Looking at Contemporary Art – Let's Talk!, Slides of Art

Download Looking at Contemporary Art – Let's Talk! and more Slides Art in PDF only on Docsity! Looking at Contemporary Art – Let’s Talk! TOUR GUIDE for GRADES 7 - 12 2009-2010 New Brunswick Art Bank Acquisitions “Artists are seers - they have new ways of looking at the world.” One of the most important things about art is how the viewer experiences it. When looking at artwork, students should: • Look carefully at artwork and describe the feelings it creates. • Focus on how the Visual Elements* are used to create feelings. • Look at how the Principles of Art and Design* are used in creating the artwork. Visual Elements and Principles of Art and Design are the fundamentals in learning to look at, write and speak about works of art: * Visual Elements: line, colour, form, space, shape, texture, value, and tone. * Principles of Art & Design: pattern, repetition, rhythm, balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, and unity / harmony. Contemporary art uses materials from the 20th and 21st centuries that are re‐worked in surprising ways to challenge the viewer to think critically about contemporary life and society. When looking at contemporary art, ask: • Is the work challenging or interesting? Do I like the ideas this artist presents? • What kinds of materials and techniques does the artist work with? • Can art be made of anything? • How do artists transform ordinary materials? • What do artists today seem to be interested in? Landscape Looking at landscapes, make believe you’ve entered each artwork, then ask: • What do you see first? Move further back - what do you see next? • If you were in this landscape, where would you be? What would you be doing? • What would you see, hear, smell, and feel in this place? Where was the artist? • Think about balance, asymmetry, symmetry and light / dark. How does the artist use them and how do they affect your feelings about the place? The artist is influenced by popular culture - the ever- changing set of ideas that characterize desires, needs, and cultural elements. He uses scale, repetition and colour to depict contemporary urban life. Idea: Depict popular culture in an artwork. The artist's approach can be considered minimalist, where the power of the image is measured by bare essentials. By the use of light, shadow, shape, colour, line, form, space and surface, the image is created. Idea: Explore “minimalism”. The artist finds inspiration in his homeland (Holland) with its huge skies and flat countryside. He also looks at the relationship between buildings and the land, and the work of some American landscape artists. Idea: Contrast urban and natural environments in art. Inspired by children’s sticker books with generic backgrounds, the artist explores the relationship between background and sticker images. Where the sky appears real, the birds are not flying naturally. What seems real is not. Idea: Create an image of animals in unreal situations. The artist calls these images “ghosts of his travels”, reflecting passing moments similar to the “click” of the camera - a very tiny fraction of taking a longer look at something as it passes us. The camera cannot negotiate this, so it blurs the image. Idea: Think about Ansel Adams’ quote: “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” The artist has been visiting the Namib desert near South Africa for 30 years where the Great Sand Sea has some of the world’s highest sand dunes, petrified trees buried by advancing sand, and dry lake beds created after infrequent rain. Idea: Create an image that shows the impact of the changing environment. The artist recreates an image about an everyday event and the feelings it evokes. Idea: Create an artwork of a pleasurable event in your past. Using the printing process of monoprint, the artist explores nature in distress and plant and biological matter in an altered state. Idea: Create an artwork depicting environmental degradation. Jack Bishop, Drive-Thru Landscape / Paysage-restaurants à service rapide, 2009 Mathieu Léger, Untitled (Graz-Koppling-Barnbach-79/92/100) / Sans titre (Graz-Koppling-Barnbach - 79/92/100), 2009. Freeman Patterson, On the Shore of the Lake That Was #1 / Sur la berge d’un ancien lac (image nº 1), 2010 Neil Rough, Motel Sackville, 2008 Adam Macdonald, Series of Six / Série de six, 2009 Yvon Gallant, Ice Cream / Crème glacé, 2008 Hendrik Gringhuis, Yellow Field / Champs jaune, 2010 Cliff Turner, Pasted Birds / Oiseaux contrecollé, 2009