoked in these three examples.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Lecture and discussion (see below).
Supplies: The three pieces of art below.
Review/Assessment: Class discussion.
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when discussing artwork.
Lesson 2: Mood Lecture
This lecture will be mostly in the form of questions, asking students to make the observations that are outlined below:
All three of these images are crisp and clear. There are no lost edges, no ambiguous corners where things are left to the imagination (for contrast, see Turner or Goya, for similar, see Egyptian style or Byzantine ikons). Everything is carefully drawn so you are sure not to miss what is being depicted, like a math class. The artist is setting you up to see a very specific image. You are not invited to go all dreamy as you examine the image ... or are you?
The illuminated manuscripts made in the Celtic style are full of animals and designs in the margins. Most of the time, these creatures do not seem to be related to the Biblical verse they are painted next to. They are simply decorations. This creature from the Book of Kells has the paws of a cat but the tail of a demon and the head of a ... well, it's hard to tell. It is a stylization, or simplification of what this beast would look like if you photographed it. There is no attempt to draw the fur, but there are a few strangely placed outlines in the body and the head which divide the creature up arbitrarily (but consistent with other Celtic beasts). Also, it is completely outlined in dots. If you saw a photograph of this animal, you might be interested in how fierce it looked, or you might want to have it as a pet. But you probably have a different feeling about this simple line drawing or cartoon. It is whimsical. You could even say it's like a scientific illustration. All that's missing are labels with arrows (but please notice that they are indeed missing. We know that the Celtic artists did label illustrations when they felt like it, so the lack of label is a choice). What kind of person must have drawn this? What mood do you get from looking at this picture?
Escher's reptiles are crawling in and out of reality. There is a roughly sketched illustration on the table, and you can see a three-dimensional looking reptile, with shading and a knobbly texture, crawling into the paper and becoming paper as it does so. On the right side, there's another reptile changing from flat paper into three-D. By the time the reptiles get to the top, they're snorting smoke! Now look at the things surrounding the reptiles. There's a few books, a Euclidian solid made from pentagons, a triangle, a glass with a jug of maybe water, maybe whiskey, and some unfriendly looking house plants. All of these are things you might find in the office of a mathematician or scientist, and they're drawn with hard edges and perfect clarity. They're not warm and fluffy. The reptiles, too, are hard and breathe fire. They're not cuddly either. They're drawn in black and white, with the kind of uncompromisingly rigid style that Escher always uses in his art. What kind of person do you think he was? As you examine this picture and see how the reptiles are drawn, what kind of feeling do you get from them? How does that make you feel? What do you think/feel about the fact that these reptiles are crawling around and around like that, not going anywhere except from flat to 3D-snorting and back again?
The third painting is not of an animal, because Riley only paints abstracts, not realistic paintings. She said, “I try to take sensation as the guiding line and build, with the relationships it demands, a plastic fabric which has no other raison d’etre except to accommodate the sensation it solicits.” She is using the kind of language that is fairly common in the art world. In language arts, we try to teach you to be clear. But the art world often uses language that tries to paint a picture and create a mood. It's a different way to use language. In this case, I'm pretty sure that what Riley is saying, is that she wants to paint a sensation or mood. She starts with that mood and then tries to make it come into being. Usually we get moods from the things around us. We are pleased or frightened, irritated or hopeful because of what happens or who we meet. But Riley is saying that you can get moods from just colors and shapes, despite the fact that this painting at first glance looks just as mathematically crisp as the other two. Look more deeply at this painting. It seems to pulse with color and action. The colors came from a trip she made to Egypt, where she was captivated by the earth tones and flowery colors of a hot climate. They are quite different from the blacks, whites, and cold blues she was using before. The action comes from you, not from the paint, which (do you have to be reminded?) isn't moving. Your eye is following the lines made by the diamonds, or picking out color patterns, or noticing where there is a break in the expected pattern. Busy busy! As your eye is doing all this work, you're getting moods from the movement and from the colors. What are they? How is this kind of mood different or the same from the kind of mood you get from looking at the Celtic or the Escher work?
All three of these images are crisp and clear. There are no lost edges, no ambiguous corners where things are left to the imagination (for contrast, see Turner or Goya, for similar, see Egyptian style or Byzantine ikons). Everything is carefully drawn so you are sure not to miss what is being depicted, like a math class. The artist is setting you up to see a very specific image. You are not invited to go all dreamy as you examine the image ... or are you?
