YEAR TWELVES

Workbook tasks: Focus on Critical & Contextual investigation:

Deadline 1: Tuesday 27^th May, (Day 3)

12 sides total :

• 8 sides for Critical & Contextual Research Tasks (see weblog or back of this sheet for full details)

http://saintgeorgesart.blogspot.com/

• 4 sides response to gallery visit (there will be a specific preparation and task guide sheet prior to the trip)

Deadline 2: Thursday 19^th June (Day 1)

12 additional sides including:

• Development and expansion of your second Madrid project

• Idea gathering and possibilities for your main ‘Theme’ for the summer & the 7 calendar months (including holidays) that you have left of the course when you come back in September!

Words, original photographs, observation, brainstorming, collaged craziness and experimentation. Ideas for artists whose work might encourage or inspire you.

Good Y13 themes recently have included ‘Chaos’, ‘Intimacy’, ‘Barriers’, ‘The Passage of Time’, ‘Childhood’, ‘Boundaries Between Painting & Fashion’

Don’t confuse a technique or medium with a theme – fashion, video, animation, painting etc are all ‘media’ or techniques that could be explored and used in relation to a specific theme.

The sooner you talk to me about your ideas the sooner I can feedback other ideas

to you.

Over the summer there will be other tasks to do including a major piece of studio work – so don’t leave this work for then!

Critical & Contextual Research Tasks (read through them all and then choose ONE)

These are reasonably loose themes that you could deviate from slightly during the evolution of the outcome. However, the final outcome, spread over 8 continuous sides of your RWB should include at least 1200 words of ORIGINAL text. Of course you may refer to books, websites and so on. However, as usual you must acknowledge every source (author and title or website address is fine). Make rough notes on paper first rather than plunging straight in – plan the task a bit like an essay. Don’t worry too much about 5 hour stunning picture pages. Use drawing and painting selectively to draw attention to very specific details. Stick printouts (smallish and RELEVANT) amongst the text to support your arguments and descriptions. No rainbow backgrounds etc – this text must be easy to read – but don’t actually type it out and paste it in! Which ever them you choose you must focus on describing the works in detail with good use of Art specific language. Use metaphor, but not waffle! Compare work from different cultures/time periods. Explain the CONTEXT in which the work was made: by whom? For whom? When? Why? What is its function? The work needs to be legible and well presented, but the content is the key – written and visual, so don’t spend hours decorating these pages. Where possible make connections between the work that you are describing and your own projects and interests.

1: The changing impact of Art when removed from its intended location.

Comparing the potentially diminished impact of religious art when transplanted from church/temple to gallery/museum and graffiti when taken from walls, trains, subways to the ‘safe’ middleclass gallery environment. Giotto, Michelangelo, Haring, Basquiat, Kenny Scharf etc. Does an artefact (such as a mask) with powerful symbolic meaning in its native culture become something else (for better or worse) when transplanted to a gallery. Does putting an ‘everyday’ object into a gallery make it into ‘Art’?

2: Group Identities, Boundaries and Borders in Art

How and why do groups of people (nationalities, religions, armies, tribes, gangs, football clubs, companies etc) display their group identities through art and visual imagery? How might groups of people be identified by ‘outsiders’? (think of how you chose to represent countries by food – what other symbols or clichés might work in the same way)

Some Ideas:

Look at propaganda paintings (American ‘Uncle Sam’, British ‘Your Country Needs You’, German, Russian, Italian & Japanese posters from the 2nd world war for example) Soviet Socialist Realism etc

Masks, Uniforms and Costumes from various tribes, groups and societies (from the Masaai and the Spanish navy to the Iroquois and the Ku Klux Klan)

Badges, Logos and Icons – from paintings of crucifixions in an Italian Church to the ‘Lupetto’ of AS. Roma Modern Graffiti on trains, walls etc.

History paintings – battles, conquests and maps. Look at Albrecht Altdorfer, Paolo Uccello , Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The Bayeux Tapestry etc

3: ‘Talking about Art is like dancing about Architecture’ (Frank Zappa)

Can one art form explain another?

How have visual artists tried to depict performance and music in their work?

