SANDWICH
ART HISTORY
Grade Two - Art and Observation
Lesson 1 – Art Helps Us to See - Point of View
MATERIALS
1. Farmer in the Field, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch, (1853-1890), oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reproduction print
Vincent van Gogh grew up in an educated Dutch family; his father was a minister and his uncle an art dealer. He pursued many careers such as teacher, art dealer, and missionary preacher. His generosity, compassion and deep desire to understand his fellow men were misunderstood by the Belgian coal miners with whom he lived and to whom he preached until his dismissal in 1880. Around this time he began to sketch copies of Jean Francois Millet's somber peasants and later to take anatomy and perspective lessons in Brussels. Van Gogh's early self-training showed intense visual perception which developed into a sinuous, flame-like style with brilliant colors. At the age of 33 he moved to Paris to live with his brother Theo. There he was influenced by the Impressionists, Pointiallists, and by the flat planes and vigorous outlines of Japanese prints. After moving to St. Remy and in Auvers, where he died, he painted vivid passionate works, expressive of his tormented life.
Van Gogh's Farmer in the Field reflects his use of brilliant colors and the influence of the "flat planes and vigorous outlines" of Japanese prints. His brush strokes, though somewhat larger and thicker than the Impressionists and Pointiallists, still demonstrate their influence upon his style. It is obvious that Farmer in the Field is his perception of the scene. He places little emphasis on figures; the two workers in the center are merely blue outlines, dwarfed by the landscape. The right-hand figure, also blue, is a whole person, although its sex is not easily determined. The figure is balanced precariously on the lurching, rushing landscape which is divided horizontally into four bands of color (red, green, yellow and blue).
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Note: Van Gogh's Farmer in the Field and Millet's The Gleaners are included in this lesson for comparison.
2. The Gleaners, 1857, Jean Francois Millet, French, (1814-1875), oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris. Reproduction print
Jean Francois Millet was the son of a French peasant. For a brief time he trained under a local Cherbourg artist and then under Delaroche in Paris where he was also influenced by Daumier. In 1849 he settled in Barbizon and painted genre subjects of peasants at work and prayer. The Gleaners and The Angelus are among his most representative works. Both are sentimental and romantic scenes executed in a realistic style.
These quotes may help you enjoy the prints by Millet and Van Gogh. They are from The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh.:
"The wood is becoming quite autumnal - there are effects of colour which I rarely find painted in Dutch pictures."
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"Yesterday towards evening I was busy painting a rather sloping ground in the wood, covered with mouldered and dry beech leaves. That ground was light and dark reddish brown, made more so by the shadows of trees which threw more or less dark streaks over it, sometimes half blotted out. The question was, and I found it very difficult to get the depth of colour, the enormous force and solidness of that ground - and while painting it I perceived only for the first time how much light there still was in that dusk - to keep that light, and to keep at the same time the glow and depth of that rich colour."
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"For you cannot imagine any carpet so splendid as the deep brownish-red, in the glow of an autumn evening sun, tempered by the trees."
"From that ground young beech trees spring up which catch light on one side and are sparkling gleen there, and the shadowy side of those stems are a warm deep black-green."
"Behind those saplings, behind that brownish-red soil is a sky very delicate, bluish grey, warm, hardly blue, all aglow - and against it is a hazy border of green and a network of little stems and yellowish leaves. a few figures of wood gatherers are wandering around like dark masses of mysterious shadows. The white cap of a woman, who is bending to reach a dry branch, stands out all of a sudden against the deep red-brown of the ground. A skirt catches the light - a shadow fails - a dark silhouette of a man appears above the underbrush. A white bonnet, a cap, a shoulder, the bust of a woman moulds itself against the sky. Those figures, they are large and full of poetry - in the twilight of that deep shadowy tone they appear as enormous clay figureines being shaped in a studio."
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"While painting it I said to myself: 'I must not go away before there is something of an autumn evening air about it, something mysterious, something serious."
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Van Gogh admired Millet tremendously. Speaking of the developement of art :
"Up to Millet and Jules Breton... there was always in my opinion progress, but to surpass these two - don't even mention it! I must have a a foundation in these artists."
