Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Grade 8 Art Appreciation Assignment

Step 1: Below are 20 images. I want you to rank them in order by their letter starting with number one being your favorite. You might want to click on the image for better detail. Please e-mail me your responses. DUE OCTOBER 4 @ 3pm. Any late work will be deducted one letter grade per each day late.

Step 2:  What were your top three images and what where you bottom three?



(Example: Top 3: A, H, and M Bottom 3: B,Q, and L)



Answer the following questions about each of your TOP three favorite images. (Your responses must be in complete sentences)
a) Why did this image appeal to you?
b) What do you think the image is about?
c) What do you think the artist is trying to communicate with her/his artwork?
d) Would you have this artwork in your home, why or why not?

Answer the following questions about each of your BOTTOM three least favorite images. (Your answers must be in complete sentences)
a) Why didn't you like the image?
b) What do you think the images is about?
c) What do you think the artist is trying to communicate with her/his artwork?
DUE OCTOBER 7 @ 3pm. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED

Step 3:  

I have sent you an e-mail providing you with the name of your artist and the title of their piece. Please research the following information about the artists. Please e-mail me your findings. DUE OCTOBER 9 @ 3pm. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED
1. The DATE of the artwork
2. The NATIONALITY of the Artist
3. The MEDIUM/MEDIA of the artwork (example: painting, drawing, sculpture, video)
4. The IMPORTANCE, SIGNIFICANCE, and/or REASON why the artist made the artwork. In other words why is the artist and artwork important? What is the message the artist is trying to communicate?
EXAMPLE OF THE FORMAT (provided by C. Newell).
Artist: Raymond Pettibon
Title: Untitled/It's Almost Like Driving In West Texas
Date of artwork: 2008
Nationality of artist: American
Media of artwork: Pen, ink, gouache and acrylic on paper
Significance of artwork: This is different than most of his artworks because he is using color and typically his images are black and white. He is commenting on George Bush's foreign policy regarding Iraq and Afghanistan by making a Texas reference with a tank. Pettibon's captions are quotes from various sources and he claims that his drawing and captions have no relation to one another.


Step 4:


Thanks to your research you now have information regarding both the artist and artwork. Please read all the findings and then re-order the artwork from 1-20 (1 being your favorite-20 being you least favorite).

1. Did you order change from your original list in Step 1?

2. How does knowing about the artist or the reason why the artwork was made make a difference in your rankings?
3. Do you think most artwork has meaning and purpose beyond the image? Why or why not?
4. Are you a visual person, meaning do you judge a work of art based on how it looks OR does the meaning behind it influence your feelings about it?
5. After reading about all the artists, who was the artist you found the most interesting and why?
6. After reading about all the artists, who was the artist you found the least interesting and why?
PLEASE RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONS IN COMPLETE SENTENCES. DUE: THURSDAY OCT 10 @ 3pm.
 



Artist: Fernando Botero
Title: La Ballerina
Date: 2001
Nationality of artist: Colombian
Media of artwork: Oil and watercolor on a canvas
Significance of artwork: It reflects back to his South American culture from the way he uses colors, by making bronzes and his ballerina has a typical Latin face.  Also he said that he like to draw bigger people because the size of objects and body parts it indicates importance and fun. Also in this painting, and most of his, the bigger people seem to be floating slightly and aren’t heavy in any way.

Artist: Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Title: Flying pins
Date: 2000
Nationality of artist: Dutch-American
Media of artwork: steel, plastic, foam, polyester gel coat
Significance of artwork: I think that the idea of have having giant sculptures on streets is amazing. Non of his sculptures are small, they are all big and significant in there own way. They are spread out all around the world in places such as: USA, Korea, UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. What they do is get a small abject and transform it and put it all over the globe. You can tell that it is one of their sculptures from miles away from how big they are.

Artist: Diana Arbus (Birth name: Diana Nemerov)

Title: Jewish Giant At Home/ Jewish Giant, taken at Home with his parents in the Bronx, New York
Date: 1970
Nationality of artist: American 

Media of artwork: Photography 
Significance of artwork: This piece is different because she is using an old camera and still her pictures are really nice, and in all of her artwork she takes quick pictures of odd people like: giants, transvestites, dwarfs, nudists, and others who don’t appear a lot in the world. 

 

Artist: Marcel Dunchamp
Title: Bicycle Wheel
Date: 1913
Nationality of artist: French
Media of artwork: Metal wheel mounted.
Significance of artwork: Marcel Dunchamp said that he enjoined watching it. It was a cry simple piece of artwork. Just an upside-down metal wheel on a wooden stool. The artwork joined his groups of artworks which were ready-mades, which meant that there were real things put in a picture. The original "Bicycle Wheel" got lost, so in 1951, he re-created it as a sculpture.

Artist: Ester Hernandez
Title: Sun Mad
Date: 1982
Nationality of Artist: American/Latino
Media of Artwork: Pastels and paints
Significance of Artwork: The artist wanted to address the issues of workers touching crops sprayed with pesticides and chemicals.

Artist: Barbara Kruger
Title: Buy me, I'll change your life
Date: 1984
Nationality of artist: American
Media of artwork: Collage
Significance of artwork: Kruger’s artwork deals with irony. She uses high contrasting images and text to get her message across about feminism and consumerism.