Japanese prints of theatrical performance (Hiroshige, Hokusai etc)

European painting and sculpture: Degas, Caravaggio, Fiorentino, Watteau, Italian futurist paintings (and music), Breughel, Lautrec, Max Beckmann, Picasso’s Circus performers etc.

Masks and costumes that express the role of the wearer – from various African nations and tribes, theatrical masks from China, Japan, Greece etc.

How has music been influenced by visual artists and vice versa?

Many visual artistic movements/styles had a musical equivalent (Baroque, Impressionist, Modernist, Dadaist)

Schoenberg (painter and composer), Matisse (La Danse, La Musique etc), Mondrian (Broadway Boogie Woogie)

4: Symbiosis: Humans and Nature in Art.

Investigating art that suggests the strength of the relationship between humankind and the environment around it.

Possible artists:

Pre 20th Century European: Metamorphosis – plants and animals into humans - Bosch, Bernini, Arcimboldo etc

Modern European: Andy Goldsworthy (abstract forms from natural materials), Anthony Gormley, Sophie Ryder (animal human creatures), Land Art – Robert Smithson. Picasso’s Centaurs etc.

Non European: Ritualistic animal masks, fetishes and totems from a variety of cultures: North and South American, African etc. Hindu animal human hybrid gods etc.

What do these metamorphic or hybrid beings suggest about human origins, relationships with nature and each other?

Romantic Art – the idea of humans at the mercy of the immense power of nature Caspar David Freidrich, JWM Turner, Albert Bierstadt etc

5: How has the image of women (as a subject) in Art changed through the 20th century?

• Liberation?
• Emancipation?
• Effects of 2 world wars, new technology etc…
• Political change including the vast increase in the number of women artists.
• Feminism.

Look at Picasso, Klimt, Modigliani, Giacometti, Warhol, Gwen John, Frida Kahlo, Dali, Freud, Jenny Saville, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Tracey Emin, Mona Hatoum, Sarah Lucas, (amongst others!) Read Germaine Greer on the subject for a feminist perspective "The Obstacle Race: The fortunes of women painters and their work", (book in the library)

6: Abstraction, patterns and geometry

How can artists express meaning without showing ‘realistic’ cows, people and hills in their work? OK this title is a bit flippant, but for this project you will compare the ways in which artists and craftspeople from at least 2 different cultures avoid direct representation in their work yet still tell us something about the world and society in which they live and make their Art.

This might include aspects of 1950s American Abstract Expressionist painting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Expresionism ,

traditional Islamic architectural patterning see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabesque

or some forms of Australian indigenous Art see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_art

(the wikipedia links are only there as very basic starting points.

http://lostworksheets.blogspot.com/

More copies of Madrid info etc

(linked as COPIES OF LOST WORKSHEETS)

Jonathon Ross ‘Japanorama’

Art in Context task.

You can watch the video again here: http://www.tv-links.cc/tv/Jonathon-Ross-Japanorama.htm (episode 3) or type the artists names into You Tube for shorter clips or other videos with/about their work.

Over 3 sides of writing and imagery in your RWB you should consider the following questions (make notes during the video)

What are some of the main themes/subjects/ideas/features of the J Art shown in the video?

How does contemporary Japanese Art reflect Japanese society including modern technology, mass media, culture, recent history? Think about Japan’s industrial development following the second world war – America occupied Japan and influenced a great deal of what has happened there since.

How does contemporary Japanese Art reflect Japanese Art of previous ages? Try to find examples by Hokusai, Hiroshige etc and compare the composition, themes, techniques and so on...

The artists featured in the video include :

Toast Girl Keiichi Tanaami Takashi Murakami Yoshimoto Nara Junko Mizuno

Research Workbook Tasks – Years 12 & 13 (including Madrid work)

Next book collection will be right after half term holiday to give you chance to finish all of the Madrid research – Monday 25^th Feb (Day 3) which is a book day.

The basic task is the same for both Year 12s & Y13s:

Before Madrid:

3 sides for the Japanorama video (Describe the contemporary Japanese Art & it’s context – see the sheet!)

7 sides of illustrated research into the lives, context and art of any 3 of the following list of artists whose work you will be seeing in Madrid (3 artists spread over the 7 sides, not 7 sides per artist!):

Velazquez Bosch Goya Murillo Breughel El Greco Rubens

Rembrandt Durer Picasso Tintoretto Dali Tapies Miro

Prepare 20 sides for working on in Madrid – some might be textured, others might be simple washes. Remember that you need to be able to work over these BACKGROUNDS with pencil, pen & other media that you will take with you. Don’t make them too dark or heavy.

