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Objective:
Choose an issue you care deeply about, and would want to try
and do something about. This issue should be something that is a general issue or
concern in society somewhere in the world. Be sure you are picking a
general issue, not simply one of your pet peeves!
Some ideas of things you might be interested in depicting/standing
up for or against: pollution/environmental concerns, abortion rights,
racism, homelessness, Aids, religious wars, the war in Iraq, poverty,
verbal abuse, bullying, depression, teen suicide, discrimination, Gay
rights…What do you CARE about?
Talk to people- has anyone in your family been affected by any of
these? How? Why? How did it affect them?
Materials: Student
choice. This would be a culminating lesson after many techniques have been
explored. Prismacolors, oil pastels, soft pastels might want to be
considered on dark paper (try quality black drawing paper). Maybe even try
a middle school/elementary favorite - outlining with black glue or black
puffy paint. Combine with newspaper text collage - or text printed from
Internet or Word file. Acrylic combined with collage would be interesting.
Some may want to consider all collage using magazines and newspaper.
Project Description:
Depict your social statement on a large sheet of paper. You may choose your media: paint, collage, oil pastel,
Prismacolors or mixed media (paint and oil pastel, or newspaper
and oil pastel etc.) Your
image should be an “in your face” style; the image should be large and
possibly cropped, going off the edge of the paper or depicting an unusual
angle or scene…Think about what point of view you want to depict (An
unborn fetus, for example, if you are against abortion. How would you
depict abortion right to choose? What if one considers Pro-Life in
different terms? Life of the mother and life of the unwanted child?
An example of a racist episode/event in history.)
Add minimal text (See art of Barbara Kruger) – or make it all
about the words (see Jenny Holzer). Choose your color scheme carefully.
You may want to choose a monochromatic color scheme (all blues, all reds,
etc.) Be sure all white space
on your paper is filled in. Take care of and clean all art materials appropriately!
Timeline:
Spend your Internet time researching the issue you have chosen to
speak out about. Keep your
sketchbook next to you, and jot down quotes or words that jump out at you
or speak to you. Use any
images you may see to sketch out some ‘thumbnail sketches.’
Be sure to document the sites you visit. Your sketchbook should be
a visual record of the research and documentation that you have done.
Written Assignment:
Write about your poster. Answer a number of these questions in
your writing. What are some other questions that come to mind? Why do you
feel the way you do? What are your arguments for or against?
What – or who – has influenced your decisions.
What is the “flip side” of your issue? What might the other
side have to say? Can you see their point of view?
What is your reasoning for choosing your stand?
Is your artwork intended to offend? Who would be offended? Does the
artist have a right to offend? Critique your project. Does it get your
point across? How? Is there a focal point (center of interest)? Does it
show effective use of Principles of Design? How?
Optional Written
Assignment: Critique one of Sergio Hernandez's or Steve Shepard's
works. What questions do you have for the artist about his work? OR - find
another contemporary artist for a work to critique.
Resources:
Sergio
Hernandez - Los Angeles artist who got his start as a cartoonist. See
Death Takes Frida!
Email Judy Decker if you need this image for a PowerPoint. Don't miss
his new cultural art
work. Many powerful images!
See email interview with Sergio Hernandez.
Soraida
Martinez - Latino
artist of Puerto Rican heritage - known as the creator of "Verdadism",
a form of hard-edge abstraction in which paintings are juxtaposed with
social commentaries. Many
women's issues - and about minorities. Must see site.
Steve
Shepard - Work inspired by Edward Hicks. Bold colorful
compositions with text borders. Powerful messages. Steve's work is black
ink and Prismacolor on paper darkened with alizarin crimson watercolor -
with text borders inspired by the Peaceable Kingdom (and others) by Hicks.
His work may inspire a lesson using pastels, Prismacolors, oil pastels or
construction paper crayons on black (or dark paper) paper. Steve is fine
artist from Mississippi - his work just has a "folk" appeal -
his statements are political in nature.
Marcia
Yerman Don't be stopped by the image on her home page - her
work is AMAZING! Drawing, gouache, collage, mixed-media, or large-scale
oil paintings, the themes are powerful - dealing with world issues -
family and more. Work is both narrative and symbolic in nature. See my
favorite! If I
Don't Do It - A great tie in for Renaissance units (playing
cards).
Locus
Media Gallery Marcia Yerman is curator for this gallery.
Gallery artists and art changes on the site. Browse at your leisure.
