Writing Assingnments Due for this Cylce

Here is a list to all of the writing assignments for this semester:

1. "The Night Cafe"



Tell me what you see in this painting.










To see a larger version of "The NIght Cafe" click
here.



2. "The Starry Night"




What is Van Gogh Trying to express in this painting?





To see a larger version of "The Starry Night" click
here.



3. "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa"



Describe the similarities between this painting and "The Starry Night."





Katsushika Hokusai
(September 23, 1760-April 18, 1849) was a Japanese painter and printmaker from the Edo Period. He is most famous for his series of prints called "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji" (produced during the period 1826-1833). One of these views, "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa," has become a modern-day icon. Hokusai's seemingly timeless images are almost 200 years old.

View from the Sea of Kazusa Province
Hokusai was born in Edo (now called Tokyo), Japan. In 1778, he was apprenticed at the art studio of Katsukawa Shunsho. During his life, Hokusai produced tens of thousands of prints, paintings, and illustrations. Hokusai's images were usually taken from the Japanese countryside, its people and its legends.

Hokusai's prints influenced many western artists, including Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.


4. Akira Kurosawa's
Dreams




What is the director trying to express about Van Gogh?



The movie is about many things, including the terrors of childhood, parents who are as olympian as gods, the seductive nature of death, nuclear annihilation, environmental pollution and, in a segment titled simply ''Crows,'' art. There are, in fact, eight separate episodes that comprise the movie, based on the real dreams of Kurosawa, each one giving a deeply personal message about the director's view on our vice. The dreamer, that main character is appropriately dubbed "I."

In this, the movie's least characteristic segment, Martin Scorsese, sporting a red beard and an unmistakable New York accent, appears as Vincent van Gogh, beady-eyed and intense, his head newly bandaged.

Van Gogh explains the bandage to the young Japanese artist who has somehow managed to invade the world of van Gogh's paintings, entering just down-river from the bridge at Arles: ''Yesterday I was trying to do a self-portrait, but the ear kept getting in the way.''


5. The Letters









Choose a letter from the Van Gogh Gallery Website
where Van Gogh talks about some of the things we talked about in class: his painting style (brushstroke, impasto), the role of nature in his art, his emotional and mental state, spirituality in his art, and Asian influence in his art. Discuss the elements of the painting that you believe have an effect on his art.

Due for this Marking Period

This is what is due for this marking period:

Guernica Essays
1- Tell me what you see.
2- What does the flower symbolize in the painting?

Value and Shading
1- Value Scale
2- Cylinder
3- Cone
4- Cube
5- Sphere
6- Still Life

Scientific Linear Perspective

1- 7 Rectangular volumes
2- 7 Prisms
3- 7 Cylinders
4- 5 Polygons
5- Your Name
6- 7 recangular volumes in 2 point perspective
7- 1 point interior
8- 1 point exterior
9- 18" x 24" Final

There you go.
Get it done.

Grading Breakdown

This is how I have my computer set to calculate the grades once I punch them in:

Projects: 50%
Writing: 25%
Preparation: 25%


Projects are all of the Art Production assignment we make in the class: drawings, paintings, etc... Writing are all of the essays, papers and tests I give you, and Preparation is if you are prepared to come to class, if you have your sketchpad, if you miss a lot of class and if you always come late.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica

"It is modern art's most powerful antiwar statement..."



On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded.

I'll post some links for Guernica to help you with your first two writing assignments of the semester.




Here is a site that has many details and early drawings used to plan for the final work.


"Describe to me what you see." This was the first writing assignment I gave you on the first day of class. I projected the image of Guernica on the screen and asked you to tell me what you saw. That's it. Simple. Don't tell me if you like it or not. Don't tell me if it is any good. I just want a pure description of the image. Find some help with describing art works here and here.




"What does the image of the flower symbolize in the painting?"


The trick to this one is that you will have to expalin the other symbols in the painting. The flower has meaning in a greater matrix of symbols and meanings that the artist is presenting in the image. The flower has meaning in relationship with the other symbols. How is the flower different than the other figures and things in the painting? This assignment is not just describing the painting but to figure out the meaning. What is the artist saying? What is the artist communicating? What is this painting about? What does the artist think about what happened on the day of the bombing?





UN conceals Picasso’s “Guernica” for Powell’s presentation.


In an act with extraordinary historical resonance, United Nations officials covered up a tapestry reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s anti-war mural “Guernica” during US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5 presentation of the American case for war against Iraq.

Picasso’s painting commemorates a small Basque village bombed by German forces in April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The painter, in desolate black, white and grey, depicts a nightmarish scene of men, women, children and animals under bombardment. The twisted, writhing forms include images of a screaming mother holding a dead child, a corpse with wide-open eyes and a gored horse. Art historian Herbert Read described the work as “a cry of outrage and horror amplified by a great genius.”

The reproduction has hung outside the Security Council chamber at UN headquarters in New York since its donation by the estate of Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1985. As the council gathered to hear Powell on Wednesday, workers placed a blue curtain and flags of the councilÂ’s member countries in front of the tapestry.