During Madrid:

You will choose a specific theme that will help you focus during the Madrid trip – remember you won’t just be working in the galleries. You are visiting the CITY OF MADRID. You must begin (and in some cases complete) at least 20 sides during the trip. A few bus tickets are OK, but it isn’t a scrap book. It is a Critical, Contextual & Visual Diary investigation!

Themes to choose from (choose one to focus your research on the WHOLE trip):

Light Movement Texture Surfaces Barriers Power Tension Frames

After Madrid:

Finish off the pages – some can be left wild and energetic, but you should make some pages really sumptuous!

Much of your CONTEXTUAL research might be added after you return (but check the galleries for information whilst you are actually there).

Plus (integrated within all of that) 3 sides (minimum) about the development of your own current project(s)

Next book collection will be right after half term holiday to give you chance to finish all of the Madrid research – Monday 25^th Feb (Day 3) which is a book day.

The Art Expedition 2008 : Madrid

All students must be at the Vueling check-in desk (Terminal B, Fiumicino) by 8.30 am on Thursday 7^th Feb.

		Flight Details (Vueling from Fiumicino): Roma (FCO) to Madrid (MAD) Thursday 07 Feb Depart: 10:15 Arrive: 12:35 Flight Number : VY6033 Terminal: B Madrid (MAD) to Roma (FCO) Saturday 09 Feb Depart: 18:30 Arrive: 20:50 Flight Number: VY6857 Terminal: T4		Hotel Details: ROOM MATE MARIO C/ Campomanes, 4 Madrid 28013 Tel. 915 488 548 Fax. 915 591 288 mario@room-matehotels.com www.room-matehotels.com
		Important Information: Luggage: Only one piece of small hand luggage is permitted ( a school rucksack is ideal). No other luggage may be brought (you will have to leave it at the airport!) Max size: 10kg with the maximum dimensions of 55x40x20cm. Remember that you will be carrying this with you on public transport and whilst walking long distances – hence no big suitcases! Liquids (shampoo, gels etc) must be in containers of 100 ml or less. Insurance: Standard school cover applies (so personal property such as ipods etc are not covered) Please contact Mr Pellegrino at school if you need further details of cover: rosario.pellegrino@stgeorge.school.it You may wish to consult your own home policy to check cover for cameras etc. Money: Students have all transport and museum fees covered plus their breakfast. They will need to bring money for lunches and evening meals during the stay. There will be some free time during the trip, but all students will be expected to be back at the hotel by 11.00 pm – nightclubbing is not on our itinerary! Clothes/equipment: This is the Art expedition! Students should come dressed to walk and work (including outdoors!) Comfortable shoes and a waterproof coat are essential. Madrid can be very cold in February! Students should bring their current RWB with at least 20 sides prepared for drawing & writing. A range of pens, pencils, pastels and other drawing materials are essential as is a camera, preferably digital. Phone cameras are not really adequate in quality. No knives or scissors can be brought. Each student will produce 20 sides or more of visual and written research plus hundreds of photographs and possibly video footage during the trip and this will form the basis for the rest of their studio work in Art this year – so it has to be good!
	Thursday 7th Feb Transfer from airport by Metro. Arrive Hotel between 1.30 pm & 2.00 pm 3.00 pm Reina Sofia (including Picasso’s ‘Guernica’) Booking Ref 23264 Friday 8th Feb 10.15 am Thyssen (Including Impressionists & Post-Impressionists) 2.00 pm Prado Murrillo Entrance Booking ref Q43544 (Bosch, Goya, Velazquez etc) Saturday 9th Feb to be confirmed (including drawing around P.za Mayor if weather permits) Once again – please check that all of your passports and other documents are up to date!

Direct Observation and Descriptive Writing Guidelines

Introduction

Isola Farnese is a town built out of the place on which it stands; we are exploring the organic relationship it has with its surroundings in relation to the effect of a chosen theme on your 5 senses.

