The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Education Department FREE for educators Oct. 14, 2011 How Artists See the World A curriculum guide inspired by the exhibition Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993-2008) Table of Contents About the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art JSMA Mission Statement JSMA Arts Education Philosophy Online Teacher Resource Center Meet the Artist: Xiaoze Xie Artist Statement Brief BioGraphy About the Exhibition UNIT 1 - Exploring Historical and Current Events Through Art Xiaoze Xie, Theatre of Power Series (1995 - ) Art Interpreters: Exploring Historic November 5, 2004, N.Y.T. (Bush Cabinet 2nd Term) 2008 oil on linen 70 x 110 ½ and Current Events throuGh Art inches Art Interpreters: The Effects of the As a child durinG China’s Cultural AccordinG to Xie, "What interests me Cultural Revolution throuGh the work Revolution, Xie saw the forbidden most is the temporary nature of this of Xiaoze Xie and HunG Liu books that his Grandfather, an mundane object loaded with the all- administrator in the Chinese encompassinG information of chanGinG UNIT 2 - Front Page News government, was charGed with daily life.... Newspapers are recycled. collectinG and destroyinG. The power Life Goes on....The accidental Warm Up Exercise: From and danGer of printed matter, coupled juxtaposition of imaGes and texts PhotoGraph to Front PaGe with the shock and despair of suGGests, and at the same time Tiananmen Square, deeply affect Xie’s conceals a larGer, more complex social Contemporary Artists Take on the art, most of which depicts decayinG picture. This is perhaps our perception Front Page books, airless museum libraries, stacks of the world in the media aGe: a of newspapers, or isolated media bombardment of discrete bits of data - State and National Standards imaGes of current events. For Xie, - superficial, fraGmented, and quite Addressed stacks of printed paGes represent not often, literally distorted.” only cultural memory and the passaGe of time, but the ways in which history is recorded and interpreted accordinG to various belief systems and political agendas. October 14, 2011 Dear Educator, This fall, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s Education Department staff has developed a series of lessons inspired by our current exhibition Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993 – 2008). We used the exhibition as a starting point for our new teacher curriculum materials focusing on contemporary artists whose work explores current and historic events, photographic journalism, media, and newspapers. We invite you to explore how the artist Xiaoze Xie and others present work that aligns with new ideas and critical thinking for your students. We are dedicated to creating resources for K-12 teachers to augment curricular areas such as language arts, social studies, and science. Please visit the museum’s website to learn more about our ArtsAsia program and other resources for classroom teachers. http://jsma.uoregon.edu/programs/k12-teachers-students.aspx Finally, we would like to invite you to bring your students to the museum for a field trip and participate in an interactive tour and studio activity. We recognize the challenges for transportation and budget cuts and are thankful to the many donors who have supported our “Fill Up the Bus” campaign. Scholarship money is available for transportation from schools across Oregon and we hope you will take advantage of this opportunity. http://jsma.uoregon.edu/programs/k12-teachers-students.aspx#Guided Thank you for making the museum a part of your teaching process. Lisa Sharon Lauren Lisa Abia-Smith Sharon Kaplan Lauren Suveges Director of Education Museum Educator Museum Educator Museum education programs are made possible with support from the Cheryl and Allyn Ford Educational Outreach Endowment, the University of Oregon’s Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS), the US Department of Education’s Title VI funds, and the Oregon Arts Commission. Section One: Introduction 1 RESOURCE GUIDE CONTENTS About the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art JSMA Mission Statement JSMA Arts Education Philosophy Online Teacher Resource Center Meet the Artist: Xiaoze Xie Artist Statement Brief Biography About the Exhibition UNIT 1 - ExplorinG Historical and Current Events ThrouGh Art Art Interpreters: Exploring Historic and Current Events through Art Art Interpreters: The Effects of the Cultural Revolution through the work of Xiaoze Xie and Hung Liu UNIT 2 - Front PaGe News Warm Up Exercise: From Photograph to Front Page Contemporary Artists Take on the Front Page State and National Standards Addressed Section One: Introduction 2 ABOUT THE JORDAN SCHNITZER MUSEUM OF ART JSMA Mission Statement The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art enhances the University of Oregon’s academic mission and furthers the appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts for the general public. JSMA Arts Education Philosophy Education is an integral component to the JSMA and is central to its vision. We believe that education should be included in the development