Expression through Art is PERFECTION

Raleigh Hills School Auction Items - 7th Grade & Bhattarai PM Kindergarten

That time of year. Our school's Auction - Don't miss it RHS families and friends.  Raleigh Hills School in Beaverton, Oregon.  The classroom auction projects are starting to flow in.  We'll post them here and they are on the FB page for our group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/153428171391555/

 

 

Mrs. Bhattarai's PM Kindergarten class helped paint this,
"PACIFIC CITY"

 

7th Grade - 2 paintings - one is the negative of the other.  The students posed in silhouette.
Thank you for helping Raleigh Hills K-8 Auction!  Consider attending February 25 - get your sitters now!  http://bit.ly/yfgTJH

 

Aboriginal Australian Dot Paintings

Dot paintings of the Australian Aboriginal desert peoples are often called sand paintings. This reference stems from their genesis in ground paintings that are created by clans as they move from place to place in the desert. The clan gathers around a central site, which is cleared so that "paintings" can be created using seeds, flowers, sand, stones, feathers, and other natural substances. The clan elders sing their way through the painting process, imparting tribal knowledge to younger members of the clan. The various symbols are explained and interpreted as lessons in the clan's history and heritage, its creation story, and the location of sacred sites, food sources, and water holes.

Today, these designs are painted on art board and canvas for sale to the outside world. While the precise meanngs of the designs are usually unclear to outsiders, they have deep cultural significance to clan members. Details usually are not revealed to anyone outside the clan. Even then, only males who 'graduate' to high rank in the clan learn the full menaing of the designs.

Stuart Davis 1894-1965

"My picture looks like the Place des Vosges, but it looks only like certain color-shape relations which are in herently there.  These color-shape relations are beautiful, independent of the objects they are associated with, therefore they are abstract - but since they are always associated with some sort of objects, they are concrete and unique in each case."  "A picture is an independent object with a reality of its own."

I have found some great resources that go beyond the lesson plan for Stuart Davis.  I'm not sure why they felt it necessary to include the part of how his wife died when we are presenting this to 3rd - 5th graders.

K-2
Download stuart-davis-k-2.pdf (1399.7K)

3-5
Download stuart-davis-3-5.pdf (2676.8K)

I've also included a great article on him from the Smithsonian written in 1991.
Download Stuart Davis-Smithsonian-12-91.pdf (552.6K)

Here are some of the images used in these PDF lessons.

Slide 25: Jazz Musicians

Slide 26: Brooklyn Bridge - photo by Walker Evans

Slide #27: Untitled - Urban Poor Shnatytown - photy by Roy DeCarava. Mr DeCarava's work could be another lesson on its own. Explore this photographer and his history. I couldn not find the exact photo, but this is another of his during the same period.

Slide #24: Advertising Billboard - this was taken in Atlanta, GA

Slide #21 - Stuart Davis at the Piano. Found nothing. ended up searching and finding only Bette Davis on pianos, Miles Davis next to pianos. No luck.  Sorry.

Slide #1: Stuart Davis Lucky Strike 1924 Oil on Posterboard, 18 x 24"

Slide #2: Stuart Davis Blue Cafe 1928 oil on Canvas, 18.5 x 21.5"

Slide #3: Stuart Davis Garage Lights 1931 Oil on Canvas

Slide #23: Door to the River 1960, Willem de Kooning, Oil on Canvas, 90.5 x 70"

Slide #10: Stuart Davis Salt Shaker 1931, Oil on canvas, 49 7/8" x 32"

Slide #8 Stuart Davis New york/Paris No2 1931 Oil on canvas, 30 x 40"  Note this is not the same image.  It is part of the same series with teh same techniques.

Slide #20: Stuart Davis Self Portrait 1919, Oil on canvas, 12.25 x 19.25".  This one is different, slightly than the one in the slide show.  Same hat, attire, different angle.

Slide #13: Stuart Davis Visa 1951 Oil, 40 x 52"

Slide #28: Stuart Davis Commemorative Stamp issued in 1964

Slide #14: Stuart Davis Rapt at Rappaport's 1952 Oil on canvas 52" x 40"

Here is another site with some great pieces by Stuart Davis.

Paul Gauguin 1848 - 1903

Download Gauguin Lesson Grades K-2 (1479.7K)

Download Gauguin Lesso Grades 3-5

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France to journalist Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal, daughter of the half-Peruvian proto-socialist leader Flora Tristan, a feminist precursor. In 1851 the family left Paris for Peru, motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leaving three-year old Paul, his mother and sister to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima with Paul's uncle and his family. The imagery of Peru would later influence Gauguin in his art.