The illuminated manuscripts made in the Celtic style are full of animals and designs in the margins. Most of the time, these creatures do not seem to be related to the Biblical verse they are painted next to. They are simply decorations. This creature from the Book of Kells has the paws of a cat but the tail of a demon and the head of a ... well, it's hard to tell. It is a stylization, or simplification of what this beast would look like if you photographed it. There is no attempt to draw the fur, but there are a few strangely placed outlines in the body and the head which divide the creature up arbitrarily (but consistent with other Celtic beasts). Also, it is completely outlined in dots. If you saw a photograph of this animal, you might be interested in how fierce it looked, or you might want to have it as a pet. But you probably have a different feeling about this simple line drawing or cartoon. It is whimsical. You could even say it's like a scientific illustration. All that's missing are labels with arrows (but please notice that they are indeed missing. We know that the Celtic artists did label illustrations when they felt like it, so the lack of label is a choice). What kind of person must have drawn this? What mood do you get from looking at this picture?
Escher's reptiles are crawling in and out of reality. There is a roughly sketched illustration on the table, and you can see a three-dimensional looking reptile, with shading and a knobbly texture, crawling into the paper and becoming paper as it does so. On the right side, there's another reptile changing from flat paper into three-D. By the time the reptiles get to the top, they're snorting smoke! Now look at the things surrounding the reptiles. There's a few books, a Euclidian solid made from pentagons, a triangle, a glass with a jug of maybe water, maybe whiskey, and some unfriendly looking house plants. All of these are things you might find in the office of a mathematician or scientist, and they're drawn with hard edges and perfect clarity. They're not warm and fluffy. The reptiles, too, are hard and breathe fire. They're not cuddly either. They're drawn in black and white, with the kind of uncompromisingly rigid style that Escher always uses in his art. What kind of person do you think he was? As you examine this picture and see how the reptiles are drawn, what kind of feeling do you get from them? How does that make you feel? What do you think/feel about the fact that these reptiles are crawling around and around like that, not going anywhere except from flat to 3D-snorting and back again?
The third painting is not of an animal, because Riley only paints abstracts, not realistic paintings. She said, “I try to take sensation as the guiding line and build, with the relationships it demands, a plastic fabric which has no other raison d’etre except to accommodate the sensation it solicits.” She is using the kind of language that is fairly common in the art world. In language arts, we try to teach you to be clear. But the art world often uses language that tries to paint a picture and create a mood. It's a different way to use language. In this case, I'm pretty sure that what Riley is saying, is that she wants to paint a sensation or mood. She starts with that mood and then tries to make it come into being. Usually we get moods from the things around us. We are pleased or frightened, irritated or hopeful because of what happens or who we meet. But Riley is saying that you can get moods from just colors and shapes, despite the fact that this painting at first glance looks just as mathematically crisp as the other two. Look more deeply at this painting. It seems to pulse with color and action. The colors came from a trip she made to Egypt, where she was captivated by the earth tones and flowery colors of a hot climate. They are quite different from the blacks, whites, and cold blues she was using before. The action comes from you, not from the paint, which (do you have to be reminded?) isn't moving. Your eye is following the lines made by the diamonds, or picking out color patterns, or noticing where there is a break in the expected pattern. Busy busy! As your eye is doing all this work, you're getting moods from the movement and from the colors. What are they? How is this kind of mood different or the same from the kind of mood you get from looking at the Celtic or the Escher work?
Lesson 3
Lesson Title: Composition: Celtic Art, Maurits Escher, and Bridgit Riley
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Content Standards: Students use aesthetic criteria to present and reflect upon artwork. They become visually literate thinkers and creators as they analyze and respond to art and make connections across disciplines, cultures, place, and time.
Key Vocabulary: Composition, balance, elements, aptropaic interlace, carpet page.
Visuals/Resources: "Chi-rho" carpet page from the Book of Kells, Escher's "Day and Night," and Riley's "Three Greens, Two Blues." See images below.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: Curves in hills, bodies, rivers, beaches.
Content Objectives: 1. Name and date the pieces. 2. Describe the technique used to make the pieces. 3. Discuss the shapes and composition of each piece and relate them to the natural world.
HOTS: Explain what's similar and what's different about these paintings.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Lecture and discussion (see below).