Select example appropriate for your unit. Use "Fair Use" guidelines
- cite your source and artist properly in you PowerPoint presentations.
Protest and Persuasion: A Unit on Printmaking or Mural
Making. Students look for visual signs of protest and persuasion in the world around them.
Optional: View Movie Fahrenheit
9/11 This lesson would be excellent as a follow up to this type of
movie. Gives one plenty to think about. Recommended from all political
persuasions. (suggestion from Donna Pauler)
Resources through
time suggested by Getty ArtsEdNet Members:
Pablo Picasso –War and Peace
Mexican
artists - muralists... your choice
Kathë Kollwitz –
German
Expressionists See
some German artists from the 1930s
- 1940s
Marsden
Hartley ( many suitable works - good for symbolism)
Gericault, Theodore
The Raft of the Medusa
1819
Oil on canvas
491 x 716 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
The Death of Marat,
Jaques Louis David:
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/his/CoreArt/art/neocl_dav_marat.html
The 3rd of May, 1808
Francisco Goya
1814
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
The Futurists:
Marinetti, the poet and ideological father of the Futurists wrote
recommending that poetry should henceforth sing only of "the
mulitcolored
and polyphonic surf of revolution in modern capitols: the nocturnal
vibrations of arsenals and docks beneath their glaring electric moons...:
factories hanging from the clouds by their threads of smoke."
The most famous of the artists were Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Luigi
Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini.
Arthur Szyk –Illustrator -
Holocaust museums' exhibition http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?ModuleId=10005788&Type=normal+article
http://www.pbs.org/shahn/
(A starting point for Ben Shahn)
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/szyk/
(Holocaust artist)
http://www.ncac.org/projects/art_now/call%20.html
(National Coalition against Censorship)
For Political Cartoons:
Try Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury and Walt Kelly of Pogo fame.
They're both quite loaded with political and social commentary. (From
Kathy- TeacherArtExchange)
From Donna Pauler –
post to Getty TeacherArtExchange List:
We need to understand how
policies put forth by our President and congress have a direct impact on
our lives and in this case art education specifically. There needs to be a
dialogue about this throughout the election cycle on this list (Getty TeacherArtExchange). It is true about Paige's remarks referring to
"teachers as traitors" (NEA as a Terrorist organization).
On CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.terrorist.nea/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/24/paige.terrorist.nea/
Democratic News:
http://www.democrats.org/children/news/200402260005.html
It is true that the funding
of "No Child Left Behind" has had a direct impact against the
arts in education.
Art images have been used to influence politics throughout history.
Hitler used 'art' to great advantage to influence. And our current
political campaigns are using visual imagery to the hilt. The Media, and
all visual images--cartoons, color of clothes we wear, icons in
advertisements, slogans and more all influence our perception and our
perceptions are our "truths". We need to understand how images
influence our thinking. How it creates a "perception of truth"
that isn't the truth!
Good art projects might include not only making art but also dissecting
some of these visual images and discuss how they influence how you feel
about the topic.
I hope we can discuss this in our art classes. It is very scary to think
that in a democracy we are told we can't talk about "political"
issues in our classrooms. I may understand how we may not advocate for a
particular party to our students, but we should certainly be able to have
a debate about issues and ideas. If not, I'd be real scared.
From Judy Decker:
High School art teachers can
have a direct impact on getting students out to vote. Many of the
students’ parents do not even care enough to go out and vote for school
issues… We as teachers need to get students caring about the direction
our country is to take
Paraphrased from a Getty
TeacherArtExchange Post:
Many artists we celebrate were the political activists of their
time...artists who created artwork that celebrated heroes and/or made
social commentary on the horrors of war or the injustices of society.
As educators we must be
educated about legislation that effects our curriculum, our budgets, our
certification requirements - our classroom sizes, the number of classes we
teach a day, the number of days we work a year, etc. All are
affected by who is in office, and who holds the power –and who writes
the check
As artists, we must continue the debate about who has
the right to choose what art we view, what is art and should/can content
of art be legislated.
From
Michael Gerrish - Why Art Newsletter (on becoming an ART Neighbor -
Authentic Relational
Transformative)
Two
"Moore" ART Neighbors
If you are going to be an ART neighbor, you’ve got to be ready to make
some noise! Pablo Picasso may have
been self centered and sometimes nasty, but creating Guernica
made him a noisy, and great, ART neighbor. In one brazenly political
image, Picasso stepped into the gap between cultures in conflict, using
his talents to portray the horror of Hitler's air attack on a Spanish
village. His painting offers each viewer a fictionalized yet authentic
glimpse into the eyes of the villagers, revealing truth about mechanized
warfare, our relationship to the suffering of others and a
transformative moment after which we must say, “Enough” to war.
