april’s artist: salvador dali

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Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol (That’s a mouthful!) was born on May 11, 1904 in Catalonia, Spain to a middle-class lawyer. His father was stern, but was tempered by a sweet mother and both supported Dali’s artistic endeavors strongly. He had a younger sister and older brother who died 9 months before his birth at age 2, also named Salvador. When Salvador was five years old, he was taken to his brother’s grave and told that he was his older brother’s reincarnation. He internalized this belief and his brother’s image was often found in Dali’s artwork. He said “[we] resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections.”

When he was twelve, Dali’s parents sent him to drawing school. A few years later, his Dad set up his first exhibition of drawings in their home. At nineteen, he went to university in Madrid and drew attention with his flamboyant style. He dressed in knee-breeches and had long hair, like a 19th century gentleman. His work quickly gained more attention though. He was drawn to the modern movements and experimented, showing proficiency in both classically academic to modern movements. He had exceptional technical skill (he was trained as a draftsman) but also had a crazy personality and was known for over the top antics to promote himself and his art. At this time, he grew his iconic flamboyant mustache, based on the Renaissance painter Velasquez that he admired. His work began to take on the surrealist quality that we most know him for. The surrealist movement used photographic precision to show dream like and sometimes shocking images. In 1940, Dali and his wife fled the chaos of WWII to the United States. During this time he designed jewelry, clothes, furniture, stage sets for plays and ballet, and retail store display windows. Dali wrote books and produced movies. His outlandish personality was just a well known as his art and he was a controversial pop culture icon. While many critics despised his work, most had to agree that he was one of the most talented painters of the twentieth century. (Dali was quick to tell you that while he was nothing compared to Vermeer or Michelangelo, he was the best painter of modern times!)

Eight years later, they returned to the coast of Spain, where Dali would spend he remaining 30 years of his life. He experimented with many new techniques, using holographic, stereoscope, visual puns, and negative space. He created elaborate illusion pictures with one subject that was visible at first glance, but another completely different scene that unfolded with closer inspection. He had a glass floor installed in his workshop and used it to study foreshortening and shadows with an almost scientific approach.

Dali used an elaborate system of symbolism. While many artists leave their work open to the interpretation of the viewer, Dali was explicit in what the dream-like images in his work represent. Here are some of the most common:
Melting clock-The omnipresence of time and its mastery over all of us.
Ants-Death and decay (Dali watched ants devour the carcass of a dead bug as a child and strongly remembered the experience.)
Eggs-Hope and love, as well as motherhood
Crutches-Reality, a grounding in tradition and societal values
Drawers-Our secrets and desires (He shows many of these drawers open or slightly ajar, showing that these secrets are now known and no longer need to be feared.
Elephants-The future and strength. Often the elephants are carrying a burden to represent different things, most commonly, power and domination.
Rhinoceros-Purity, often used to represent the Virgin Mary (Dali was deeply Catholic)
Snail (and also lobster)- The human head and brain. (Dali was fascinated with hard shell and soft interior and saw a lot of symbolism in this.)
Today, we will create our own surrealist painting. Take a minute to think about the scenes you see in your dreams. The bulk of the work for this project, will be in creating a picture that says something to you. Combine real life images in a way that makes them interesting or say something new!

We will use watercolors and watercolor paper (please limit paper use since it is a little bit expensive.) Watercolors work well with pencil so feel free to add detail and pencil everything before you start painting.