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Van Gogh wanted his figures to live, not to be academically correct. He believed that Millet painted figures as he felt them; he painted the truth of the laborer in action. Both Van Gogh and Millet painted the close connection of the peasant to the earth. How?
4. False Mirror, 1928, Rene Magritte, Belgian (1898-1967), oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York, reproduction print.
Rene Magritte was a well-known surrealist painter born in Lessines, Belgium. He began to draw and paint at the age of twelve and demonstrated n early taste for the unusual and the bizarre. He studied art intermittently and in about 1918 Magrittebegan to search for a personal painting style. His earliest work showed the influence of Futurism and by the early 1920s a form of cubism became apparnet in his painting. As artistic movements and he evolved a personal style which emphasized the meaning to an overriding aesthetic effort.
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Of Magritte, Suzi Gablik wrote: "When it came to painting, he manifested an almost constitutional dislike, feigning something between boredom, fatigue and disgust." Magritte's is everyman's Surrealist and universally admired. His paintings commend themselves, at least in reproduction, for their craftsmanship and finish, and they appear almost Super-realist. His work is dead-pan initially - the viewer takes a few seconds to realize what is wrong with the scene depicted. Being unaware of the meaning of the various symbols he uses is unimportant and does not detract from an appreciation of the disjnction between the real world and his depiction of it. It is in these slight and subtle shifts in meaning that his Surrealism lies. His speciality - the painting within a painting - is a further example of this disjunction; it is at once bith a mystical experience which allows us to question the nature of reality and also the basis for considerable semantic speculation. There is no apparent reason or consistency in Magritte's work - he delighted in ambiguity. If we truly appreciate it, we do the same.
What is wrong? What is real?
Modern Painting
~ Adams, Hugh, Mayflower Books, Inc NY 1979
5. Virgin Forest at Sunset, 1907, Henri Rousseau, French (1844-1910), oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum, Basel, reproduction print.
Rousseau was a French customs officer (un Douanier) who taught himself to paint by copying the masters in the Louvre. Later he exhibited at the Salon des Independants. Rousseau's tranquil jungle settings have a dreamlike quality and the forms of staring, hypnotic animals are rendered in a bold naive style. Many of his works reflect his lack of formal training - his past as a 'Sunday Painter' - in the flatness of forms, the labored detail, the meticulous but awkward finishing, the stiffness, the innacuracies of proportion and perspective and an aim of naivete. However, his paintings have something more. They have a decorative flair and an air of enchantment. Rousseau could not so much as copy a picture postcard (as he sometimes did) without transforming its trite realism into his own distinctive unreality. His often exotic subject matter intensifies and makes more obvious the other-wordliness inherent in all his work.
The Virgin at Sunset particularly comes to life when thinking about the sounds and noises in the jungle.
OTHER IDEAS:
• scents
• climate
• touch (example: are some plants prickly? some soft?)
• How does the person feel? Frightened? Brave?
• How would you feel?
Download Grade Two - Lesson Two Synopsis here
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Optional Activity: Painting with Spice Pigments DOWNLOAD HERE
INTRODUCTION
There are as many ways to paint a picture as there are artists. Paintings help us to share a person's way of seeing. All artists look hard and think carefully about what they see.
These are not actual paintings, they are printed reproductions. However good they may be, printed reproductions are always very different from the original painting. To see paintings in their full glory you should visit an ar gallery or museum. But whether you are looking at the actual paintings or at reproductions, use our eyes and look.
An artist often has a difficult choice. Should he paint only hat he sees? Or should he paint what he knows is really there, even though it would be impossible to see it in real life? For example, some artists do not paint people exactly as they see them. They imagine how a perfect person would look, and take away all the faults and blemishes that exist in real life. On the other hand, many artists paint very realistically and include all the faults and imperfections.
Some painters do not want us to think about perfection or the exact way that people look. They want us to think about feelings. When you have strong desires or emotions they can very often seem to push you about in different directions. Artists sometimes distort faces on a person's face or body in real life.
Artists, as we have seen, have many ways of making pictures, but we should also realize that they paint for many reasons. Sometimes to make us imagine things we cannot see with our eyes or to make us share their dreams. Sometimes to make us think about ourselves and who we are. Sometimes just for the sake of showing the way pictures are made and how an artist uses things like colors, paint or brush strokes.
