Summer Assignments Beginning IBVA Y1 Students

1. Museum/Art Gallery Visit

• Visit at least one major museum or several art galleries. Following is a list of some in Egypt: The Museum of Art in Moharram Bey, 6 Menasce Sreet, The Alexandria Arts Complex, Moharram Bay, Alexandria; The Mahmoud Moktar Museum, 5 el-Tahrir Street, Gezira, Zamalek, Cairo; The Adam Henein Museum “A Life of Creativity”, Al-Labeini Street, Harraniyya, Giza; The Mohamed Naghi Museum, 9 Mahmoud el- Guindi Street, Giza; The Effat Naghi and Saad Al-Khadem Museum, 12 al-Karim Street, Saray al-Qubba, Zeytoun, Cairo; The Inji Efflatoun Museum, Amir Taz, Palace, Saliba Street, el-Khalifa, Cairo; The Hassan Heshmat Museum, 24 Gharb al- Sharit Street, Ain Shams, Cairo; The Special Collections Museum, The Agricultural Museum Complex, Dokki, Giza; The Museum of Islamic Art, Port Said St.,Bab AL- Khalq – Cairo; Aisha Fahmy Palace, Zamalek, Cairo (newly opened with art exhib); The Museum of Modern Art, Opera House Grounds, Zamalek; The Mahmoud Said Museum Complex, 6 Mohamed Pasha Street, Gianaclis, Alexandria • Identify an artist or art works that you are interested in and write about them and their art • Take notes from the exhibition texts, or any other written material you find. Consider even buying a book or catalog. • Do visual note taking: sketches, photos, documentation of the work. • If the situation allows it, talk to the artist, curator, gallery owner, this could be valuable primary source material! All of the above should be recorded in the visual journal and documented thoroughly.

2. Write, Create, Explore, Think!

In your journal: Address the prompts through with bullet points, images, full sentences, diagrams or whatever means necessary.

You are required to respond to 5 prompts in full (plus the gallery assignment above). One must be a formal piece of art for the 1st day of class from one of these prompts or your own idea (the doodle page does not count for this).

You are not limited to the prompts below. You may also address your own compelling questions about art, responses to current events in the art world or art related articles.

The links following most of the prompts are meant to facilitate your investigation, however, they should not be your only reference.

Some Art:21 videos may not load. Search for them on http://Youtube.com or http://video.pbs.org

Prompts

• Power: How is the theme of power reflected in the ideas and concerns of contemporary artists. http://www.art21.org/films/power

• Do you doodle on your notes in other classes? Just doodle until you fill an entire page but make it extra interesting! Advanced doodling!! Look up zentangles for inspiration.

• Analyze the symbolism in The Arnolfini Portrait. It is an is an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck.

• Fill a blank page with detailed overlapping shapes. Paint or color them in and use color theory (complementary, analogous, tints and shades to influence your color use).

• How are mothers, fathers or children (pick one) depicted in art throughout history and across cultures? Reference Article: Motherhood

• Create two paintings in your journal, using two different approaches. First, create an abstract image, and title it after you are finished. Second, create a title, and then create an abstract image. How do the processes and finished works differ from each other?

• How does contemporary art address the idea of identity? ART 21 VIDEO IDENTITY http://www.art21.org/films/identity

• Create a work of art that expresses your identity.

• Construct a journal page around the last time that you traveled.

• Define the terms modernism and modernity. What is the difference? Discuss the historical context in which modernism developed, and give examples of artworks that can be described as modern. How does contemporary art relate to its modern antecedents? • What do portrait photographers create, for whom, and for what occasions?

• Pick a lyric from one of favorite songs and illustrate it.

• Protest: How do contemporary artists engage politics, inequality, and the many conflicts that besiege the world today? http://www.art21.org/films/protest and http://www.npr.org/2012/05/14/152496317/even-under-threat-syrian-artists-paint-in- protest

• Discuss, Structures in Art: http://www.art21.org/films/structures

• How is beauty defined? Why might beauty be important to society and culture? In what ways are notions of beauty different within different cultures, and in what ways are they similar?

• Compassion: Might a work of art move us to temper our more destructive impulses? In what ways do artists’ feelings of empathy contribute to works that tackle problematic subjects and address the human condition? ART 21 VIDEO COMPASSION http://www.art21.org/films/compassion

• Grab your favorite novel and randomly open it to any page. Read the first paragraph on that page and illustrate it.

• Look up You Tube videos on shading techniques and fill a page in your visual journal.

• Draw your bedroom in one-point perspective.

• Take a photo of a landscape/seascape you visited and paint it.

• Look in the mirror and draw your portrait.

***Please purchase a hard cover sketch book size 21 x 28 cm, a set of drawing pencils ranging from 2B to 8B, and a good eraser. All work must be done in your visual journal (sketch book). Each page must be numbered and dated. It is advised by IB to work horizontally in your sketch book as it is easier to scan and upload pages for IB submission.