Here are a few things to remember with watercolor:
Always wet your brush well before loading the paint and wet your brush frequently while working. If your color starts to get streaky, it is because your brush is not wet enough.
You can create soft colors by using a lot of water with just a bit of paint or bright, more opaque colors by swirling your brush longer in the paint.
If your water becomes dark, get new water. Clean water will help keep your colors bright.
Watercolors are meant to bleed. If you use two wet colors together, they will bleed into each other. This is part of what makes watercolor beautiful! Try it on purpose by mixing colors to create shadows.
If there is an area you want to have a definite line, you can prevent bleeding by painting one area and then giving it a few minutes to dry. Work in a different section of the page and then return to that area with the other color.
If color bleeds somewhere you don’t want, you gently “lift” it off the page by touching a napkin to the area. Fold it into a small corner if needed.

march’s artist: roy lichtenstein

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Roy Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923 in New York city to fairly ideal upper middle class family. As a young man, he went to private school, loved Jazz and took summer art classes. He enlisted when WWII began and served as a draftsman and artist. After the war, he earned a Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State and had his first solo exhibition soon after. He settled into a professorship at Rutgers and experimented with Expressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Impressionism.

One afternoon, his son was looking at a Mickey Mouse comic book and said “I bet you can’t paint as good as that, eh, Dad?” Roy took the challenge, producing a piece called “Look Mickey”. He loved the style and began producing paintings with hard lines and the Ben-Day style dots used in comic books. In 1961, he showed the pieces and all were purchased before the showing opened. His work was instantly popular world-wide and also highly criticized as being a shallow copy. Time magazine even labeled him the “Worst Artist Ever”. However, Lichtenstein didn’t take himself or the criticism too seriously. He said “I am nominally copying, but I am really restating the copied thing in other terms. In doing that, the original acquires a totally different texture.” Lichtenstein was part of the “Pop Art” movement, which took images from advertising and everyday objects and elevated them into fine art. Often with a heavy dose or humor and irony.

As he matured, he applied his same techniques to sculpture, creating ceramics that had a surreally 2 dimensional feel. Some of these works were done on a huge scale for municipal projects. In the 1990s, he began a series of 60 paintings that applied his stylized approach to famous paintings from Van Gogh to Degas and were shown side by side with a print of the original work. He died of pneumonia in 1997 at age 74.

Today we will create our own pop culture comic style pictures.
1. Use the rulers to draw as many frames as you want on the paper to tell the story.
2. Pencil in the details. Make it one interesting moment or tell a larger story.
3. Outline everything with a sharpie and fill in with the markers. You can use solid color or Ben-Day dots to provide some shading or texture.

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.

december’s artist: tomasso masaccio

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Tomasso Masaccio was born December 21, 1401 in a small town north of Florence, Italy. There is very little information documenting his life, but it was common for artists to become apprentices around age 12. Most likely, he went to work under a master in Florence around that time. His first documented work (which was signed by him) was completed in January 1422. Artists during the renaissance did not sign their work until they had achieved the status of master. Twenty-one was young to be a master and sadly Masaccio died when he was 26. During this short career though, he had a profound influence on art. He was one of the leaders that moved the style of painting from very ornate and unrealistic two-dimensional to a more natural and realistic view. He was one of the first to use linear perspective (with lines moving back to a vanishing point) as well as atmospheric perspective (where things get bluer, blurrier, and lighter as they recede into the background) in his painting. He used shading and directional light sources as well as shadows beneath objects to create much more life-like figures than the traditional use of outlines and flat, two-dimensional depictions. His work had a heavy influence on later artists, such as Michelangelo.

Masaccio created primarily religious works to ornament cathedrals, but he also painted a handful of portraits. He had a preference for showing people in profile. Today we will create our own portraits in profile. You can work with a partner and draw each other or use the hand mirrors to draw a self-portrait (Which will be more difficult, you will need to peak out of the corner of your eye to do so.)

This lesson will guide you through the general way to draw a face. Remind the students that each face is unique. It is by observing and drawing the unique features that we make our drawings life-like. This will be a bit technical, so help the students not to get too stressed out over the details.

1. Very lightly, draw a line the length you want your finished face to be. Lightly draw intersecting lines to divide this into thirds. This will give you a fame-work to keep the face in proportion.

2. Look closely at the shape of the nose then draw it in the center section, all the way from the top to the bottom.

3. In the top section, we will draw the forehead. Indent in a little where the nose meets the forehead and then bow out for the ridge of the brow bone. Now gently curve up to the top of the line to make the forehead.