All great artists know that once you start to look and think and imagine, there is no reason ever to stop.
Just Look...A Book
About Painting
~ Cumming, Robert, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1979
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
- What did each artist want to say?
- How do the artists use light?
3. Haymaking, Pieter Breughal, Flemish (1525-1569), The Narodi Gallery, Prague, reproduction print.
Pieter Breughal was one of the greatest painters of the Netherlands. In 1551 he journeyed to Italy and was deeply impressed with the art of the High Renaissance and the dynamic landscape of Italy. He glorified the simple life of the peasants at work and play. Notice how he keeps our eyes moving around the picture by carefully spacing the colors and groups of people. He leaves out shadows and confusing details.
Grade Two - Art and Observation
Lesson 2 – Black & White in Color
INTRODUCTION
Painters use color in many ways. Some colors may draw the viewer into the painting or emphasize or show importance to particular forms. A repeated color may draw our eye around the painting or create designs, balance or rhythm. Color adds variety to a painting and it may be used in a symbolic way to express an idea or set a mood.
Color may be defined as a characteristic of light by which an area of an object can be distinguished. In talking about paintings we are usually referring to pigment color and the light it reflects.
Color is pigment. Even prehistoric man used colors from the earth — yellow, ochre, and red—brown of clay, black of charred wood, white of lime. He rubbed these pigments on cave walls, then learned to mix them with animal fat to make them permanent. There painting began.
Figment is any powder-ed substance which is mixed with a suitable liquid in which it is relatively insoluble. The color of the pigment may come from metal oxides, animals, vegetables, earth — and most recently synthetic chemicals.
Colors also have value which refers to their lightness or darkness; tints of higher value and shades of lower value. The intensity of a color is determined by the amount of pure pigment not to be confused with value.
A group of painters, called the Impressionists, like the scientists of their day, also did some speculation of their own on the nature of the visual experience. Form, and space, they reasoned. are not actually seen but implied from varying intensities of light and color. Objects are not so much things in themselves as they are agents for the absorption and refraction of light. Hard outlines, indeed lines themselves, do not exist in nature. Shadows, they maintained, are not black but tend to take the color complementary to that of the objects that cast them. The concern of the painter, they concluded, should therefore be the light and color more than with the objects and substances. A painting, according to the Impressionists, should consist of a breakdown of sunlight into its component parts, and brilliance should be achieved by the use of the primary colors that make up the spectrum. Instead of greens mixed by the painter on the palette, separate dabs of yellow and blue should be placed close together and the mixing left to the spectator's eye. What seems confusion at close range is clarified at the proper distance. By thus trying to increase the brightness of their canvasses so as to convey the illusion of sunlight sifted through a prism, they achieved a veritable carnival of color in which the eye seems to join in a dance of vibrating light intensities. As a result of this re-examination of their technical means, the Impressionists discovered a new method of visual representation.
The Psychology of color:
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Color has very strong effects and associations for man - though these may differ with cultures and between individuals. We often speak of red as hot and blue as cold. But it is when colors get together that the action begins! Colors can set moods - harmony, sadness, wild excitement, mystery.
MATERIALS
1. Color Wheel Graphic - Primary colors, Secondary colors, Complementary colors
Note the primary colors on the color wheel graphic. All other colors are created by mixing red, yellow or blue, Orange, green and purple are secondary colors. Colors opposite each other on the color wheel are complementary colors and when placed side by side, can intensify each other and vibrate. Colors next to each other make up color families. Cool colors (blue, green, purple families) are those associated with cool things, — water, ice, shade trees. Warm colors (red, orange, yellow group) are those associated with warm or hot things,— fire, sun.
Color theory
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By second grade, the kids will know about the color wheel and basic color mixing. This is a good time to review for a few minutes since this lesson is all about color!
2. Prisms - Remember to bring a Flashlight and have someone turn out the classroom lights
Color is light. Physicists experimenting with light in the late 1800’s developed the science of color. Bending light rays through a prism, they demonstrated that the visible spectrum (canbe seen by the human eye, versus infra—red, ultra—violet, etc.) is a combination of colors making white light. We observe this in nature with the rainbow.
