UNIT & LESSON PLAN GUIDELINES

SUMMARIZE THE ORIGINAL LESSON; DO NOT INCLUDE COOPERATING TEACHER HANDOUTS

REVISE THE LESSON. MAKE IT DIFFERENT & MORE COMPREHENSIVE. If it is simple, make it more interesting. Go beyond mere ruler measurement.

PROOFREAD AND ORGANIZE YOUR MATERIALS USING MY HEADINGS--WHICH ARE CATEGORIES THAT THE STATE INCLUDES IN ITS STANDARDS.

ADD DEFINITIONS OF MAJOR STUDIO CONCEPTS

USE THESE CATEGORY HEADINGS TO SHOW EVIDENCE OF MEETING THESE STATE STANDARDS.

ADD PAGE NUMBERS to references

NO MORE THAN 20 PAGES. PUT IN SOFT COVER FOLDER.

NO INTERNET ARTICLES. YOU MUST WRITE THE LESSON OUT

ORIGINAL LESSON PLAN

The OLD nine-week drawing unit concentrated on portrait drawing and abstraction done in pen and ink. Instructions: "Choose three photographic portraits, either black and white or color, of celebrities or normal people."

Procedure:

• Draw in pencil a 9"x 12" or 12" or 18" portrait of each photo. Do three versions of each portrait. Particular attention should be paid to detail and shading. DO ONE FULL AND 2 SECTIONS or DIFFERENT VIEWS OF EACH PORTRAIT.
• On white poster board, lightly in pencil, do a Mandarin design of squares and rectangles (no smaller then 2" in any direction). ADD: Mandarins design is based on division of frame with variety of sizes. Notice Picasso's division of the Guernica.
• Each block is to be filled with sections or symbols from the original three portraits. ONE PORTRAIT WOULD BE ENOUGH. These contour drawings are to be first drawn in pencil.
• Shading should be done with black ink and pen using the following techniques: crosshatch, parallels lines, and pointillism. The closer together the pen strokes or points, the darker the shading will be. An example of the final project was printed on the handout.

MY ADDITIONS: I added art criticism, art in context, and aesthetic components.

REVISED LESSON MODEL

TITLE: PICASSO, PORTRAITS, & PERSPECTIVES

Unit Overview: Students learn about Picasso and the importance of Cubism as a way to change perspectives. They analyze how he abstracted forms, changed viewpoints, arranged the picture through a grid system, and added symbols. Students make their own portrait grid drawing demonstrating their understanding of the grid and changing perspectives, and adding symbols.

GOAL: To introduce Cubist and Abstract Art: Purpose, influences, perspectives, spatial qualities, context and effects on other arts. The Curriculum is subject-centered. Students can also choose subject matter to express their concerns, so the curriculum is also child-centered (individual self-expression). Dewey advocated a balance of both. Arizona and State Standards are based on subject-centered approach using performance assessments and rubrics. Global Awareness Comparisons are included.

Unit Performance Objectives: Students will:

• Examine Picasso's painting,Guernica , by using exploratory art criticism (Art as Inquiry) 10
• Explain (Picasso's) artworks from (Spain) Europe: major period (Cubism), characteristics (simultaneous multiple views), subjects (portraits), themes (war), and symbols (Art in Context). (Informal Quiz, Art in Context) 10
• Explain the role of art in society--how art from Europe reflected its cultural factors and aesthetic (formalist) values. Explain how Picasso's work was affected by science and politics (Art in Context and Interdisciplinary).
• Explain Picasso's tools, materials, techniques, methods, processes, and technologies employed in the fine arts and in communication and design (Art in Context). 10
• Plan and make a grid composition with at least 3 different views (Creating Art). 10
• Make an abstract portrait drawing with symbols (Creating Art). 10
• Incorporate two or more related symbols (Creating Art) 10
• Self-evaluate their own painting by description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment (Art Criticism-Art as Inquiry). 10
• Explain how Picasso's abstract features and organizational principles convey a universal message? Understand how symbols can add expressive meanings and Understand art as a form of communication (Aesthetics- Art as Inquiry
• Write about and discuss the following questions "What makes the Guernica a masterpiece?" What makes for good form? (Aesthetics-Art as Inquiry.) 10
• Explain how Picasso's work influenced (compare/contrast) other arts (dance, theater, film, etc.)? Understand the variety of perspectives with which individuals approach works of visual art. (Interdisciplinary) 10
• Attend, participate, and work in class 10
• Total 100 points for this 8-week unit

ART AS INQUIRY ACTIVITY: Be an art critic and develop your critical thinking skills. Answer the following questions about Picasso's Guernica (1937) in paragraphs (10 points).