Supplies: The three pieces of art below.
Review/Assessment: Class discussion.
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when discussing artwork.
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Content Standards: Students use aesthetic criteria to present and reflect upon artwork. They become visually literate thinkers and creators as they analyze and respond to art and make connections across disciplines, cultures, place, and time.
Key Vocabulary: Composition, balance, elements, aptropaic interlace, carpet page.
Visuals/Resources: "Chi-rho" carpet page from the Book of Kells, Escher's "Day and Night," and Riley's "Three Greens, Two Blues." See images below.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: Curves in hills, bodies, rivers, beaches.
Content Objectives: 1. Name and date the pieces. 2. Describe the technique used to make the pieces. 3. Discuss the shapes and composition of each piece and relate them to the natural world.
HOTS: Explain what's similar and what's different about these paintings.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Lecture and discussion (see below).
Supplies: The three pieces of art below.
Review/Assessment: Class discussion.
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when discussing artwork.
Lesson 3 Discussion
All three of these images use curved shapes to lend power and movement. The eye is drawn to the right because there are strong diagonals from bottom to top in that direction, and we don't follow down as much as we do up. The right is usually the side of consciousness, of verbalness, of daylight and prosaicness, while the left is the unconscious dream side.
The Chi-rho carpet page illustrates the text, "Christi autem generatio sic erat ...," which begins with the Greek XPI, pronounced CHRI, about the holy spirit impregnating Mary. It is The Word made Flesh, a central doctrine of Catholicism. To me it seems on purpose that the Chi leans to the right; the illuminator could just as well have extended the other part of the X instead, and then it might illustrate Christ as Dream. Notice how the XPI fills the entire page, with an added non-letter design in the same style at the right. What would the carpet page have looked like without that additional design element? Or without the filled-in part between the X and the P, or inside the P? The balance of the page depends on having about half white, half colored elements. "Autem gene" is outlined in red dots below. "Autem" means "also" or "but," which is a silly word to emphasize, imho. In the eyes of the monks who calligraphed this, every word would be sacred, so why not emphasize it? There are two more styles of lettering, the illegible sepia handwriting, which is similar to the Roman style of handwriting, and the careful uncials in red at the top, which announce that the Book of the Evangelist Matthew is starting. The capital letters are filled with aptropaic interlace, knots which confuse evil.
Escher's "Day and Night" reverses the expected order, with day on the left and night on the right. Although the composition is symmetrical over the centerline, the inverted values and the reversal of the archetypal meaning of right/left give interest to the composition. The two rivers (which are geographically unlikely) outline what could be a woman's waistline and the two villages at the bottom corners are quaint and identical. The geese seem to peel off of the farmland, from flat to dimensional just like the reptiles in Lesson 2. They seem to bring day into night, and night into day, messengers from the other side. The symmetry is part of the message. What about top vs. bottom, though? The top half of the woodcut is geese and sky; the natural world; while the bottom is farm, villages, bridge, and barges. Does the composition give meaning here? What is the meaning? When you look at the Escher compared to the Chi-rho, what is the first thing that hits you (aside from color vs. black and white?). Squint your eyes and you will see that the Chi-rho is almost organic, like a strange, cute little beast with funny ears and paws that advance forward ... to the left! The rigid symmetry of Escher's woodcut vanishes, and you see a central checkerboard surrounded by the organic shapes of the river and the female torso outlined by the rivers. This propensity for the human eye to see humans and animals in random forms is well documented, but in the case of these two artists, we may presume that they intended this effect, at least in part.
Riley's "Three Greens, Two Blues," like Escher's, is a piece that seems symmetrical at first glance, but isn't. She uses not repetition, but rhythm to emphasize the sensation that she's trying to make us feel. I just listened to an interview with her, where she says that repetition helps you notice things that you would otherwise miss. In my opinion, she is asking us to look at the most basic of patterns, partly because the opposite obtains if you repeat more complex forms. Look at the Escher, for example, or the Chi-rho. The repeating geese and the repeating interlacings become a background blur instead of objects of individual interest. This shift is remarkable! If you look at Riley's painting as a whole, the strong diagonals leaning rightwards are prominent. However, try looking just at the oranges, or just at the dark greens. The straight lines disappear and there are just some rather odd-shaped curves. If you look just at values, you get the diagonals again. She is playing with what happens to composition depending on color and value. Another thing to note is the range of value. Like the interlacings inside the chi-rho, Riley does not use the full range of value from black to white, in contrast to Escher, who leads you from full white through grey to full black in his woodcut. Why did she make that decision? Why did the others? (In the case of the chi-rho, we may take the vellum as "white," even though it isn't. But they did have soot to work with so the lack of strong black is intentional.)
