Teacher Resource

SUGGESTED GRADE LEVELS: Grade 7 – Grade 12 CURRICULUM LINKS: Visual , Science, Geography, Social Studies VIJA CELMINS: TO FIX THE IMAGE IN MEMORY May 4 – August 5, 2019

“I like to work with impossible images, impossible because they are nonspecific, too big, spaces unbound.” —Vija Celmins, interview from 1995

Artist Vija Celmins (VEE-a Sell-muns) was born in 1938, in Riga, . When she was two years old, the Soviet Union annexed and occupied the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). Celmins’s family escaped to Germany, survived the Nazi regime and eventually immigrated to the in 1948. When she first arrived in the U.S., she couldn’t speak English. Encouraged by her teachers, Celmins spent much of the school day drawing.

For the last forty years, Celmins has revisited a select group of natural subjects in her illustrations, and prints: desert floors, spider webs, the surface of the moon, ocean waves and star fields. She works from photographs, but intends her close-up views to be loose interpretations, rather than literal depictions, of her subjects. In life, the seas and sky are in constant motion, yet Celmins’s work creates moments of pause and stillness within these giant, often overwhelming, bodies.

Use the Critical Analysis Process to explore the works in this exhibition:

DESCRIPTION: l What is your initial reaction to these works? l What captures your attention? l How does this work make you feel? How does it achieve that?

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION: l What is the theme of this artwork? What do you see that makes you say that? l What do you think the purpose of this work is? l What message or meaning is this trying to communicate? l What three words would you use to describe Celmins’s Untitled (Ocean)?

CULTURAL CONTEXT: Vija Celmins, Clouds, 1968. Graphite on paper, 34.9 x 47 cm. Collection of Eba and Jerry Sohn. © Vija Celmins. l How has the artists’ lived experiences Photo: courtesy . influenced her subject matter? l Consider the title of the exhibition – To Fix the Image in Memory. How do titles contribute to the meaning and feeling of artworks?

continues > Teacher Resource continued , 1977. Graphite on acrylic ground on paper, 25.4 x 32.7 cm. 25.4 x 32.7 cm. Graphite on acrylic ground on paper, , 1977. Untitled (Ocean) Vija Celmins, © Vija Celmins. bequest of Alfred M. Esberg. Museum of Modern , Francisco San . Photo: Don Ross, Francisco courtesy the San

LOOK AT THE IMAGE ABOVE and have each student write down their response to the prompt below: l I see l I feel (emotionally or physically) l I hear

HAVE STUDENTS FORM SMALL GROUPS and and then rearrange their collective word pile to form a poem.

Give the Poem a Title:

ABOUT UNTITLED (OCEAN) (1977) Celmins began her ocean art works in the late 1960s. At the time, she was living in Los Angeles and had a studio on Venice Beach. She took photos of the Pacific Ocean during her evening walks around the Venice Pier and later used these images for inspiration. By focusing on the waves and cropping out any suggestion of land, skyline or human presence, Celmins strips away any familiarity a beach scene might have. Instead, the choppy waves create a seascape that appears even more mysterious. Celmins has described her waves as occupying a space where “stillness and movement, flatness and depth, are held together in a delicate balance.”

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