• Describe the subject matter and objects in background.
• Analyze how Picasso arranged the painting (use tracing paper to analyze the grid system)? What are the major compositional shapes (circle, square, triangle, other)? Are his shapes organic or geometric or both? Are the colors monochromatic (one color with different lights & darks), complementary (opposite colors on the color wheel), analogous (neighboring colors on the color wheel), other? What patterns did he repeat?
• Technique: How did he make the painting? (flat shapes, modeled shadows, patterns, thick or thin paint). What materials did he use?
• Interpret the meaning or message (human, animal, spiritual, other). Name and explain the symbols he uses? A symbol stands for something else; a lion means bravery. What mood do colors convey?
• Judge the painting by using the following explanations. You can choose more than one reason. 1.The painting experiments with unusual shapes, colors or materials (formalistic); 2. The painting communicates meanings & symbolic qualities (expressive); 3. The painting has different functions (for protection, for praying, for social protest, for education, other); 4.The painting is realistic and represents a particular person or thing (representational). Elaborate on your answer.

ART CRITICISM ASSESSMENT TOOL (SCORING RUBRIC or RATING SCALE) & CRITERIA

• Exceptional: The answers provided clear evidence that the student understood how to describe, analyze, interpret, judge with reference to some art theories.
• Competent: The answers provided good evidence that the student understood how to describe, analyze, interpret, judge with reference to one art theory.
• Partial: The answers provided some evidence that the student understood how to describe, analyze, interpret, judge somewhat.

CREATING ART ACTIVITY: Make a Cubist Portrait Drawing with Grid Composition and Multiple Views, similar to Picasso's. A portrait drawing is a process of capturing an image likeness or its feeling.

Previous lesson: Make a traditional realistic drawing in pencil, using correct proportion, composition (fill the frame), and shading (four different lights and darks). Monochromatic painting or design using shades of gray is called grisaille.

Procedures:

• For subject matter, make a portrait of someone, such as a celebrity, sport star, or famous artist and symbols that represent that person.
• Abstract your portrait. Cubism is an art style that reduced images to basic shapes and lines. Abstract means to simplify, to flatten, and to select a segment.
• Plan (composition) your grid drawing beyond a checkerboard. You can use the rectangular or triangular system of dividing a picture into at least 3 or more frames. What would a circular arrangement of unequal sections look like?
• Include multiple views (close-up, panorama, bird's-eye, or worm's-eye). Try to use Picasso's principle of simultaneous multiple view (showing front and side view) at least once.
• Communicates two or more related symbols to convey the person's feeling or character.
• Use flat shading, abstract or contrasting (extreme lights & darks), and patterned.
• Explain your choice of materials and processes, viewpoints and symbols.
• Cleanup and Safety Precautions: Keep lead pencils out of mouth-poisonous.
• Evaluate your own painting by description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment. See art criticism activity (10 points). What did you communicate about yourself through symbols?

Materials: Student journal to plan the grid and difference views, tracing paper to enlarge the plan, lead pencil to transfer drawing to large bond paper (18 x 24"), black and white 2B pencil or marker pens. Alternate: Try the computer with a scanned photo

CREATING ART ASSESSMENT TOOL (SCORING RUBRIC or RATING SCALE) & CRITERIA

Authentic assessments use rubrics to describe student achievement. A rubric is a scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work or "what counts"; it also determines gradations of quality for each criterion from excellent to poor" [no dictionary definition of rubric] (Goodrich, 1996. p. 14).

Make an abstract portrait drawing. Abstract means to simplify, to flatten, and to select a segment .

• Exceptional: The drawing provides clear evidence that the student can simplify several images by reducing them to basic shapes and lines and choosing segments.
• Competent:: The drawing provides clear evidence that the student can simplify a few images by reducing them to basic shapes and lines and choosing segments.
• Partial: The drawing provides evidence that the student can simplify one image and repeat it. (10 points)

Plan a grid composition, a drawing made of repeated but unequal shapes or spaces that shows multiple views.

Communicates two or more related symbols. A symbol is a visual image that stands for something else; e.g. the horse is a symbol of bravery. The symbols should convey the person's feeling or character.

• Exceptional: The drawing provided clear evidence that the student uses different unique symbols and provided excellent evidence for choice.
• Competent: The drawing uses at least one personal or cultural symbol, non stereotyped, and gave evidence of choice.
• Partial: The drawing uses one stereotyped symbol (10 points)

AESTHETICS ACTIVITY: Essay "What Makes a Masterpiece?" Discuss in 2 paragraphs the following: [Use the 4 theories of art]

The dictionary defines masterpiece as "An outstanding work of art or craft or something superlative, the highest quality. One critic has said, "A masterpiece expresses what (emotions and symbols) is universal, timeless and meaningful for all people. It does so by using the media of choice to its very fullest, and in doing so, creates new [formal] relationships and show us something we have not seen or felt before." What formal qualities fit the art critic's definition here. Maybe the artwork has a unique function or place in the artworld? Or does it represent life [realistically or abstractly]? Why or why not is Picasso's painting, Guernica, a masterpiece? Give evidence or examples.

