WHAT IS BEAUTY?
Dr. Mary Stokrocki, Arizona State University, Tempe
Lesson in based on "A Participant Observation Study of Cultural Influences and Issues in an Art Class for Brazilian Preservice Teachers," . Journal of Multicultural and Cross-cultural Research in Art Education.
Discussion Questions
1. What different kinds of beauty do you now value? What knowledge that you have gained by discussing the beautiful?
2. What did you learn about the artistic process?
3. What did you learn about Botero and his work? Botero Online: http://www.Botero.com.br
4. When and how isphotocopy art legal?
5. Who determines beauty?
6. Why is Mona Lisa considered beautiful? When was she considered beautiful? What characteristics were beautiful about her? Who determines what is beautiful?
6. What is moral beauty?
Extra credit: Interview a beauty expert from some institution to discover what colors or forms they value this year and why [Katz et al., 1995).
Lesson Overview
Throughout the ages, people have debated the changing ideas on beauty. Adolescent students are preoccupied with it as a major concern in their relation with peers. Universal and relative views on beauty persist. The purpose of this unit is to assess students' preconceptions and preferences about beauty and to suggest that such questioning is an appropriate introductory teaching method in the student-centered curriculum. Then the unit examines the concept of beauty: human and artistic. Questions of beauty exist in the area of inquiry called Aesthetics, a study of the nature (concept), scope, value, and origin of art. Beauty is one of its values.
Objectives: Students will:
1. Examine their preference and conceptions of beauty, and related ideas: beauty, art, reproduction, and meaning [cognitive].
2. Discuss beauty in nature and in art: relativist and absolute [comprehension].
3. Distinguish the different art reasons for beauty: formalism, imitationalism, expressionism, and functionalism [comprehension].
4. Discuss the differences between beauty: authentic, fake, and reproduction, moral beauty[comprehension].
5. Support their ideas about beauty with informed reasons (proper aesthetic theory) [evaluation].
6. Integrate aesthetic knowledge with other art disciplines of art criticism and history of art [synthesis].
7. Discuss how to add beauty in the ugly environment.
Teaching Procedure:
Activity 1. Prequestionnaire about What is beauty? Who is beautiful? Why is he/she beautiful? List the results and discuss them as a class [Art as Inquiy -- Aesthetics].
Activity 2. Discuss the paintings of Botero and his voluptuous women. Discuss his video (Castano & Trujillo, 1994). Find Columbia on the map. See the video on his life. List answers. Discuss his work and imitations of Mona Lisa. Is Mona beautiful? When was she considered beautiful? What is beautiful about her? Who determines what is beautiful? [Art in Context]
Activity 3. Reinterpret Botero's work; for example, make it more contemporary, or use another style, substitute what is beautiful to you, or create a parody on beauty and its falseness. Use multimedia, magazines [Creating Art].
Activity 4. Self evaluation -- art criticism worksheet [Art as Inquiry]
Activity 5. Small group discussions and summary:
Aesthetics a. Critics originally regarded Botero as "mediocre, a reproducer, and a fake." Modernists were against his figurative style. They only valued the minimal. "Post modernism brought Botero to the art scene. Of course, Botero deals in the "maximal female image" (pun on minimal and maximum). Discuss this dilemma.
Aesthetics b. Discuss the institutional world of beauty and its interrelated experts (fashion designers, cosmeticians, beauticians, plastic surgeons, etc. Compare authentic, moral (Yi-Fu, 1993), and sacred beauty (Museum of Religious Art in Sau Paulo & Sante Fe). Discuss institutionalism as an art reason or theory. Extra credit: Interview a beauty expert from some institution to discover what colors or forms they value this year and why [Katz et al., 1995).
Institutionalism is an explanation that highlights the institutions that decide or evaluate the beautiful. An institution in a simple sense is an established practice. A mosque, a museum, a corporation, and a government office are institutions that determine what art is good for the institution. For example, a fashion designer decides what colors and forms are important for the season. Each institution is a separate art world of people who share common ideas. This theory explains how aninstitution promotes beauty (Lankford, 1992).
Activity 6. Social Studies: Discuss the meaning of "American." What are similarities and differences between North & South & Latin America?
Other Related Activities:
Activity: Compare Botticelli's reproduction of Primavera with the reproduction of Ghirlandaio's Portrait of an Old Man with a Young Boy or another masterpiece of this theme of the ugly vs. beautiful (Hurwitz & Day, 1991). The Reaniassance ideal was the virtuous woman, who plucked her forehead hairlines to achieve smoothness and proportion and had a small mouth with smile that showed no more than six teeth(O'Neill, 2001 p. 65).