At the age of seven, Gauguin and his family returned to France. They moved to Orléans to live with his grandfather. He soon learned French and excelled in his studies. At seventeen, Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine to fulfill his required military service. Three years later, he joined the French navy where he stayed for two years. In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad. They had five children over the next ten years.

Frank Stella 1936 -

It's always a pleasure to teach about an artist that is still living. Just breaks up all the rest. 

Here is the link to the Grade 3-5 Lesson Plan. Download frank-stella001.pdf (1653.4K)

Late 1950s and early 1960s

Upon moving to New York City, he reacted against the expressive use of paint by most painters of the abstract expressionist movement, instead finding himself drawn towards the "flatter" surfaces of Barnett Newman's work and the "target" paintings of Jasper Johns. He began to produce works which emphasized the picture-as-object, rather than the picture as a representation of something, be it something in the physical world, or something in the artist's emotional world. Stella married Barbara Rose, later a well-known art critic, in 1961. Around this time he said that a picture was "a flat surface with paint on it - nothing more".

 

Morro Castle 1958 Enamel on Canvas, 84 5/8 x 107 7/8

  Delaware Crossing 1961, Oil on Canvas 77 x 77"

Effingham I, Ireegular Polygon series, 1967, Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy on canvas, 10' 8" x 11'

Bonne Bay, from Newfoundland Series (Axsom 55) m 1971, Color Litho, Silk Screen 38 x 70"
This was a departure from the technique of creating a painting by first making a sketch. Many of the works are created by simply using the path of the brush stroke, very often using common house paint.

Price Realized - $15,000

Estimate -$8,000 - $12,000

Sale Information - Sale 1990

Bonne Bay, from Newfoundland Series (Axsom 55) m 1971, Color Litho, Silk Screen 38 x 70"

lithograph and screenprint in colors, 1971, on Special Arjomari, signed and dated in pencil, numbered 37/58 (there were also 12 artist's proofs), with the Gemini G.E.L. blindstamps, Los Angeles, with full margins, apparently in very good condition, not examined out of the frame

Laysan Millersbird (#22, 5.5x) Exotic Birds Series, 1977, Mixed Media on Aluminum, 130 x 225 x 25
La Vecchia Dell'Orto
1986. Mixed media on etched magnesium, aluminum, canvas, and fiberglass, 163 3/4 x 190 1/4 x 32 1/2". 1990.002

 

Frank Stella is best known for his shaped canvases of the 1960s, which were painted in brightly colored stripes. In the late 1970s, he turned to a bolder, more dynamic expression, creating painted and constructed reliefs such as this one. This piece is number twenty in the Cones and Pillars series. The titles of works in this series are taken from Italian folktales, and they represent Stella’s desire to reintroduce narrative drama into abstract painting. Here, to his stripes and colors of the 1960s, Stella has added a third dimension and a sense of tumultuous motion.

Takht-1-Sulayman I, 1967, Polymer and Fluorescentpaint on canvas.  10' x 20'
In 1967 Frank Stella began a series of brightly colored paintings based on the protractor, a drafting tool used for measuring and constructing angles. With the protractor he made three semicircular designs--the "interlace," the "rainbow" (seen here), and the "fan"--which he calls variations I, II, and III. He used these designs as the basis for the many paintings in the Protractor series.Stella named the paintings after circular cities and archaeological sites in the Middle East, where he had traveled in 1963. Tahkt-i-Sulayman is an ancient shrine in Azerbaijan, Iran. But Stella insists that the meaning of his work is purely formal: "My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object.... You can see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see."

Nogaro - 1981, Mixed media on aluminum and fiberglass.  105 x 120"

JMW Turner 1774 - 1851 - The painter of light

But aren't most artists painters of light?  That's what they are doing most of the time, especially impressionist, realists, fantasy artists - they paint the amount of value of color to create the emotion or story with tints and shades depicting the amount of light.  That's what this lesson plan is about; identifying light and dark values in a work of art and describe how tints and shades are created.

JWM Turner was born in a poor neighborhood in ondon England in 1775. He became a great landscape artist because of his ability to show the changing sky and weather in his paintings.  He was also able to capture the emotion of an event through value, tint and shade. 

The PDF for this lesson plan for grades 3-5 is here.