AESTHETICS RUBRIC (10 points)

• Exceptional: The essay provided clear evidence that the student understood Picasso's several universal meanings (emotions and symbols), media of choice, and the formal relationships with which he was experimenting.
• Competent: The essay provided clear evidence that the student understood some of Picasso's universal meanings (emotions and symbols), media of choice, and the formal relationships with which he was experimenting.
• Partial: The essay provided clear evidence that the student understood at least one of Piccaso's universal meanings (emotions and symbols), media of choice, and the formal relationships with which he was experimenting.

ART IN CONTEXT ACTIVITY: Be an art historian and interview your artist.

• Prepare the questions and write down his answers. Include the following information: purpose, major period, place, characteristics [mood, style] subjects, themes, & symbols. Choose one of his/her famous works and tell how it reflects cultural factors and aesthetic values?
• Look on the Internet and explain in short paragraphs why Picasso's work was innovative for Europe by referring to the following: style: his tools, materials, techniques, methods, processes, technologies. See the reading on "Picasso and Cubism," at the end.
• Discuss how Picasso's work compares/contrast to other arts (dance, theater, film, etc. Understand career choices available in the visual arts.
• Invite a professor, an art critic, or a graduate student in art history to speak about Picasso and the influence of Formalism on the History of Aesthetics.
• GLOBAL AWARENESS: Compare his grid work with Wilfredo Lam, the Cuban Picasso. INCLUDE A PICTURE OF THE GLOBAL ARTISTS" WORK

Art in Context: Assessment (10 points)

• Exceptional: The interview provided clear evidence that the student could explain most of Picasso's following characteristics: major period, place, and style--mood, subjects, themes, and symbols.
• Competent: The interview provides evidence that the student could explain two or three of Picasso's following characteristics: major period, place, and style: mood, subjects, themes, and symbols.
• Partial: The interview provides evidence that the student could explain at least one fact from each of Picasso's following characteristics: major period, place, and style: mood, subjects, themes, and symbols. 10/5/02

MODEL INTERVIEW: PICASSO AND CUBISM

WHERE AND WHEN: Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain (Place) in 1881 and moved with his family to Barcelona, where his father taught at School of Fine Arts. Although Picasso lived two-thirds of his life in France, he still considered himself Spanish, especially in his moods of "sun and shade" (p. 11).

EARLY INFLUENCES: The son of an art teacher, as a boy, Picasso loved to draw pigeons (symbol of peace) and he made this drawing at age 11 (p. 10). At age 14, he made his realistic first portrait Girl with Bare Feet (1895) (p. 17). He was influenced by Impressionists & Expressionists. Similar to these artists, he choose the subject of "city life," especially people (p. 16). Although a fine draftsman, he was attracted to the grotesque style (exaggerated real), such as his love of bullfights (theme).

CONTEXT or PERIOD--Other Historical Events at the time: Barcelona, at the crossroads of East and West and on the Mediterranean, was an independent municipality, prosperous, and full of art. The 1890s was a time of modernismo - style, an intellectual movement that rejected materialism as a result of increased industrialism (p. 12). The works of the philosophers Nietzsche and Schopenhauer influenced him. The Barcelonian Catalans, who had their own dialect, grew independent and wanted to succeed from Madrid and the rest of Spain. Picasso always regarded Barcelona as his true home.

His work was affected by European cultural factors (Politics---nihilism of war) and aesthetic values (experiments with pure form and simultaneous views). He was devoted to Communism (p. 149). The French Communist Party in 1949 adopted his "dove" symbol that he used earlier in a Milanese pigeon poster (p. 150).

STYLE CHANGE: Picasso's work changed from his father's influence and used more expressive characteristics. Picasso imitated Daumier's style at this point of his career. He used "real-life subjects, gestural lines, rough brush work, heavy outlines, and muddy colors" (p. 19). Picasso then moved to France (1900). In Paris, his style changed dramatically. Picasso wanted to portray a new way of seeing something from all sides. He invented Cubism, a style of abstract or simplified shapes (p. 53), inspired partly by African masks and sculptures that were displayed in the Louvre Museum and partly by Cezanne. Cezanne emphasized "solid form and experimented with flattened perspective and equal emphasis of positive and negative space" (Day, 1987, p. 235). Picasso ignored normal perspective and spatial relations, used simultanous views, and exaggerated monster faces (p. 54).

