Grade Four Session One – The Theme of Modernism Fourth Grade Overview: In a departure from past years’ programs, the fourth grade program will examine works of art in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in preparation for and anticipation of a field trip in 5th grade to MoMA. The works chosen are among the most iconic in the collection and are part of the teaching tools employed by MoMA’s education department. Further information, ideas and teaching tips are available on MoMA’s website and we encourage you to explore the site yourself and incorporate additional information should you find it appropriate. http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning! To begin the session, you may explain that the designation “Modern Art” came into existence after the invention of the camera nearly 200 years ago (officially 1839 – further information available at http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm). Artists no longer had to rely on their own hand (painting or drawing) to realistically depict the world around them, as the camera could mechanically reproduce what artists had been doing with pencils and paintbrushes for centuries. With the invention of the camera, artists were free to break from convention and academic tradition and explore different styles of painting, experimenting with color, shapes, textures and perspective. Thus MODERN ART was born. Grade Four Session One First image Henri Rousseau The Dream 1910 Oil on canvas 6’8 1/2” x 9’ 9 ½ inches Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York (NOTE: DO NOT SHARE IMAGE TITLE YET) Project the image onto the SMARTboard. Ask the students to take a couple of moments to look closely at the image but not to say anything, just look closely and carefully. After a few minutes ask them: What do you see in this image? What do you notice? What is going on in this picture? Make sure they support their comments with specific details from the composition and give them plenty of time. Some questions to further the discussion: Bring up the elements of art (shape, color, form and line) and ask them to point out the different elements in the painting. Do the animals and people look realistic? Why and/or why not? How do the animals look in the painting? Scared? Ferocious? Do you think the artist actually saw a scene like this? How do you think the woman in the painting might have gotten to where she is? What about the other figure in the center of the painting? Who might he/she be? How and what is the mood and/or feeling conveyed in this painting? Depending on the direction your conversation takes, you may wish to further engage the children in a discussion of the two figures in the painting: the woman reclining on a divan and the darker figure in the center of the painting. Who might this person be? How do we know? (It’s a male snake charmer and you’ll the orange snake slithering in right foreground; it’s also been noted that the model for the reclining woman was a friend of Rousseau’s named Yawigha). Now is a good time to reveal the title of the painting (The Dream) and the name of the artist (Henri Rousseau). The title of the painting will have more significance to the children once they have discussed the work in detail. Now tell the children a little bit about the artist and, most significantly, how he never left France during his life, but rather gleaned all his knowledge from visits to the botanical gardens and zoo in Paris and by reading lots of material on the these subjects. In fact, before he retired at age 49 and became a full-time “artist”, he was a customs inspector for the French government for 20 years. About the Image: “The Dream” was painted by Henri Rousseau in 1910. Rousseau was a curious figure in the early twentieth-century avant-garde. He was not trained as a painter and instead he was a self-taught artist whose day job was as a customs agent. His work centered on exotic renditions of jungle scenes which are detailed with great precision in terms of the foliage, the animals, and the landscape. Rousseau never left Paris. Rather, he got all of his knowledge for the horticultural details by going to the botanical gardens in Paris, by going to the zoos to look at the various birds and animals, and by reading lots of magazines that were charting the sort of exotic places that travelers and explorers were just starting to go to on other continents. Rousseau titled his painting “The Dream” because there is this very strange situation of an upholstered sofa in the middle of the jungle on which this woman with her two braids sits naked staring out at the scene ahead of her. One interpretation that the artist gave was that the woman was reclining on this sofa in some living room in Paris, and she was dreaming this jungle around her. But there are so many ways to think about this painting and that it's much more fun to leave it open in your mind as to how this lady on the sofa got into this jungle. This painting was first exhibited just a few months before Rousseau’s death in September of 1910 in Paris. http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79277 About the Artist: Henri Rousseau is most celebrated as being one of the best naive artists of the time. His work can also be viewed as a precursor to Surrealism with its juxtaposition of unlikely people and things and the fantastical, dreamlike qualities associated with his paintings. Rousseau was given the nickname La Douanier (“Customs Officer”) which stemmed from a job he held from 1871 to 1893 when he worked with the Paris Customs Office. Prior to this career, he served in the army. During this time, painting was something that he did as a hobby. In 1893 he accepted early retirement, which allowed him to focus on painting full time. This in turn allowed him to better his form and create a name for himself in the world of art. Although much of his work was often ridiculed, he did not waiver in the form and style in which he created his artwork. There is a traditional, academic quality to his work that was very unlike the work of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists who were working at the same time in Paris. His ability to see beyond the eye's reach, and his ability to perceive what was not seen on paper gave his work extreme depth and helped him create a diverse set of paintings during his career. Like most artists, shortly following his death, Henri Rousseau became an extremely well known name in the art world. Rousseau died on September 2, 1910 in Paris. http://www.henrirousseau.net/ Grade Four Session One Second Image Pablo Picasso Demoiselles d’Avignon 1907 Oil on canvas 8’ x 7’ 8” Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York Project the image onto the SMARTboard and before you start asking them questions, allow them to absorb the image quietly on their own. Some children may recognize the image and you can encourage that but don’t give anything away yet. You may start the dialogue by bringing up the subject of Portraiture. Portraits can represent individuals in many different ways. They can be literal representations of a person or they can represent a person symbolically. As we had previously discussed, with the invention of photography, painters began to explore new ways to represent the world, breaking with the literal and representational compositions of the previous era. Rather than just seeking to capture the sitter’s physical appearance, many artists sought to represent his or her character, disposition, and even inner psyche. In order to represent such subjective and symbolic aspects of their subjects, artists often paid less attention to capturing precise facial features than to developing new compositional devices, employing non-naturalistic color (also called “arbitrary color”), and making very specific choices about the background and what it might reveal about the subject. http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/what-is-modern-art/modern- portraits Some of the students may have already guessed the artist and you may tell the class the artist’s name and the title of the painting – Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Now you can begin with some questions: What do you see in this image? What do you notice? What is going on in this picture? How does Picasso choose to portray these women? Where do you think he found the inspiration for their faces? Which elements of art can you point out in this painting? How do certain of these elements affect the mood or feeling of the painting? You can discuss with the students that Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon after encountering African masks and Iberian sculpture at the Palais du Trocadéro, a Paris museum. Picasso, like many of his contemporaries, drew inspiration from non-European art. African masks, with their radical simplification and stylization of human features, suggested an alternative to conventions of Western painting and representation, and challenged artists like Picasso to develop new forms of representation. Another interesting conversation topic is to point out that when this painting was first shown to the public it outraged many people, including some of Picasso’s closest friends. People thought it was ugly, ridiculous and distasteful. In fact, it wasn’t shown in public again for almost 40 years.