Artist: MC Escher
Title: Magic Mirror
Date: 1946
Nationality of artist: Dutch
Media of artwork: Drawing (Lithograph Paint)
Significance of artwork: As most of MC Escher’s images, Magic Mirror is black and white and it is tessellation. It has a mirror standing vertically on wooden supports facing the right side of the image. There is a sphere at each side of the mirror. The main focus is a procession of small winged lion sculptures which emerge from the mirror and trail away in single file. The reflection of the griffin procession continues behind the mirror. The griffins then loop around to the front and form a tessellated pattern on the surface. As usual, his image is signed at the bottom-left part.

Artist: Shepard Fairey
Title: Freedom to lead
Date: 2009
Nationality of artist: American
Media of artwork: screenprint
Significance of artwork: The reason the artist made this image was to try and help people in Burma. He used the bird as a sign for peace. The use of colour with reds, yellows and blacks all send a message of passion, hope, and power.

Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat 
Title: untitled
Date: 1983
Nationality of artist: American
Media of artwork: color silkscreen
Significance of artwork: It was when he went through what would be a defining period in his career. Homing in on the possibilities implicit in drawing from his own life experiences as a means of addressing larger human concerns, he produced five key works over an eighteen-month period one of them was this art work. These works not only offer insight into this period in Basquiat’s career but reveal the depth of his concern for portraying spiritual experience

Artist: William Blake
Title: Pity
Date: Year 1795
Nationality of artist: English
Media of artwork: Color print finished with pen and ink and watercolor
Significant about the art: Because it was influenced by the Bible, Milton and Shakespeare In this work, the inspiration came from Macbeth, especially the lines:
"And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim.
Upon the sightless couriers of the air."

Artist: Pieter Bruegel
Title: the fight between carnival and lent
Date: 1559
Nationality of artist: Dutch
Media of artwork: Oil on wood
Significance of artwork: This painting explains a common festival of the period, as celebrated in the Southern Netherlands. The painting shows the difference between Carival (party) and Lent (abstaining from vices) in a small town setting.

Artist: Marc Chagall
Title: La Mariee
Date: 1950
Nationality of artist: French-Russian
Media of artwork: gouache -pastel
Significance of artwork: he uses different colours for the wedding dress he drew it read, and the background id dark unlike other wedding, and he drew animals playing the instruments which is also odd. Focus is on a singular young woman in quasi-wedding attire with a bouquet of flowers, it focuses abut marriage, and it seems like the viewer is the one who is going to marry her.


Artist: Salvador Dali
Date: 1945
Nationality of artist: Spanish
Media of artwork: Painting
Significance of artwork: This artwork was a scene from a short movie called Destino. In this scene there is Dali and Walt Disney dressed like mouse. This scene takes place in the woods.

Artist: Frida Kahlo
Title: Roots
Date: 1943
Nationality of artist: Mexican
Media of artwork: Oil on canvas
Significance of artwork: At the age of six, Frida contracted polio, which caused her right leg to be much thinner than the other. It was to remain that way permanently. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. She started to draw these pictures of her cousins and friends, because we she made an artwork it used to make her feel way much better. She uses more light colors than dark. I can see that all her pictures refer to her health.

Artist: Edvard Munch
Title: Vampire
Date: 1895
Nationality of artist: Norwegian
Media of artwork: oil
Significance of artwork: The picture is simple and concentrated in expression. A woman with long red hair bends over a man, Medusa-like she lets her red hair bind him to her. The pair cast a single shadow, which groups them in a classic pyramid composition. Love and Pain, which was the first title of the picture, indicates an ambition to express complex feelings in painting.

Artist: Pablo Picasso
Title: Mirror (detail)
Date: 1932
Nationality of artist: Spanish
Media of artwork: painting
Significance of work:  Picass’s art is very strange. His art is usually mixed. What I mean by that is that he doesn’t draw a normal face but he draws the face all mixed together. This is what he is famous for.


Artist: Mark Rothko
Title: No. 8
Date of Artwork: Unknown, 1952
The Medium: Abstract painting, oil on canvas
Nationality of Artist: Born in Russian Empire, Nationality is also American but by law
Significance of Artwork: Most of his artwork are color field paintings. He also creates a lot of blurry paintings of an object. I think Rotho likes mixing and blending colors that stand out. I think the drawing is the view from his balcony. The painting is both a color field painting and blurry.
Artist: Stewart Davis
Title: Colonial
Date: 1954
Nationality of artist: American
Media of artwork: Oil on Canvas
Significance of Artwork: "I paint what I see in American, in other words I paint the American scene." He grew up in an artistic family and his work is influenced by the dynamics of jazz music.

Artist: Winston Smith
Title: Gesundheit
Date: 2002
Nationality of artist: American
Media of artwork: Collage
Significance of artwork: I think that this painting, just like many of his others, has something to do with politics. Gesundheit means to wish someone good health when someone sneezes. I don’t see how that relates to the painting except for the man playing the violin seems like he is going to sneeze. I think Winston wants to show different kinds of religion and people. There are various things in this painting including an UFO, cobras, a naked lady, a man with a violin, etc. Maybe he is trying to show that different people and thing can get together and look so beautiful.



Artist: Andy Warhol
Title: Campbell's Soup Cans
Date:1962
Nationality of artist: American
Media of artwork: Synthetic polymer paint, and silk screening.
Significance of artwork: Andy Warhol’s work was usually in relation to artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertisement. He was one of the most famous pop art artists. What helped him become more famous is that pop art became very popular in the mid- 1950s. Andy Warhol did not have the attention he wanted when he made the Coke bottles and comic strips at the beginning, so he decided to make the most things he likes in the world which was money and a can of soup. He finds that Campbell’s Soup Cans are found everywhere in American homes, so he turns it into high art.

1 comment:

  1. if women are always right what happens if tow women have different opinions

    ReplyDelete