TOOLS & MEDIA: Picasso's main materials were traditional paper & pencil, oil & canvas, and scrap collage & assemblage. He added textures (newspaper) and imitated (wood & fabric) them (p. 94). Later, he worked in clay [ceramics] and lithography.

EMPHASIS ON ONE ARTWORK--THE-GUERNICA.His greatest work was the Guernica (1937, DATE) that he designed with 45 sketches (p. 136). This work is painted in oils on canvas [p. 137-138].

* SUBJECT MATTER included sun, horse, bull, and fighting and fallen people.

*THEME: The painting, perhaps the greatest antiwar art statement (holocaust) reacted to the horrible bombing of the Spanish village of Guernica. The painting (12' x 26') epitomized the role of art as the communication of ideas and social protest.

* COLOR HARMONY: He painted in black, white, and gray, a monochromatic grisaille.

*COMPOSITION was unified with triangular shapes and diagonal lines (Arnheim, 1962).

* STYLE: Whereas Picasso could draw realistically and shade well, he simplified [ABSTRACTED] forms, introduced more contrast (extreme lights and darks), reversed positive and negative areas, and used more patterns in theGuernica,. This painting is CUBISTIC.

*TECHNIQUE was flattened shapes with some shading in oil here.

* SYMBOLS of the dying horse (bravery) and bull (brutality & darkness) all represent Spain. The painting commemorated the 1936 rebellion of Spanish Morocco in the town of Guernica in the north. It was bombed by German planes prior to W.W.II. His painting WomanWeeping (1937), inspired by his mistress Dora Maar, also shows grief and rage against this bloody civil war.

* MOOD:The colors convey this sad and ghastly occasion.

GLOBAL COMPARISON: NONWESTERN: Wilfredo Lam of Afro-Cuban and Chinese descent was born in idyllic Cuba. He studied African Art in Paris at age 21 but the Nazis sent him back after a stay a prison camp in Martinique. His masterpiece, The Jungle, which he painted in 1943, is gouache on paper. It is similar in size and content to Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Lam also painted faces, based on African masks, but his paintings are denser. Fascinated by the santeriaa and voodoo world, Lam's work celebrates a mythical beast-woman who creates and devastates in nature (Benton & DiYanni, 1999). Also see Romare Bearden. INCLUDE A PICTURE OF THIS GLOBAL WORK and a short description.

INTERDISCIPLINARY CONNECTIONS:

ART & SCIENCE: He stripped subjects of details, suggested flat planes, and reduced forms to blocks and cylinders. Cubism was an intellectual pursuit that followed such trends as "Einstein's theory of relativity that was a concern for time, space, and multiple views" (Day, 1987, p. 235). Cubism broke forms & traditions and reduced them to lowest terms (science atoms).

THEATER ARTS: Besides influencing painters, Picasso affected other careers: sculptors, costume designers, and graphic designers. As a designer, he influenced different compositions (such as a grid) and ways of seeing (simultaneous front and side views). Picasso made cubistic costumes for an avant-garde ballet called Parade. He painted the curtain similar to a circus poster (p. 76). He also designed & painted pottery (p. 176).

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REFERENCES:

Wertenbaker. L. & Editors of Time-Life Books (1967). The world of Picasso (1881-1973). New York: Time-Life Books.

Clergue, L. (Dir.). (1970). Picasso, war, peace, love [video recording]. Universal Education and the Visual Arts. Indianapolis, IN

Arnheim, R. (1962). The genesis of a painting: Picasso's Guernica. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

[See Student Pottery inspired by Picasso's Cubist style.]

Evaluation: Informal Quiz (or crossword puzzle)

Where did Picasso consider his home?

Who taught him how to paint?

When did Picasso live?

What are his famous themes and favorite subject matter for painting?

What was his most famous masterpiece? Why is it famous?

What art style did he make famous? Explain the characteristics.

How did he design [composition] the Guernica?

How did he paint this work? [tools, medium, flatly or modeled]?

What other art forms did he master and influence?

Why did his style change?

What were his political views and affiliations?

Art Education References

Benton, Janetta Rebold, & DiYanni, Robert. (1999). Arts and culture: An introduction to the humanities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Day, M. (1987). Discipline-based art education in secondary classrooms. Studies in Art Education, 28 (4), 234-242. [This was an experimental study of integrated teaching (DBAE style) types of Cubism founded by Cezanne to eight graders in (for 8 weeks for 40 hours of class time). Students' attitudes changed positively (respect for art style); they maintained interest throughout; quality of painting improved; and technical knowledge extended.]

5/20/03