3. Prehistoric Art, Spanish, Grotte D'Altimira (The Altimira Cave), Bison II
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Man has always had the urge to create. Prehistoric man, faced with the hardships of mere existence painted the walls of his caves with pictures of animals he hunted. This probably gave him the feeling of magical ability to capture them and to calm his fears. His choice of color was limited to the colors of the earth - clay, charred wood, lime, blood, guano (excrement from bats/birds - the kids love this one).
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Additional Links: Altimira Cave with pics
4. A Girl and Her Duenna, Murillo (moo-ree-yoh) Bartolme Esteban, Spanish (1617-1682), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC reproduction print.
A duenna is an elderly woman serving as governess and companion to the younger ladies in a Spanish or a Portuguese family. We can learn about the customs, clothes and architecture of other countries by examining paintings. The women are looking out a window. Can you guess what they are looking at? Often when we think of Spain, bullfights and fiestas with parades through the streets come to mind. Notice the dark background. How would the painting make YOU feel if the red flower was not there?
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Murillo was a Spanish Baroque artist who painted mostly religious works. He also painted pictures of everyday life (genre paintings.) In 1660 he founded an academy of painting at Seville and became its first president. He had many assistants and followers and his naturalistic style. He continued to influence Sevillian painting throughout the 18th century.
Additional Links: Esteban biography & additional pics
5. Rooms by the Sea, Edward Hopper, American (1882-1967), oil, Yale Univ. Art Gallery, new Haven, CT
Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York, of mixed Dutch and English ancestry. He studied with Robert Henri in New York City and painted dark-toned, moody scenes, influenced partly by Henri’s palette and by his own solitary personality. Hopper went to Paris in 1906, but instead of becoming associated with any movement or group, he drew and worked by himself, Impressed by the unique light of Paris, he developed his own quietly luminous style. Upon his return to New York his slowly maturing impressions accumulated from constant observation of everyday sights resulted in numerous city scenes — the streets, houses and people enveloped in a spirit of loneliness, and the canvas itself bathed with clean, glaring light. Hopper exhibited during the twenties and although recognition came late to him, it has endured. His individual interpretation of life communicates a sympathetic, objective love of the commonplace American scene.
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Light plays an essential part of Hopper’s paintings. It is as fully realized as the objects on which it falls: it reveals the color arid surfaces. Sunlight simplifies and casts heavy somber shadows. The light and shadow defines and models forms (not breaking up the forms as Impressionists do.) He liked strong sunlight. Many of his titles have the word sun or light. movement is created by light and creates composition. He paints colors just as he sees them in nature. he uses blacks and whites.
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Beginning in 1930, Hopper also painted along the Cape Cod shore. In 1933 he bought land and built a studio house in Truro, where he spent almost every successive summer until his death in 1967.
A fellow Cape Codder
Did you know that Edward Hopper spent many years living in Truro? Does his work remind you of the place we live?
6. Waterlilies, 1905, Claude Monet, French (1840-1926), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
7. Boats at Argenteuil, 1872, Claude Monet, French (1840-1926), Louvre, Paris (Multiple prints)
Claude Monet might be called the most important French Impressionist. From his earliest encounters with artists, such as Boudin, Pissarro and Jonkind, through the time of later contacts with such influential contemporaries as Sisley and Renoir, Monet continued to explore the optical effects of changing light and color. Monet painted directly from the object in order to record visual sensation more accurately. His late studies were a series of Haystacks and Rouen Cathedrals which examine how light at different times of the day changes the subject it illuminates.
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Monet's famous 'Waterlilies" in their shimmering formlessness have recently been related to abstract art, more specifically, Abstract Impressionism.
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Monet sat and painted this scene many times. Each time he painted it, he did so at a different time of day. the amount of sunlight is different at noon than at 6 pm. What time of day do you think this version was painted? Is the water really pink and purple? The buildings are silhouetted and they are in shadow, but Monet saw many colors in the shadows. do you see them?
Lots of Lilies
There are more than 50 versions of Monet's "Waterlilies"
