Visual Arts Basics Some of our favorite links

Episode Summary

Teacher Tape

• No one knows all the answers, so this teacher-tape is dedicated to the art of questioning. In teaching our students to appreciate visual art, one question to begin with is-


What is the purpose of this piece of art? What is the artist's intent?
• Art can be useful and decorative. Examples: Native American arts.
• Art can be about beauty. Example: Asian arts, Raphael. It can also help us define what beauty is. Example: Rembrandt.
• A painting can record an experience or tell a story. Example: Lascaux Cave Painting). It can give us a slice of life. Example: Degas. It can recreate a famous story. Example: Botticelli.
• Art can create one's immortality. Example: pyramids, Sofonisba and Velasquez.
• Art can also express political beliefs. Example: David and Delacroix, Rodin, Picasso.
• Another purpose of art: to express religious values. Example: Chartres, Giotto, Michelangelo, Bernini.
• Some works of art are about revealing truth. Example: Caravaggio, Constable, Van Gogh.
• Another purpose of art is fantasy. Example: De Chirico, Chagall, Dali.
• Art can express timeless, universal feelings. Example: Cassatt, Moore.
• Art can reflect the social and cultural background of an era. Example: Hopper, Warhol, Lawrence.
• Some artists like to shock us. Example, Manet.
• Painters sometimes simply experiment with formal elements. Breugel, Kandinsky, Rothko, Pollock, Kline.
  
  
• Questions to ask a painter. Lexington artist Carolyn Hisel discusses her own works using the elements of art and principles of design. This section is roughly based on the SAGE acronym. (See-Analyze-Guess-Evaluate.) Carolyn tells the audience what she sees in her painting, she does some formal analysis; she considers her symbols-aspects of a work the viewer normally guess about, and then she evaluates her own products.



• A final question: How do the visual arts parallel with, or intersect, other arts? This section of Basics is about capturing the essence of the study of humanities-To understand one art form makes one infinitely more able to understand each of the others. For example... the visual art element of line is important in dance. Our eyes follow the pathways, or lines, created by dancers. The visual art elements of shape and space emerge clearly in architecture. Color is easy to recognize in visual art. Tone color (timbre) would be the musical parallel. Form makes a painting instantly recognizable. Form also lets us know where we stand in the literary arts. We know immediately if a work is a story, a free verse poem, a haiku, or an essay. Form gives us clues how to address a painting or a piece of writing. Texture in the visual arts calls on our sense of touch. In filmmaking, texture is also an important tool. It's easy to see the visual art element of value in photograph. Photographer Dorothea Lange uses a wide palette of values to capture the essence of the Depression Era.

Student Tape

• Elements of art, the tools of the artist. Elements of art are the most basic tools an artist uses. We cover line, color, value, shape, form, space, and texture. Line leads your eye through a work and may be implied or defined. Example, Cassatt. Color, or hue, is related to light. Example, Monet). The color wheel shows us how primary colors relate to secondary colors. Color may be symbolic. Example: Van Gogh. When a painter mixes black or white with a single color, he works with value. Example: Caravaggio, Rembrandt. Shape is a two dimensional area clearly set off by another of the elements of art. It may be geometric or organic. Example: Jacob Lawrence. When we create shape and make it three-dimensional, we have form. Example, Michelangelo. Space is what's above, below, around, and within things. Example, O'Keeffe, Dali. Texture refers to how things feel, or how they look as if they'd feel. Example, Constable, Courbet. Wrapup-Recap and review.



• Principles of design. If the elements of art are like tools of the painter, then the principles of design relate to how the artist uses those tools. Goya uses each of the principles of design in The Third of May. He applies balance and proportion, emphasis, contrast, pattern and repetition, movement and rhythm, and unity. Goya composes using asymmetric balance (difference in symmetrical and asymmetrical balance); He uses the element of color to emphasize the mood of terror. Contrast creates interest in this painting. Almost every pattern (linear, horizontal, vertical, geometric) is repeated in The Third of May. Goya uses movement and rhythm to take our eyes to important parts of the painting. At some points the movement is fluid, in other places, we are aware of more rhythmical use of color, shape, and line. Finally, Goya creates a unified piece of work-he doesn't emphasize any single element or art or principle of design so much that we lose the drama of the execution.



• Masterworks and wrapup. A fine artist has great command of the elements of art and principles of design. A truly great artist creates a work that addresses the spirit of the times. This section is a discussion of ten paintings-focusing on how they fit into the culture of the time in which they were created. Giotto, The Lamentation, 1305. Giotto is called the "father of Western painting." He shows movement in space, and has a psychological understanding of both subject and viewer. Caravaggio, The Conversion of St. Paul, 1600. This painting captures the essence of the Counter Reformation. David, The Death of Marat, 1793 and Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818. A parallel discussion of these two paintings-one an example of the Neoclassical Era and another of the Romantic Era which replaced it. Manet, Dejuner sur l'herbe, 1863. Manet might be considered the first real modern painter. He brought painting into the real world, and even offended us with it. Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849. In the mid 1800's industrialism, materialism, and the growing strength of the middle class gave art a new, more political, focus. Picasso, Demoiselles d'Avigon. 1907. Picasso "made it new" with this painting, which shattered forms, and violated rules that had been sacrosanct since the Renaissance. Pollock, Number 1 Lavendar Mist, 1950. Pollock's action painting was about freedom for painters. His work made America the new art capital of the world.



• Finally: Using the acronym S-A-G-E, students apply what they've learned to analyze a painting. See the painting; Analyze what you see using principles and elements, Guess what the artist had in mind. Do this and you should be able to fairly Evaluate any painting

Episode Summary - Vocabulary - Works Consulted - Teacher Response Form