Download jmw-turner-production.pdf (7.9K)

Joseph Mallord William Turner, the son of a barber and wigmaker, was born in London in 1775. As a child Turner made money by colouring engravings for his father's customers. At the age of 14 he entered the Royal Academy. He exhibited his first drawing, A View of the Archbishop's Palace in Lambeth in 1790. Two years later he providing illustrations for the Copperplate Magazine and the Pocket Magazine.

In 1792 Turner went on his first sketching tour. Most of his pictures during this period were cathedrals, abbeys, bridges and towns but in 1796 he became interested in painting pictures of the sea. He also began touring with his artist friend, Thomas Girton.

Mary Cassatt 1844 - 1926

"I have touched with a sense of art some people - they felt the love and the life.  Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?" - Mary Cassatt.

The production involves watercolor, colored pencils, crayons or pastels.  Students will be making a small frame using the colors in the color wheel in order by blending. Start with the three primaries and make the three secondary colors for the frame. 

Part II:  students will draw a genre scene (every day life happening) and mount it on the rainbow frame.

Here are the links:  PDF of the script for  3 - 5  PDF of the scirpt for K-2

Please read through the scirpts.  There is something different - you are to be a sort of "mad scientist" before the slide show giving them the basics of mixing primary colors to create secondary colors.  The questions in the lesson will make more sense to them with this activity ahead of time. Invite students to be your color assistant.

 

Jacques-Louis David 1748 - 1825

Download jean-david.pdf (7245.5K) - Lesson plan.

Self Portrait

David painted his first self-portrait in 1784, in which he looks like a figure by Fragonard. This picture, which he painted in prison after the fall of Robespierre, expressed--perhaps more fully than the others--David's power and truthfulness, his determination, lucidity, and self-respect.

 

Portrait of Mme. Recamier

One of David's whims

Commissioned by Madame Récamier in 1800, the picture remained unfinished for reasons unknown. David was not satisfied with it and wanted to rework it but Madame Récamier, who thought David worked too slowly, commissioned one of his pupils to paint her portrait instead. Vexed by this, David said to his model: "Women have their whims, and so do artists; allow me to satisfy mine by keeping this portrait." The painting remained in his studio, unfinished, and was probably not seen by the public until after it entered the Louvre in 1826. In 1864, Théophile Gautier wrote of Madame Récamier's "indescribable attraction, like the poetry of the unknown."

The Oath of the Horatii

• Oil on Canvas, 10' 10" x 13' 11""
• 1784
• Musée du Louvre at Paris

This painting occupies an extremely important place in the body of David's work and in the history of French painting. It was commissioned by the Administrator of Royal Residences in 1784 and exhibited at the 1785 Salon under the title The Oath of the Horatii, between their Father's Hands. The story was taken from Titus-Livy. We are in the period of the wars between Rome and Alba, in 669 B.C.

  Bonaparte Crossing the Saint-Bernard Napoleon at  St. Bernard

• Oil on Canvas, 9' 11 1/2" x 7' 2"
• 1800
• Musee du Louvre, Paris

  Napoleon in His Study

• Oil on Canvas, 80 1/4" x 49 1/4"
• 1812
• The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C

Henri Rousseau

Wonderful discussion on art and ecology featuring "Tropical Forest with Monkeys" by Henri Rousseau on the National Gallery of America's website HERE.

The lesson plan for the course on Henri Rousseau is here.Download Henri-Rousseau.pdf (33726.7K)    Photos are in the continuation of this post.

Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) was a clerk in the Paris toll service who dreamed of becoming a famous artist. This job allowed him to support his family and gave him time to pursue his true passion—art. From his post at the toll gates and on strolls through the suburbs of Paris, Rousseau observed the world and filled numerous notebooks with sketches from nature. He retired at age forty-nine to become a full-time artist.

Although he painted many exotic scenes, Rousseau never left France. He explored the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden and zoo in Paris where he studied and drew plants and wild animals. He visited museums for artistic inspiration, and based some painted characters on pictures in books and magazines. The public laughed at Rousseau’s bold, primitive style, but he was admired and championed by modern artists such as Pablo Picasso and the surrealists.

Gold Paper Mache Eggs and Carl Faberge

Today's project went well!  We had a couple of hiccups - substitute teacher, my daughter was home sick, my husband was with her. Plan B - VERY helpful, wonderful students that made it so enjoyable.  The photos were taken by the students after they finished their projects.  I think they liked the camera as much as making the eggs.