Light

Look at the effects of light around you: direct light, filtered light (through foliage, shutters and flapping curtains), reflected light, absence of light (shadows and shade)

What atmosphere is evoked by the play of light in different locations of the town (how would you describe this light - hazy, clear, dusty light, etc…) Does light dominate the place or not – what feel does it confer to it?

Consider contrasts, juxtapositions, discordant effects of light; silhouettes and stencil effects

How does the light falling upon the town affect the relationship between its surfaces and forms, or between its colours?

Can you describe the effect of ambient and colour temperature on your perceptions of light?

Negative Space

Consider the ‘drama’ of the spaces left between buildings, people, objects, vegetation or geometrical patterns

How do gaps, voids and passage ways create the identity and atmosphere of Isola Farnese?

Do you notice any patterns / repetitions of negative spaces?

Consider the range of scale of negative spaces - from the gap between tiles to a valley between two land masses; consider unexpected details/effects

Ask yourself how crucial these negative spaces are to the interplay of light and colour, textures and surface patterns (such a shaft of light channelled through broken brickwork, etc.)

Colour

Look at the effects of colour around you: what mood/atmosphere does colour evoke here?

Can you describe the colour range of the buildings -is there a prevalent style, are there accidental colour relationships?

Find examples of subtle tonal harmonies; consider juxtaposition, discordance, contrast, natural and man-made colour relationships.

Describe how residue and presence of colour reflect weathering and the passage of time.

How does colour relate to the surroundings of the town? Does the deliberate use of colour remind you of other places?

Consider the effects and the relationship between colour and light – how does the atmospheric light and shadow of this afternoon affect your perception of colour at Isola Farnese?

3 Dimensional Form

Describe the arrangement of surfaces, forms and angles around you: what patterns, rhythms and structures are apparent?

What atmosphere do they evoke? Is the environment open, claustrophobic, tightly packed, threatening, welcoming, etc.?

Describe the movement of your eye and body as you move around these spaces and structures (easy, fluid, cumbersome, relaxing…)

Find examples of harmony or discordance between the arrangement of inter-related forms

Consider, too, the presence or absence of human forms and how they might animate and inter-relate with the environment you are drawing

Texture and Surface Pattern

Consider closely the interplay between natural and man-made patterns and textures of Isola Farnese: how are textures created by erosion, carving, scratching, weathering, agglomeration? Do you notice rhythm, repetition or other patterns?

Consider the scale of textures around you, from roof tiles and brickwork or cobblestones, to the grain of an ancient wooden door, etc.

How do the textures and patterns of the town evoke a diary of its history (for example, what is the visual effect of a shiny ice-cream advertisement on top of Roman or Etruscan architectural fragments, etc.)

What atmosphere do the patterns and textures of the place evoke? What do they FEEL like?

Descriptive vocabulary you might like to use (just for a start!):

fractured, tinted, rugged, weathered, robust, jagged, heavy, light-washed, eroded,

resistant, imposing, resilient, softened.

Invent surprising ways of describing the colours around you –‘lemonade light filtering through the trees’ or ‘the sky turned the colour of peptobizmol’

GM & EGB, 2007

Y13 Research Workbook Critical & Contextual Research Project

At least 16 sides of visually dynamic (and legible) research approaching one of the following questions:

Keep printouts and scrap book approach to a minimum. Illustrate, write, think, discuss. Find other critics (see links on weblog) and see what they have to say. This is the difference between a 4/5 and a 6/7 student!

http://saintgeorgesart.blogspot.com/ (for clickable links to help you)

1: Group Identities, Boundaries and Borders in Art

How and why do groups of people (nationalities, religions, armies, tribes, gangs, football clubs, companies etc) display their group identities through art and visual imagery? How might groups of people be identified by ‘outsiders’? (think of how you chose to represent countries by food – what other symbols or clichés might work in the same way)

Some Ideas:

Look at propaganda paintings (American ‘Uncle Sam’, British ‘Your Country Needs You’, German, Russian, Italian & Japanese posters from the 2nd world war for example) Soviet Socialist Realism etc

Masks, Uniforms and Costumes from various tribes, groups and societies (from the Masaai and the Spanish navy to the Iroquois and the Ku Klux Klan)

Badges, Logos and Icons – from paintings of crucifixions in an Italian Church to the ‘Lupetto’ of AS. Roma Modern Graffiti on trains, walls etc.

