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Three points:
1. Contemporary pedagogy in art education begins with the idea that art
comes from the art that came before us and from culture. It has been
long acknowledged that we all learn by copying. We, meaning all of
us-kids, grown-ups, Van Gogh, Picasso, other artists-everybody. Art
teachers are supposed to teach by teaching specific skills & concepts to
empower kids to express the ideas of art. Using the work of artists to
show how artists used color, texture, line, etc. to express ideas IS the
way to teach art. Anybody who still thinks that "art comes from within"
is suffering from what might be called the "20th century hang-over." You
have the right idea and stay true to it! Fear of contaminating kids by
teaching them something is so 1950s.
2. When Commodore Perry opened the door of Japan to the world in 1858,
artists went wild! The book "Japonisme: The japanese Influence on
Western Art Since 1858" (S. Wichmann,2001) shows how many, many artists,
including Van Gogh, copied japanese images. And they didn't just copy
in a loose or general way. Van Gogh created carefully constructed grids
in his efforts to understand the structure and composition of the
Japanese art.
3. Some quick thoughts: Get past VG's personal problems with the ear
story right away. Talk about him as a serious artist who learned how to
draw from copying from books and other art, just like the other artists
of his time. If you are going to show the painting of the sunflowers, I
would also include a bouquet of real sunflowers for kids to see and
examine closely. Looking at the real ones and VG's painting, examine
VG's yellows. Those yellows are not straight from the bottle, but have
lots of color blended into them. And look at the textures caused by
VG's brush strokes. The kids can learn a lot by copying these things,
"in the manner of VanGogh."
Also, VanGogh said that art was like algebra: there are certain
foundational skills that are necessary to know, and must be learned.
Best of luck,
Edie Pistolesi
Professor of Art
Department of Art; Art Education area
CSU Northridge
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4 comments:
What is fascinating is that the Japanese artists learned from the European artists as well.
I'm thinking....didn't Nancy Andreasson (sp?) do a study of creativity finding that the highest levels are found in cities in which artists are exposed to other artists??
I think she did.
Edie,
thank you so much for the moral support and the good ideas.
One of the problems with Art Lit is that there is a tension between wanting the child to learn by copying an artist, and not wanting them to copy at all. Some teachers and parents have a horror of copying because it means that the copy may be judged against the original and it may not measure up to the original. To copy is to possibly fall short. I think this concern is misplaced for young children -- we have attempted to eliminate copying in too many areas of early schooling.
What really bothers me about this specific Art Lit project is that we make the children make a copy of Van Gogh's sunflowers but we drop the ball when it comes to taking the time to briefly teach technical skills the child needs to work with the thickened paint we are using.
It's like we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to give children the benefit of copying an artist, but we don't want to get our hands dirty by helping children copy well.
Art can't be all process and no product. There's got to be something likeable at the end, and there hasn't been for this sunflower project. And if it really was all about process, we'd really teach process skills and evaluate how well we taught those skills.
And I'm sure I see this "giving with one hand and holding back with the other" in reading, mathematics, and writing, too.
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