and design of each tour, exhibition, and program we create. We value museums as learning environments in which curiosity, discovery, and contemplation are encouraged. Our aim for each visitor, regardless of age, background or ability, is to experience the museum with enthusiasm and success, empowered by new perspectives. Our programs focus on family-centered learning, interdisciplinary connections, and the individual learning styles of each visitor. We are committed to providing exceptional programs that promote museums as sources for life-long learning. Teacher Resource Center Curriculum Materials Please visit our website at: http://jsma.uoregon.edu/programs/k12-teachers-students.aspx Download our latest curriculum resources based on the exhibition Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993 - 2008). Also, download curriculum resources from past professional development workshops including The Grand Tour, a curriculum unit on travel, community, and cartography, NewArt Northwest, a curriculum unit on contemporary art with connection to environmental science, language arts, social studies, visual arts, and extensive curriculum guides on the art and culture of China, Japan, and Korea based on the museum’s collection. Outreach Kits Outreach kits contain artifacts, reproductions representing the museum’s collection, and curriculum resources for teachers. Kits are loaned at no charge for 3 weeks. Contact Lauren Suveges at [email protected] to reserve a kit today! Online Collection Please visit our online collection and search through over 3,000 images by artist, time period, or culture to share with your classroom. http://jsmacollection.uoregon.edu/main.php?module=objects Section One: Introduction 3 MEET THE ARTIST: XIAOZE XIE From the Stanford University Department of Art & Art History http://art.stanford.edu/profile/Xiaoze+Xie/ Artist statement My long-standing interest in time, memory and history is a thread that runs through my paintings, works on paper, photographs and installations over the years. I started “The Library Series” in 1993, when I was intrigued by rows of “sleeping” books on the shelves of a library. I see books as a material form of something abstract, such as ideology. I have also been fascinated by what people do to books – banning, destroying, glorifying with gold leaf, or worshipping as ultimate truth. In “The Library Series” and “The Chinese Library Series” (1995- ), I have painted a wide range of images, from books whose spines give no hint of content to the largely neglected volumes by Lenin in a Chinese library, from the gilded edge shining with blinding light to the pages fallen into silent decay. My more recent project “The MoMA Library” (2005-06) engages specific art-historical references; it is both a tribute to and a eulogy of Modernism. Installations “Nocturne: Burning of Books by the Nazis”(1995) and “Order (The Red Guards)”(1999) grew out of my deep fascination with books and my interest in history. Both are based on historical documentation of the specific events yet aim to go beyond the narratives and resonate on political and philosophical levels. My recent work deals with the vulnerability and the fragmentary nature of historical memory, as well as our superficial perception of the world in the media age. My ongoing project entitled “Fragmentary Views” (2001- ) is a series of paintings based on photographs of piles of newspapers found on the shelves as arranged, marked, or labeled by librarians. What interests me most is the temporary nature of this mundane object loaded with the all-encompassing information of changing daily life: from the front- page news to stock market columns to birth announcements and obituaries. Newspapers are recycled. Life goes on. In these paintings, the close-up view reveals fragmented news pictures and texts of seemingly unrelated events, from the quiet passage of the everyday, to the disturbing conflicts and tragedies of our time. The accidental juxtaposition of images and texts suggests, and at the same time conceals a larger, more complex social picture. This is perhaps our perception of the world in the media age: a bombardment of discrete bits of data - superficial, fragmented, and quite often, literally distorted. In the compressed newspaper stacks, you can find images of the ruins of the World Trade Center, the spectacle of the day and night bombing of Baghdad, suffering faces of victims of suicide attacks, Chinese government’s propaganda campaigns. What can you say, in the face of what’s happening every day? Nothing comes as a shock. In the newspaper paintings, I have found a way to combine my ideas and interests in the earlier library paintings of decaying books and installations dealing with historical events, Section One: Introduction 4 in a simple format. Stylistically I have drawn on the history of painting and at the same time maintained a reference to documentary photography, I have used image as text and text as image. My work seeks to engage the dialogue between painting and photography, the discourse on the social and political potential of art, as well as critical issues on Conceptualism and aestheticism.