History paintings – battles, conquests and maps. Look at Albrecht Altdorfer, Paolo Uccello , Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The Bayeux Tapestry etc.

2: When does Art become garment and garment become Art? How does fashion influence Art and vice versa?

Ritual and performance. For example: masks of the Fang people of West Africa, Japanese Noh theatre masks, North American traditional headdresses, Australian Aboriginal body painting. The costumes and contraptions of modern artist Rebecca Horn. (etc etc etc)

Where does the basic function (covering, protection, warmth etc) become less importance than the aesthetic appearance?

Fashion as a visual statement of politics and ideologies: Flapper girls in the 20s, Punks in the 70s, Hippies in the 60s etc

Influences in both directions – Pop Art, Op Art, Conceptual Art.

How does fashion in post War Britain (for example) reflect social and artistic change?

3: ‘Talking about Art is like dancing about Architecture’ (Frank Zappa)

Can one art form explain another?

How have visual artists tried to depict performance and music in their work?

Japanese prints of theatrical performance (Hiroshige, Hokusai etc)

European painting and sculpture: Degas, Caravaggio, Fiorentino, Watteau, Italian futurist paintings (and music), Breughel, Lautrec, Max Beckmann, Picasso’s Circus performers etc.

Masks and costumes that express the role of the wearer – from various African nations and tribes, theatrical masks from China, Japan, Greece etc.

How has music been influenced by visual artists and vice versa?

Many visual artistic movements/styles had a musical equivalent (Baroque, Impressionist, Modernist, Dadaist)

Schoenberg (painter and composer), Matisse (La Danse, La Musique etc), Mondrian (Broadway Boogie Woogie)

4: Symbiosis: Humans and Nature in Art.

Investigating art that suggests the strength of the relationship between humankind and the environment around it.

Possible artists:

Pre 20th Century European: Metamorphosis – plants and animals into humans - Bosch, Bernini, Arcimboldo etc

Modern European: Andy Goldsworthy (abstract forms from natural materials), Anthony Gormley, Sophie Ryder (animal human creatures), Land Art – Robert Smithson. Picasso’s Centaurs etc.

Non European: Ritualistic animal masks, fetishes and totems from a variety of cultures: North and South American, African etc. Hindu animal human hybrid gods etc.

What do these metamorphic or hybrid beings suggest about human origins, relationships with nature and each other?

Romantic Art – the idea of humans at the mercy of the immense power of nature Caspar David Freidrich, JWM Turner, Albert Bierstadt etc

5: How has the image of women (as a subject) in painting changed through the 20th century?

Liberation? Emancipation? Political change including the vast increase in the number of women artists. Feminism. Look at Picasso, Klimt, Modigliani, Giacometti, Warhol, Gwen John, Frida Khalo, Dali, Freud, Jenny Saville, Paula Modersohn-Becker (amongst others!) Read Germaine Greer on the subject for a feminist perspective "The Obstacle Race: The fortunes of women painters and their work", (book in the library)


6: The changing roles of the human figure in Art in the 19th & 20th centuries – from portraiture to symbolic presence.

Cezanne (figure as motif rather than specific portrait) through Expressionism/Cubism’s distortions and simplifications, then body art and performance of 60s & 70s. Move on into the recent work of artists like Gormley in which the body is represented as a volume in space, a symbol or a vessel.



7: The changing impact of Art when removed from its intended location.

Comparing the potentially diminished impact of religious art when transplanted from church/temple to gallery/museum and graffiti when taken from walls, trains, subways to the ‘safe’ middleclass gallery environment. Giotto, Michelangelo, Haring, Basquiat, Kenny Scharf etc.


8: The continuing presence of the painted portrait in the age of photography.

What can painted portraiture offer to the artist/viewer that photography can not? How has photography freed the painter from the need to reproduce only the ‘straight forward’ likeness of the sitter? How has photography fed the painters’ imaginations and furthered the development of painting? Bacon, Nash, Hockney, Degas, Sickert, Jenny Saville, Richard Billingham etc. Read some Susan Sontag on this subject Review of her book ‘On Photography’ with a few quotes: http://www.photo.net/books/on-photography or this Sontag

.