february’s artist: georges braque

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Georges Braque was born on May 13, 1882 in a suburb of Paris, France. He grew up working with his father and grandfather, who were decorative house painters. He also attended art school at night. Initially, he was a member of the impressionist movement, but soon joined the Fauves. (The “Beasts” like Henri Mattise. They used bright colors to convey emotion.) Braque was fascinated with the effects of light and perspective and began experimenting with flattening images or showing multiple perspectives at once. He was good friends with Pablo Picasso and the two artists began experimenting with breaking their paintings down into the geometric shapes and combing more than one view point. The two artists often painted side by side, creating pieces that looked almost identical. The term Cubist wasn’t initially adopted by Braque and Picasso, but came from a critic, who wrote that Braque’s work was a canvas “full of little cubes” (Another example of someone criticizing an artists work, but the artist refusing to let it be a negative thing!) Within a few years, the movement was known as cubism and its popularity was spreading quickly. Cubist paintings are much easier to understand if you keep in mind the exaggeration of the shapes in a figure (for older students, mention that figures, landscapes and still life subjects were abstracted into their base shapes), along with the display of multiple perspectives at once. Braque mentioned “shattering an object into fragments” to better understand the form of the object. In 1912, the pair began to experiment with collage, creating what they termed “Papier Colle`” They pasted newspaper clippings, ads, and other papers into their work. This created a new texture and could add a different narrative to the piece.

Braque joined the French Army at the beginning of WWI and suffered a severe head injury, leaving him temporarily blind. After his recuperation, he returned to painting alone. Picasso moved onto other experiments, but Braque remained devoted to the Cubist method until his death at age 81.

Today we will paint our own canvas boards using the techniques that George Braque pioneered.

Set out the still life display on the cart. Put it somewhere centrally located if possible. Tell the students that they will not be able to touch the display, but they will be able to quietly move to a different spot in the room. Tell them that this will give them the chance to look at things from more than one angle; like Georges Braque did. Encourage them to mix the views together and focus more on the shapes of the objects than the objects themselves to create a cubist painting. If they are nervous about going right to the canvas, there is paper on the cart to do some preliminary sketches.

Tell the students to start by looking at the display and very lightly sketching it in on their canvas. Then they can quietly move to a different seat. Now look at the display again. How has it changed? Lightly add in elements from this new direction. (Remind the students that it is hard to get the graphite from their pencils off of the canvas, so make sure you draw super lightly!) Once they have created a composition they are happy with, they can paint the piece.

Don’t forget the general rules for painting:
1. Wet your brush
2. Only dip the tip into the paint (and only give them a small amount of paint to start-they canalways have more!)
3. Work from the background to the foreground. End with the small details!

Now, they can add in some of the paper. Cut or tear it into shapes that fit into their scene. Tell the students to use as much or little as they’d would like to create their artwork. They can stick it right down on top of the paint and it will stick to the canvas.

january’s artist: louise nevelson

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Louise Berliawsky Nevelson was born on September 23, 1899 in what is now Ukraine. Her family immigrated to the United States, settling in Maine when she was six. Her father was a woodcutter and owned a lumberyard. This influence is definitely seen her heavy use of wood in her sculptures. Though her family flourished and was financially successful within a decade, there was a strong prejudice against Jewish immigrants in the community and life wasn’t perfect. Her Mother struggled with severe depression. Perhaps as a cure or compensation, her Mother would dress herself and her daughters in ornate costume like dresses and heavy makeup that belonged in an old world palace more than everyday Maine. Again, this influence would show up in her life.

At age nine, she saw a plaster cast of Joan of Arc in the public library and “was entranced by it.” Soon after, she decided to study art. In high school, she painted and drew. Soon after high school she married Charles Nevelson, a wealthy ship-owner. He was supportive of her artistic pursuits, but only to a limit. She felt stifled in the conservative upper class society and ultimately left Charles to study art in Germany.

Louise was strongly influenced by the cubists, especially Picasso; as well as Native American and Mayan art. She called herself “the original recycler.” She often combed the streets of New York for debris; such as a broken chair leg, pieces of wood or railings and tin cans, which were arranged into “Assemblage boxes” (Assemblage means that you create or assemble the art from objects found in everyday life.) She then spray painted them a single color so that the item’s identity was lost and only the form was visible. Pieces of wood and random garbage became sunflowers and dancing girls.

Nevelson felt that color was a vital aspect of art. She had three phases of color for her sculpture. The first and biggest was black, which she described as the “total color” that “it contains all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors; black is the most aristocratic color of all.” In the 1960s she began incorporating white and gold into her works. Nevelson said that white was the color that “summoned the early morning and emotional promise.” She described her gold phase as the “baroque phase”, inspired by the idea being told as a child that America’s streets would be “paved with gold” Her installations were created with highly detailed boxes that could be assembled then taken apart to create a new piece of art.

Her works often explored her difficult past and the tumultuous times of the 1960s and 70s. As well feminism. The bride is a frequent symbol in her work, which she said represented her escape from the expectation to marry and have children. She also cultivated a distinct and eccentric public persona with flamboyant outfits. Although she was a key figure in the feminist movement, she said “I’m not a feminist. I’m an artist who happens to be a woman.” Nevelson died of natural causes at age 87 on April 17, 1988.

Today we will make our own assemblage boxes. Use the box as a base and up to 3 charms, gears or cutouts and as much dried pasta as you’d like. You can also cut other shapes or designs out of white or natural card stock. Mix the items together to make an interesting picture or design.

You can give the objects different depths by making a pop-up tab (accordion fold a strip of paper or fold it into fourths to make a box) that can be glued to the back of the object. Then you can glue it to the box to secure it. You can also use pieces of the fluff to give texture or depth to a shape.

Try to make the shapes tell a story. Think about what you are using not as what you already know it to be, but how it can be a part of something new. Make sure everything is secure in the box.