The Chi-rho carpet page illustrates the text, "Christi autem generatio sic erat ...," which begins with the Greek XPI, pronounced CHRI, about the holy spirit impregnating Mary. It is The Word made Flesh, a central doctrine of Catholicism. To me it seems on purpose that the Chi leans to the right; the illuminator could just as well have extended the other part of the X instead, and then it might illustrate Christ as Dream. Notice how the XPI fills the entire page, with an added non-letter design in the same style at the right. What would the carpet page have looked like without that additional design element? Or without the filled-in part between the X and the P, or inside the P? The balance of the page depends on having about half white, half colored elements. "Autem gene" is outlined in red dots below. "Autem" means "also" or "but," which is a silly word to emphasize, imho. In the eyes of the monks who calligraphed this, every word would be sacred, so why not emphasize it? There are two more styles of lettering, the illegible sepia handwriting, which is similar to the Roman style of handwriting, and the careful uncials in red at the top, which announce that the Book of the Evangelist Matthew is starting. The capital letters are filled with aptropaic interlace, knots which confuse evil.
Escher's "Day and Night" reverses the expected order, with day on the left and night on the right. Although the composition is symmetrical over the centerline, the inverted values and the reversal of the archetypal meaning of right/left give interest to the composition. The two rivers (which are geographically unlikely) outline what could be a woman's waistline and the two villages at the bottom corners are quaint and identical. The geese seem to peel off of the farmland, from flat to dimensional just like the reptiles in Lesson 2. They seem to bring day into night, and night into day, messengers from the other side. The symmetry is part of the message. What about top vs. bottom, though? The top half of the woodcut is geese and sky; the natural world; while the bottom is farm, villages, bridge, and barges. Does the composition give meaning here? What is the meaning? When you look at the Escher compared to the Chi-rho, what is the first thing that hits you (aside from color vs. black and white?). Squint your eyes and you will see that the Chi-rho is almost organic, like a strange, cute little beast with funny ears and paws that advance forward ... to the left! The rigid symmetry of Escher's woodcut vanishes, and you see a central checkerboard surrounded by the organic shapes of the river and the female torso outlined by the rivers. This propensity for the human eye to see humans and animals in random forms is well documented, but in the case of these two artists, we may presume that they intended this effect, at least in part.
Riley's "Three Greens, Two Blues," like Escher's, is a piece that seems symmetrical at first glance, but isn't. She uses not repetition, but rhythm to emphasize the sensation that she's trying to make us feel. I just listened to an interview with her, where she says that repetition helps you notice things that you would otherwise miss. In my opinion, she is asking us to look at the most basic of patterns, partly because the opposite obtains if you repeat more complex forms. Look at the Escher, for example, or the Chi-rho. The repeating geese and the repeating interlacings become a background blur instead of objects of individual interest. This shift is remarkable! If you look at Riley's painting as a whole, the strong diagonals leaning rightwards are prominent. However, try looking just at the oranges, or just at the dark greens. The straight lines disappear and there are just some rather odd-shaped curves. If you look just at values, you get the diagonals again. She is playing with what happens to composition depending on color and value. Another thing to note is the range of value. Like the interlacings inside the chi-rho, Riley does not use the full range of value from black to white, in contrast to Escher, who leads you from full white through grey to full black in his woodcut. Why did she make that decision? Why did the others? (In the case of the chi-rho, we may take the vellum as "white," even though it isn't. But they did have soot to work with so the lack of strong black is intentional.)
Evaluation and Modifications
I think in the case of children, the first step in teaching analysis of artwork is to point out that it can be done, and to give a bit of vocabulary to help make that happen. I personally did not have that vocabulary until I took this course, except for the most basic terms such as "composition." The closest I got to it was attending a few classes with my daughter last spring at St. Andrew's in Scotland, where various speakers were doing close readings of "Frankenstein," and this summer when I took a Coursera class in Science Fiction, where Professor Rabkin taught us how to do close readings of science fiction texts. As I'm from a math-science background, this was an eye-opener for me! As I'm an adult, I took to it like a fish to water. But, I see from my attempts to teach literature to 9th-grade twin math-science students, that close readings are a learned skill.