4. Make a small mark 1/3 of the way down in the bottom section, this will be the mouth. Look at how the area connecting the lip and nose curves in. Make this and then curve out for the lip. The upper lip will end in the line. That is the opening of the mouth. Now make the bottom lip, indent in and slope back to make the chin. Then extend a line below the jaw down to make the neck.

5. The eyebrow will start at the top line. For now, make the general outline, but don’t worry about putting in a lot of detail. Look carefully at where the eye falls under the eyebrow. The bottom of the eye will be at about the center of the section. If you lay a pencil down at the corner of the nose the end of the eyebrow, the corner of the eye will fall along this line also.

6. Now erase the guide lines. Add in the interesting details. Make the eyebrows with several short strokes that will look like hair. Add in a few clumps of eye lashes around the eyes, frame the face with hair. For older students, you can talk a little about shading, if you’d like. Add some rich details like Masaccio would, a fancy necklace or hat. Put your subject in intricately detailed clothes, anything that makes it fun.

7. Finally, add a little bit of color by filling in the areas with chalk. Press lightly and use small strokes, then blend gently with your finger. Spray each picture with hairspray, holding the can 6” away to “fix” the chalk and pencil. This will keep them from smudging.

november’s artist: henri matisse

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Biography:
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was born on December 31, 1869 in northern France. His father was a successful grain merchant. Matisse went to law school and practiced briefly. When he was 20, he had appendicitis and his mother brought him a set of paints to keep him busy while he was recovering. He said that he discovered “a kind of paradise” during those days and abandoned law to study art. This was a bitter disappointment to his father, but Henri moved to Paris where he studied painting in the traditional style. In the next decade, he became friends with a then unknown VanGogh and started to follow the work of Cezanne and Gauguin. He quickly became a leader in the new styles of art. In 1898, he married Amélie Noellie Parayre and had 2 sons, he also had a daughter. Amelie and his daughter modeled for several of his works.
Around 1906, he was introduced to Pablo Picasso and the two became lifelong friends and rivals. Together, they are credited with defining modern art. During this time, he traveled to Morocco, Spain, Algiers, and Tangiers, ultimately settling in Nice. In 1939, he and Amalie divorced. Another of his common models, a Russian named Lydia Delectorskaya became his companion and worked with him, running the studio, keeping records and correspondence for the rest of his life. Matisse stayed in Paris and was able to work through WWI.
In 1941, he was diagnosed with abdominal cancer and was bedridden after surgery. He couldn’t paint and sculpt as he had before. A few times in earlier years, he had used collage for projects. Now, he began cutting paper that Lydia had painted bright colors into whimsical designs. Initially, they were small in scale, but soon they became mural-sized. He would direct assistants how to place the “cut-outs” in room-sized works. He used this technique to design the stained glass and interior of a small chapel in the French Riviera. He died of a heart attack in 1954. His children continued to work in the art world during their lives and the influence of his work can still be seen in modern art today!
Project:
We will make our own cut-outs like Matisse did. You can make your cut-out as simple or intricate as you’d like. Here are a few tips to make it easier:
You can plan out what you want to do with a rough sketch on a piece of scratch paper, but it isn’t mandatory.
Cut or tear the paper to give it different textures. You can fold the paper and then tear it to control where it tears more easily. You can also hold the paper with one finger, while using your other hand to pull the other side of the paper down to create a tear with a bigger edge.
Combine cuts and tears to give an interesting texture.
Arrange the pieces on the paper before gluing anything down to make sure you like the final design. When you are happy with the way it looks, glue everything in place.
After you are done hold the paper up and give it a little shake, make sure all of the pieces are secure.

october’s artist: edvard munch

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Edvard Munch was a forerunner of Expressionism and a pioneer in Modern art. He was born on December 12, 1863 on a farm in Loten, Norway. When he was only 5 years old, his mother died of Tuberculosis, which also claimed the life of one of his sisters a few years later. (There were 5 siblings, total.) Edvard was a sickly child and was homeschooled, by his pious father who was strict and often cold with the children. His family was tight-knit, staying close to home. He loved to draw from an early age and also loved the vivid ghost stories told by his father and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. These things combined with a young exposure to mortality, gave him a preoccupation with death that can be seen in his artwork.