Extra Credit: Why do you think they would cover up the reproduction of Guernica when Colin Powell was trying to convince the American people that we should go to war in Iraq?

What We Learn in an Art Class.

I promised I would post here an I have only gotten around to it now. Sorry about that.

We covered the following in class already but I think it is a good way to start off the year. This is kind of like a syllabus, but it is more like a philosophical approach to the class.

An art class can be broken up into 4 areas: Art Production, Art History, Art Criticism and Aesthetics.


Art Production

Art Production is what most of you imagine what the class would be like before I started to throw all kinds of writing at you. Art Production is "Making Art." Art Production is the making of art, and the various components of making art, such as use of tools, manipulation of media, form and expression. It is when you learn to draw, paint, make sculptures, print, etc... We have been doing that a lot recently with our value scale projects and linear perspective drawings. It is about the "How" or "how to" in art. It does not talk about the "Why"?

Here is a link to a diagram on how to make an origami mushroom from a square piece of paper. It is a simple example of Art Production. If you come into class with one I'll give you an extra credit grade.



Art History

Art History is learning about art and artists from the past. Art History is not just "who made what when," but is the history of objects and the history of people through art. Works of art provide a unique documentation of cultural changes throughout history. Studying historical works not only gives us insights into the past, but can also provide valuable insights and information about the present.

Obviously, when we were studying Picasso's Guernica we were learning about art from the past. We will be doing a lot of this.



Art Criticism


"All profoundly original art looks ugly at first." - Clement Greenberg

Art criticism is the study and evaluation of art. It is making judgments about art. There are 4 steps to Art Criticism:

Describe - what things are in the painting? Think of things like clothing, environment, etc.

Analyze - how are the elements of line, shape, form, texture, space and value used? How are the principles of unity pattern, rhythm, variety, balance, emphasis and proportion used?

Interpret - what is the artist trying to say to you? What is going on in the picture or artwork?

Decide- What do I think about this artwork? Do I like it? Why or why not?How do I feel about whether the artist was successful in conveying an idea?

We will do more on this.


Aesthetics

Aesthetics (also esthetics) is the philosophy of beauty and art. Philosophical questions about art seem to be unanswerable. What is art? What is good art? What is beauty? It is important in the study of art that students engage their brains, think about what they are doing, learning, and feeling about their art and the art of others. In studying art through aesthetic questioning, the answer is not important. The act of working through the puzzle provided by the question is extremely important.


Learn these terms. I will be using them all year. I plan to post again this weekend. Stay tuned.

Mid Term

Francisco Goya
1746 - 1828
The Executions of the Third of May, 1808

To view this painting go to http://www.artchive.com/ftp_site.htm and scroll down to Goya on the menu on the left hand side. Then scroll down to the link to "The shootings of May Third 1808" Click on the thumbnail of the painting and it will open in something called "image viewer."

The Question:

What does this painting say about the human condition?

Vocabulary:
(to be used in your 2 page answer)

Human Condition
Expression
Communication

Due for Second Cycle

This is for my Art Foundation Classes

1. 7 Rectangular volumes
2. 7 Cylinders
3. 7 Prisms
4. Name (at least 8 letters)
5. 5 Polygons
6. 1 point interior
7. 1 point exterior

Here are some links to some linear perspective sites:

Exploring linear perspective
Studio Chalkboard

Due For First Cycle

Here are all the assignments due for First cycle:

1. Sketchpad Check
2. "What is art?" Essay
• Tell me what you believe art is.
3. "Stag at Sharkey's" by George Bellows Essay (boxing)
• The Artist
• The Painting
• page 99 of Visual Experience text book
• one page
• first half of page: Tell me what you see
• second half of page: tell me how it makes you feel
4. Guernica Essay
• Pablo Picasso's Guernica
• explain what you believe this painting is about
• Here is the Painting
• Info on Picasso
5. Value Scale
• Info on Value Scale
• Chiaroscuro
6. Cylinder
• Shading a Cylinder
7. Cone
8. Cube
• Shading a Cube

9. Sphere
• Shading a Sphere
• Another

Linear Perspective

Linear perspective is a mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. The system originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s. The artist and architect Brunelleschi demonstrated its principles, but another architect and writer, Leon Battista Alberti was first to write down rules of linear perspective for artists to follow. Leonardo da Vinci probably learned Alberti's system while serving as an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio in Florence.

To use linear perspective an artist must first imagine the picture surface as an "open window" through which to see the painted world. Straight lines are then drawn on the canvas to represent the horizon and "visual rays" connecting the viewer's eye to a point in the distance.

The horizon line runs across the canvas at the eye level of the viewer. The horizon line is where the sky appears to meet the ground.

The vanishing point should be located near the center of the horizon line. The vanishing point is where all parallel lines (orthogonals) that run towards the horizon line appear to come together like train tracks in the distance.

Orthogonal lines are "visual rays" helping the viewer's eye to connect points around the edges of the canvas to the vanishing point. An artist uses them to align the edges of walls and paving stones.