The first step is to convince the students that it is legitimate at all. The twins and I bicker now and then about whether it is even legitimate to come to conclusions without hard evidence. Since we all have taken logic, I understand what they're concerned about. Can I really talk about a woman's torso in Escher's "Day and Night" with a straight face? To me it seems clear that Escher had Asperger's, so I wonder if he did know about that shape that I see in that woodcut, or if he thought he was just doing something mathematical and cool. BUT I say, and I say it loud, that if I see it, I get to say that I see it. I also believe (but cannot prove) that people are much wiser and more perceptive than they think they are. I think that if that woman's torso is in the painting, then Escher put it there, and at some level, he did it on purpose. Even if he didn't, still, it's there, and it contributes to the overall sense of the woodcut.
So, the biggest problem that I anticipate from these lessons is the philosophical objections that my students might have. Can we even nitpick that closely at all? I would imagine that it would be a worthy digression to follow, perhaps for several lessons at a time.
The next problem that I anticipate is that we do not have a sophisticated vocabulary to speak with, and vocabulary drives depth of perception (in my opinion). We might notice an inchoate mood in one of Riley's paintings, but without the ability to pin it down with exact words, we can't discuss it with each other, and hence we can't learn from each other in that way. I don't have an answer to that, except to bring it to consciousness and discuss it with my students.
A third problem is practical. I don't have a cheap way of sharing these images with my students. What I've done for my other lessons is to use my own money to purchase cheap editions of the artists' works from amazon.com, and hold them up as I talk. Then, I leave the books at the station tables and ask them questions about the contents to treasure hunt for. This would not be useful if the point of the lesson is to discuss as a group. I am angling to get a Smartboard from the District, but it will be expensive and the needs of my Friday afternoon class are rather low on the totem pole of our school budget.
As I wrote this exercise out, I decided to modify the art practice lessons that I do with my class to include more analytic vocabulary. I don't have much myself, but I'll start geeking out on art criticism and see what words people think are important to describe what they see. In my low-key critiques of my students' work, I often talk about color choice, composition, and movement. It's time to take that to a new level.
The first step is to convince the students that it is legitimate at all. The twins and I bicker now and then about whether it is even legitimate to come to conclusions without hard evidence. Since we all have taken logic, I understand what they're concerned about. Can I really talk about a woman's torso in Escher's "Day and Night" with a straight face? To me it seems clear that Escher had Asperger's, so I wonder if he did know about that shape that I see in that woodcut, or if he thought he was just doing something mathematical and cool. BUT I say, and I say it loud, that if I see it, I get to say that I see it. I also believe (but cannot prove) that people are much wiser and more perceptive than they think they are. I think that if that woman's torso is in the painting, then Escher put it there, and at some level, he did it on purpose. Even if he didn't, still, it's there, and it contributes to the overall sense of the woodcut.
So, the biggest problem that I anticipate from these lessons is the philosophical objections that my students might have. Can we even nitpick that closely at all? I would imagine that it would be a worthy digression to follow, perhaps for several lessons at a time.
The next problem that I anticipate is that we do not have a sophisticated vocabulary to speak with, and vocabulary drives depth of perception (in my opinion). We might notice an inchoate mood in one of Riley's paintings, but without the ability to pin it down with exact words, we can't discuss it with each other, and hence we can't learn from each other in that way. I don't have an answer to that, except to bring it to consciousness and discuss it with my students.
A third problem is practical. I don't have a cheap way of sharing these images with my students. What I've done for my other lessons is to use my own money to purchase cheap editions of the artists' works from amazon.com, and hold them up as I talk. Then, I leave the books at the station tables and ask them questions about the contents to treasure hunt for. This would not be useful if the point of the lesson is to discuss as a group. I am angling to get a Smartboard from the District, but it will be expensive and the needs of my Friday afternoon class are rather low on the totem pole of our school budget.
As I wrote this exercise out, I decided to modify the art practice lessons that I do with my class to include more analytic vocabulary. I don't have much myself, but I'll start geeking out on art criticism and see what words people think are important to describe what they see. In my low-key critiques of my students' work, I often talk about color choice, composition, and movement. It's time to take that to a new level.