He studied art as a young adult, but his chronic illness kept him from finding much success in school. His father felt art was an “unholy pursuit” but Edvard was driven to express himself. In his journal, he wrote “…in my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself.” He experimented with many different styles of art art as a student, and was often subject to harsh criticism from family, neighbors, and critics alike. His media is widely varied, he painted, used oil pastels, and drew and later added photography and printmaking to his skill set. As he grew more mature, he aimed to show the tension and emotions felt within rather than the external reality that can be seen by others. He did this by simplifying forms, using heavy lines and sharp contrast and colors and symbols to convey specific emotions.

The Scream is his most famous work and one of the most recognizable paintings in art. Munch made a handful of variations on the picture in pastel and paint. He recounted a night when he was walking with 2 friends and was suddenly filled with anxiety. Too tired to continue, he stopped and leaned against a nearby fence. As he did, the sky seamed to turn red and he felt nature scream around him. He later said that he felt himself “going mad” and knew he would never love again. Much of his art was biographical, as The Scream is. Mental illness was common in Edvard’s family and that turmoil is evident in his work.

Happily, in later life, Edvard sought treatment for depression and alcohol abuse. He greatly improved in spirit and his work took on a much more optimistic quality. At this point, he was also widely winning critics approval and was even given the title of Knight of the Royal Order of St. Olav “for services in art”. He died in his house at Ekely near Oslo on 23 January 1944, about a month after his 80th birthday.

*As you show the students Munch’s work, here are some conversation starters you can use to help them explore:

~Munch’s work is the perfect style for Halloween! Notice how even though the scenes are depicted with bright colors and happy subjects, there is a slightly eerie quality?

~What do you think about the faces? Edvard Munch said that he was more interested in depicting what was happening inside a person than showing a beautiful, flattering exterior. What do you think he was trying to show us?

~What do you think about the scream? Have you felt that way? (Generally one of the best questions to ask students about a picture is “How does this make you feel?”)

Today we are going to make our own pastel inspired by Edvard Munch’s style. You can do a landscape like Starry Night or a Portrait; but include some details to give the viewer an idea of your emotions like Munch did.

  • Pastels look a lot like crayons, but they are actually paint that is rolled into sticks. They are soft and have a rich color. They are easy to break, so hold them gently. It is fine to press firmly, but don’t press too hard.
  • Use your pencil to very lightly sketch where you want things, but try not to press to hard. The graphite can smear into the pastel and look muddy. Keep it simple, it’s best not to get too detailed.
  • Pastels blend a little bit differently than other media (Media is the art term for what you are using: paint, pencil, crayons, etc.) You can blend several colors together to create a more interesting texture. Layer blues and greens or purples together will look very nice, but you can even combine opposing colors, like red and purple or blue and yellow.
  • Generally you don’t want to blend with your fingers. Color with small strokes with your darker color, then layer the lighter color over the top and it will blend together. You can also color over the top with white to blend.

 