Even after completing the work, Picasso continued to be noisy about the
politics of war when he refused to allow Guernica to enter Spain until
the fascist government was replaced. All this is even more remarkable
when we remember that what we view as a masterpiece today was denounced
by politicians from the left and right when it was first exhibited in
Paris in 1937. In a challenging time, he was willing to take the heat to
speak
out through his work.
Michael
Moore is making noise now, this time with his politically inspired
film Fahrenheit 9/11.
I’ve been amused by comments from some viewers who challenged his film
because it isn’t “balanced” or is somehow unpatriotic. Of course
it’s not balanced! Opinions don’t have to be balanced…but they
ought to be honest and earnestly held…and Mr. Moore’s opinion is
surely that. For those who believe documentaries should not express a
point of view, I suggest a visit to the POV
website. Independent, non-fiction film artists do have opinions, and
express them freely in their work. If viewers are inspired to improve a
situation, that's great!
As for Mr. Moore being
unpatriotic, was Picasso being unpatriotic in 1937 when he took a stand
against fascism? If patriotism is defined by the winners, I guess he
was; when Picasso died in 1973, Franco
and fascism still ruled Spain. And yet, when Picasso’s sobering
masterpiece arrived in a free and democratic Spain in 1981, did its long
delayed arrival transform Picasso from angry rebel to posthumous
patriot? Perhaps labels that change with change aren't proper
labels after all.
I'm less concerned about
debating the past and more concerned about the improving the present. I
don't want to wait 40 years for truth to be freed from the bankruptcy of
one sided patriotism and two dimensional intellect. If you don’t want
to wait, make some Authentic
Relational Transformative
noise now. There
are lots of options! ©WhyART.com 2004
Add Aesthetic Lesson - Is it Art? - Meet
the World Flags.
View the flags designed by Brazilian
artist Icaro Doria. Read
about the campaign. Do we call this art? Why or why not?
"The magazine Grande Reportagem in
Lisbon, Portugal, is running a sobering ad campaign that adds a
color-coded legend to the flags of various countries to comment on the
cultural and social conditions there. The mastermind behind the effort
is a 25-year-old Brazilian graphic designer named Icaro Doria. 'We
started to research relevant, global and current facts and thus came up
with the idea to put new meanings to the colors of the flags,' Doria
tells BrazilianArtists.net. 'We used real data taken from the Web sites
of Amnesty International and the UNO.' The tagline is, 'Meet the
world'."
(copied from a blog).
Have students design a work of art
dealing with similar world issues.
Submitted by Jill Swedlow - Chicago
UNIT: Social Comment - Political Art - Heroes - Leadership
Lesson: CONSTRUCTING A PRESIDENT
Grade level: Middle school (adaptable to elementary)
This lesson came from an workshop at Art Institute of Chicago
for educators called "Looking Critically at Political Art."
Jill is using this idea with her 7th and 8th graders.
Students will be introduced to artwork and other forms of visual
culture that address issues of representational politics and political
campaigns.
Discussion questions:
- What images of political candidates are we currently exposed to
in visual culture?
- What do we learn from these images?
- What do the images teach us?
Students can use journal writing to describe the political and social
issues that are important to them as individuals and as part of a
larger group. Students also begin to describe how they would
like their political candidate to look. They can focus on
underrepresented individuals (women or minorities).
Students will look at various artists political and social
issues. Students will answer specific questions that relate to
ideas they have written in their journals.
Students will begin to construct their presidential candidate by
looking through magazines and finding images that relate to the ideas
that they have written about in their journals.
The class is broken up into groups, the groups will function like
political campaign consultants.
Each group is expected to produce the following:
- A SLOGAN: No more than 3 words: has to relate to the issues that
the group decides are important. (You can also discuss why
the limit is three words)
-
IMAGE: The image must consist of a full body. Each body
part has to stand for something: the body parts have to
represent the issue that the students decide on.
Head: Arms: Torso: Legs: Context:
Example: The head could stand for intelligence, Arms:
Power or strength, Legs: Energy, etc.
Resources:
[HIGH
SCHOOL LESSONS] [MIDDLE SCHOOL
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