Creating a Mini Art Gallery

In class, we are creating Mini Art Galleries with six famous works of art. Each student will be a the curator of an art exhibit! So far, each student has selected a Picasso painting and a Japanese wood print. We are carefully observing our artworks and preparing commentary and critiques to eventually "tour" people through our galleries.

In class, we have talked about how to prepare our commentaries.

Here are the criteria we have come up with:

Principles and Elements of Design – how do these impact the way you feel about the piece of art?

-texture

-pattern

-colour – complementary colours, hot and cold, analogous, monochromatic

-shape

-space

-lines

-form

-focus

-balance

-rhythm – repeating sort of pattern

-contrast

-harmony

-unity

Questions you might ask when looking at art

-what is the story?

-what does the title mean?

-what is the style of art? (abstract, realistic…)

-who is the portrait of? What is his or her story?

-is it a portrait? A landscape? A still life?

-who made it? What is his or her story? When did he or she paint it?

-What else was going on in the world when the artist created this work?

-what materials were used?

-is it collage? Painting? Sculpture?
-what feelings are evoked in the viewer?

-what I see…

-what I feel…

-what I hear…

-what I wonder….

-how does this compare to other art I’ve seen?

Together, we looked at "Guernica" by Picasso and wrote a critique for it.

Guernica – Pablo Picasso

Line – the way the artist painted the lines of the necks of people makes the painting feel very dramatic

Rhythm – almost as if it’s a play, lots of action happening, lots of passion, textures with shades of black and white

Texture – on horse, looks like it’s a collage out of newspaper, Picasso might have done that because the newspaper tells a story and the horse tells a story, trying to put pressure on the Germans to make peace?

Colours – dark and solemn instead of bouncy and light and happy, Picasso chose those colours because it’s a war and that’s a dark time to be in

Space – really really tight, everybody all together, other places destroyed, this place is the safest place left, it makes it feel very urgent, all the action of the war is going on at once

What else is going on in the world at the time Picasso painted this? Lots of war and destruction, bombs, he painted this during the Spanish Civil War, 1500-1600 civilians were killed in a Spanish town by German bombers. This makes us wonder what war adds to people’s lives

What I feel – everything feels sad, everything is dying, I feel screaming, death, sadness, pain, I feel like I’m a part of it because so much is going on, you get wrapped into it

What does the title mean? “Guernica” sounds like a made-up title of random syllables and later we read that it means the town that the bombing happened in

 

Pablo Picasso

In class, we read spoke and read about one of the most well known artists of all-time, Pablo Picasso. We were surprised to learn many things about him and enjoyed learning more about the man behind the famous art.

As Shauna read aloud from "Lives of the Artists: Messes, Masterpieces and What the Neighbours Thought", students listened and then took turns summarizing paragraphs. You can read below to see what we learned!

Pablo Picasso

1881-1973

-age 92

We already know:

-abstract artist – not realistic

-blue period

-there are some original Picasso paintings in Ottawa

-knew how to do abstract and portraits, not many artists know how to do that

-from Europe – Spain

-he did a lot of different types of art: ceramics, sketches, paintings, sculpture

We learned together:

-he didn’t do well in school, he had dyslexia

-he brought a pigeon to school and drew it

-he was pretty successful in Spain at a young age

-he lived in an attic in Paris, was robbed for everything but paintings

-whenever he had enough money, he went to the bullfights, because he liked that as a child

-he was extremely productive, a workaholic

-he was pretty small, but buff

-he’s crazy, he went crazy around people, he was a show off

-he had lots of important friends, but he was very violent and they were afraid of him!

-he dated a lot of ladies and a neighbor threw a rock at a window

-he only let one person watch him paint, his second and last wife

-he had four children and had a good relationship when they were younger, when they were older, he didn’t have interest in them

-he had some weird habits: he didn’t throw anything out, he didn’t let anyone dust his studio and he safety pinned his wallet to his vest pocket

-he was paranoid about his security

-he didn’t have a phone until his son had a medical emergency

-he had a strict and sort of strange diet

-eccentric:  different from other people, liked to keep lots of animals

-really big show-off, vain: liked books and movies about himself

-prolific: he made 200 paintings at the age of 90
-source: "Lives of the Artists" - Krull

We learned on our own:
-Picasso's dad painted in the realistic style, he saw his son's paintings and quit painting because Pablo was better! - Pat