may’s art movement: art nouveau

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Art Nouveau (French for New Art) was a movement that swept throughout Europe and the United States from the early 1880s through 1915. The movement began in Britain, but was quickly taken up by other art centers as a response to the Industrial Revolution. Artists, craftsmen, architects and others consciously decided to work together to bring art into everyday aspects of life. They were unhappy with the utilitarian and mass produced lifestyle that they Industrial Revolution had sparked. With all of the mechanical advances made during this time, things could be mass-produced in factories instead of hand made by craftsmen which lead to a more homogenized and less thought out set of dishes or hairbrushes, etc.
The artists and artisans of the art nouveau movement also wanted to break down the hierarchy of arts that said fine art (such as painting and sculpture) were separate from home design and the more functional items that filled the general publics houses (often referred to as the applied arts). By embracing architecture, graphic art, interior design, and most of the decorative arts (such as jewelry, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils, and lighting), the founders of the movement hoped to create a world that was more beautiful to live in. According to the philosophy of the style, art should be a way of life. For many well-off Europeans, it was possible to live in an art nouveau-inspired house with art nouveau furniture, silverware, fabrics, ceramics, and jewelry, etc.
Artists took the plant forms they saw in nature and then flattened and abstracted them into elegant, organic motifs. Common elements of the period were controlled but swooping lines with rich design flourishes and stark contrasts. As the movement grew, the materials used became more lavish and the construction was highly skilled and detailed. This made many products more of a luxury and therefor not readily accessible to the general public. (However, the design motifs were also used in mass produced objects as well.) Louis Comfort Tiffany was a leader of the movement in America (often it was referred to as “Tiffany Style” in America). His intricate stain glass lamp shades are an excellent example of the art nouveau ideals.
Advertising was another interesting frontier during this time. (Railroads, and the telephone were newer innovations and made it much easier to move products and information great distances. You can imagine that life really changed around late1800s. This was the time when many things we take for granted today were being invented.) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters advertising the Moulin Rouge (a dance show) and other venues and products are considered to be the first of the modern format for the poster or billboard.
Art nouveau works were not all uniform in style. One artist, Siegfried Bing, said “Art Nouveau, at the time of its creation, did not aspire in any way to have the honor of becoming a generic term. it was simply the name of a house opened as a rallying point for all the young and ardent artists impatient to show the modernity of their tendencies.” Yet, it is easy to see a unifying style across this movement that did bear many different names in different countries at the time. This lavish style was ultimately the downfall of the art nouveau movement. As World War I unfolded, people turned to more functional design and the sweeping nature-inspired lines of art nouveau were replaced with modern, sleekly industrial designs of Art Deco. However, the graceful nature-inspired designs continue to show up in design today and the idea of infusing everyday life with art and beauty is one we should continue to uphold.
Today we will do just that as we try to redesign everyday objects and make them more beautiful. Use one piece of paper to brainstorm ideas and make rough sketches of how you could change some of the items you use everyday. Then take one or two of those ideas and make a more refined sketch of what that item would look like.
There are colored pencils on the cart as well as some colored paper to make it more interesting, but ultimately, this is a thought activity; just be creative and have fun with it!
*If there is time, encourage the students to share their ideas.

april’s artist: miquel barcelo

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Miquel Barceló, was born in Felanitx on the island of Majorca, Spain on January 8, 1957. He studied art there briefly in the Arts and Crafts School of Palma de Majorca before enrolling at the Fine Arts School of Barcelona in 1974. After a year in Barcelona he would return to Majorca to protest with “Taller Lunátic”, a conceptual vanguardist group that fought against (in the arts, not actual fighting) the notion that “painting is dead” and the move to more contemporary practices like art installations and performance art.

In the 1980’s he traveled extensively throughout Europe, United States and West Africa and would eventually set up studios in both Paris and Segou, Mali. These cultural influences can be seen in his work. After a series of exhibitions in the early and mid 1980s, Barceló’s popularity grew to the point that his work was shown in the most prestigious galleries and museums including the National Gallery of Modern Art Pompidou Center in Paris.

As homage to his homeland, Miquel Barceló crafted a mural of approximately 300m² for Majorca´s San Pedro Cathedral Chapel in 2004. He covered the walls of the chapel with terra-cotta and painted them with images related to the miracle of the loaves and fish from John in the Bible. Also in 2004 a series of watercolors, illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy, were shown at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Barcelo was 47 years old and the youngest living artist ever to have their work shown in the Louvre.

His biggest commission was the domed ceiling of the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Chamber in the UN’s Palace of Nations in Geneva. It features multicolored stalactite forms figuratively dripping from the ceiling. Barceló explained that the dome represented “a sea and a cave, in absolute and apposing union” He said the idea came to him “on a day of immense heat in the middle of the Sahel desert” in Africa in where “the mirage of an image of the world was dripping towards the sky…. flowing drop by drop”

Now in his sixties, Miquel Barceló continues to split his time working in Paris, Spain, and Mali today. His work includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and cast iron.

