I’ll be revamping my life drawing/painting unit in grade 10 to perhaps focus more on the concept of beauty and how form, line, colour, medium & pose can evoke emotion and tell a story. In anticipation of this, I’ve collected several photos and compiled them into the slideshow below. Feel free to use/download it if it suits your needs.
Following on from my previous post on Art & Social Justice Education, here’s the second list from the book on “OUR CULTURES: RECOGNITION & REPRESENTATION.”
Kaisa Leka (International Disability Arts & Culture Movement): Find her work entitled “I Am Not These Feet” which is a comic chronicling her experiences with prosthetic limbs.
Darrel Morris‘ work inquires into the organization and normalization of gender and sexuality in American society. He produces pieces that challenges and destabilizes deeply rooted expectations of what men should do in public. It serves as an example of how masculine identity and male subjectivity is constituted in and through process of negative differentiation.
Nicholas Galanin‘s work captures the misrepresentation of aboriginal cultures. His choice of materials and images turns the exploitation on its head. (If interested in this, also check out the work of Canadian artist Carl Beam.)
Xu Bing mixes Chinese calligraphy with English words. Look carefully when viewing his work.
Bernard Williams‘ work has stylized black cutouts and heavily outlined images. He raids categories and appropriates symbols, objects, images & information in order to reinterpret and reimagine what it means to be American. It would be interesting to compare/contrast his work to that of Kara Walker.
If readers have other ideas or artists that can be included, please do drop me a line in the comments section.
I’ve just finished reading Art & Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons, edited by Therese Quinn, John Ploof & Lisa Hochtritt (site). The books premise is that art can contribute in a wide range of ways to the work of envisioning and creating a more just world. It’s an expensive purchase, but has some interesting ideas and links to contemporary artists. The book has 3 major themes:
5. Paula Nicho Cumez‘s ‘work addresses immigration rights, the breaking up of beloved families and what it must feel like to be forced to leave that which you love, all that you know and your home.’ Her work involves Maya Kaqchikel culture, an indigenous community in Guatemala.
6. Rafael Trelles uses reverse stencils instead of spray-paint. He creates his images by cleaning.
Do check out some of these artists. Soon I’ll post part 2 on recognising and representing our cultures.
“The epic life of a world-class artist, jammed into six minutes and narrated by Tom Waits.”
I’ll be doing a digital storytelling unit with grade 7s next year. This video may be one of my examples. Love it!
Commissioned by LACMA for their first annual “Art + Film Gala” honoring John Baldessari and Clint Eastwood.
I recently finished reading Just My Type by Simon Garfield. I usually don’t read books like this, but I’m glad I did. It’s entertaining and really interesting. Simon Garfield provides insight into the history of fonts as well as providing interesting stories that accompany them. Of course, there’s stuff like Helvetica vs. Arial & Comic Sans etc. and a mention on how the Obama campaign used Gotham. If interested, feel free to read my notes via a GoogleDoc here, but I’m not convinced you will find it useful. Pick up the book instead.
I blogged before about Gauguin‘s involvement with Van Gogh‘s ear. Bloomberg recently reported that “…Theo’s happy news helped, at least, to push him over the edge.” Theo announced to Vincent that he was to marry. Read the full story here. The saga continues…
From The Art Institute of Chicago:
Learn tips and techniques that help young visitors make the most of their museum visit and enriches their encounters with art, both in the museum and at home!
(I’ve also placed this video under the “Arts, Learning & Talks” tab at the top of this site as well as on my Art wiki, that also has other museum links.)
I found out about Picturing America through a tweet from kenfar. Though I do not teach American History, I applaud the site for integrating Art into other subjects. What I like most is how the gallery is viewable through themes (leadership, freedom & equality, democracy, courage, landscapes, creativity & ingenuity). The galleries are not large, but it may give teachers ideas on how to present using visuals and art history.
HE WAS the ultimate Renaissance man – studying anatomy, designing a rudimentary helicopter and creating some of the most admired paintings of the age.
But could Leonardo Da Vinci also have perpetrated history’s greatest art forgery?
That’s the suggestion of one expert, who claims that Leonardo was responsible for faking the Turin Shroud.
The relic has inspired generations of pilgrims who have flocked to see what they believe is the face of the crucified Jesus. But it has also provoked bitter controversy after scientists carbon-dated it to the Middle Ages.
Now a US artist has entered the fray, putting forward her own theory about its origin. Lillian Schwartz, a graphic consultant at the School of Visual Arts in New York, claims that the image is a self-portrait of Leonardo, which was made using a crude photographic technique.
Read the full story here.
Thanks to Shane M.
The Guardian (UK) reported:
Vincent van Gogh’s fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist’s bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin. FULL STORY HERE.
But Bloomberg says:
I don’t believe a word of it. This is not the first time it has been suggested that Gauguin might have been the aggressor in this odd art couple. The psychological motive for the suspicion is, I suspect, that many people don’t like Gauguin, and identify with the suffering Van Gogh. That’s the reverse of the effect the two men had in reality. Quite a few contemporaries liked and admired Gauguin; almost everybody, including his brother Theo when they lived together, found Van Gogh’s company unbearable. FULL STORY HERE.