Today we will try some sculptural painting of our own. Show the students the different materials we have to add texture to their paintings. Tell them to lightly sketch out the design you want to make on your canvas board. You will want to keep your design somewhat simple and add one or two of the materials to give it a different texture. You may want to do something representational (a picture of something, made to look realistic) or abstract (a picture that is not of anything recognizable). You may want to paint the background first or you may want to add the joint compound to build up ridges or shapes and then carefully paint on top of that.

Some hints to help make these paintings more successful:
-Give the joint compound some time to dry by working on other areas before painting it.
-Paint very lightly over the compound. If you press into it, it will make marks. I often tell my students to just lightly tickle it with the brush.
-Lightly press the yarn or fabric into the compound or wet paint to help it adhere to the board.

*When setting up, I recommend getting there a few minutes early to fill water cups. (I usually do a cup per pair of students–it is less to clean up.) After I have given the discussion part of the lesson, I pass out the boards and while students are sketching their design, I pass out the water, brushes napkins and plates. Then I go around with the paint and give them small (dime sized) dabs of paint. I tell them they can always have more, but often this is all they need so we start with this much. Give the students that want it a spoonful of joint compound (they can have more if they need it, but it’s best to start small) and let them come get the other items off the cart as needed.

*Please wash the brushes very thoroughly with a small amount of dish soap and put them in the container with the brush tip up. (If you put the brushes down, it bends the bristles and they loose their shape and don’t work well.)

march’s artist: gustav klimt

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Gustav Klimt was born on July 14, 1862 near Vienna, Austria. He was the second of seven children in an artistic family. His mother loved music and his father was a gold engraver. His brothers were also artistic and they were encouraged to develop their skill as children. In his teens, Gustav went to art school with his brothers and formed a group called the “Company of Artists” with another friend and the 4 teens had great success doing murals in public buildings and aiding better known artists in their work.
In 1892, Gustav’s father and brother both died, which had a great effect on his work. He became the chief support for his family. His turned to the much more stylized look that he would become famous for. This is also the time that he met Emilie Louise Flöge, who was his life-long love and companion. (The painting “The Kiss” is of them.) Emilie was a fashion designer and they would work closely together, influencing each other’s art for the rest of their lives. He would help design her costumes. If you look at his paintings with this in mind, you can see the influence of fashion, as well as the textural quality—almost like fabric on the clothing. Gustav had 14 children.
Gustav Klimt enjoyed mush success and notoriety in his life. The government in Vienna was nurturing to the arts and he was appointed the as the president of a government supported group that encouraged the arts and sought to bring new artists to Vienna. Interestingly, there was no manifesto—this wasn’t an art movement, per se. They encouraged all of the different styles and everyone worked and exhibited together. While Klimt’s work was often in limelight, he himself was a quiet and reclusive figure. He painted deliberately with great attention to detail and worked hard. While he collaborated with many other artists on projects, he did not like to socialize with many people. He worked day and night and rarely spent time with people outside of his family.
Just like his personality, Gustav Klimt’s work can seem contradictory. His figure paintings are boldly geometrical and patterned contrasted with ethereal highly detailed brushwork on the people themselves. His landscapes have a similar, very refined quality and did not include the use of gold leaf like his figure paintings did.

Today we are going to try our hand at incorporating metallic elements into a painting. Since this project could get a little complicated, there will be a simple example and a more detailed example. For grades kindergarten-second, just show the simple example.

1. Very lightly, sketch out your design.
2. Decide where to put the foil and cut out the basic shape, then lay it down on the paper and trim as needed.
3. Carefully, glue the back of the foil with the glue stick. Hold the top with your finger and move in one direction. Press lightly, it is easy to tear the foil.
4. Put the foil on the paper and smooth down. Glue any edges that need it.
5. Water color the rest of the picture.

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