Measurement and Testing Approaches:
Activity 9. Pre and post Questionnaires, matching art theories to art work, identifying issues, small group discussion of case puzzle, and art criticism as self-evaluation. Students write the questions and answers, new vocabulary words, and place them in their process portfolios.
Vocabulary Words:
art, absolute and relative, abstract and concrete, preferences, quality, reproduction (copy), beauty, nature; formalism, expressionism, representationalism, institutionalism, sculpture, authentic (original), fake, idealistic, expert, reinterpret symbol, .
References:
Botero, F. (1998). Botero: New works on canvas. New York: Rizzoli. Also The Museum of Arte de Sao Paulo. Posso Gros Mont, Montcalieri, Italy.
Botero Online: http://www.Botero.com.br.
Hurwitz, A., & Day, M. (1991). Children and their art: Methods for the elementary school (5th edition). New York; Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Katz, E., Lankford, L., & Plank, J. (1995). Themes and foundations in art. New York: West Pub. Co.
O'Neill, Mary (2001). Virtue and Beauty: The Renaissance image of the ideal women. Smithsonian 32(6), 62-69.
Yi-Fu, Tuan, (1993). Passing strange and wonderful: Aesthetics, nature and culture. New York: Kodanstra International. [Moral Beauty]
ART ASSESSMENT TOOL (SCORING RUBRIC or RATING SCALE) & CRITERIA
Reinterpret Botero's work; for example, make it more contemporary, or use another style, substitute what is beautiful to you, or create a parody on beauty and its falseness. Use multimedia and add symbols in an exciting way (overlap images).
To reinterpet is to change the form, style, substitute images, to communicate a new idea (parody: satire, poke fun, criticize)
Symbols are images that stand for something else; for example, a rose can mean love and beauty
Creating Art (10 points)
Exceptional: The drawing provides clear evidence that the student can reinterpret several images by changing and substituting forms and symbols to convey a new idea in an exciting way.
Competent: The drawing provides some evidence that the student can can reinterpret several images by changing and substituting forms and symbols to convey a new idea in an exciting way.
Partial: The drawing provides little or no evidence that the student can can reinterpret several images by changing and substituting forms and symbols to convey a new idea in an exciting way.
Aesthetics Rubric (10 points)
Exceptional: The essay provided clear evidence that the student clearly understood institutional ideas on beauty and the pros and cons for reinterpreted classical masterpieces.
Competent: The essay provided some evidence that the student understood some institutional ideas on beauty and the pros and cons for reinterpreted classical masterpieces.
Partial: The essay provided little or no evidence that the student understood institutional ideas on beauty and the pros and cons for reinterpreted classical masterpieces. Their ideas are stereotypical.
Art in Context Rubric (10 points)
Exceptional: The student provided clear evidence for understanding Botero's reinterpretations of classical works and his use of massive forms and provided excellent evidence for choice.
Competent: The student provided some evidence for understanding Botero's reinterpretations of classical works and his use of massive forms and provided excellent evidence for choice.
Partial: The student provided little of no evidence for understanding Botero's reinterpretations of classical works and his use of massive forms and provided excellent evidence for choice.
References
Botero, F. (1998). Botero: New works on canvas. New York: Rizzoli. Also The Museum of Arte de Sao Paulo. Posso Gros Mont, Montcalieri, Italy.
Botero Online: http://www.Botero.com.br.
Castano, P.,& Trujillo , A. (Dir. & Prod.). (1994). The rotund world of Botero (video, 25 min., VHS). West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur International Films.
de Oliveira Godinho, A. (Ed.). (1983). O Museu de Arte Sacra de Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Banco Safra. Museum of Religious Art in Sante Fe.
Hurwitz, A., & Day, M. (1991). Children and their art: Methods for the elementary school (5th edition). New York; Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Katz, E., Lankford, L., & Plank, J. (1995). Themes and foundations in art. New York: West Pub. Co.
Lankford, L. (1992). Point of view: Aesthetics. Reston, VA: NAEA.
Ratcliff, C. (1980). Botero. New York: Abbeville.
Ross. Stephen. (1996). The gift of beauty. Ithaca, NY: SUNY Press.
His book celebrates "the good" --all oppositions point to infinite responsibility. Nature's abundance with beauty and truth as gifts, including the ethics of inclusion.
Art History Synopsis on Botero
For those unfamiliar with Fernando Botero, the following is a brief review of his life and style. Young Botero made maps in geography class, drew animals in zoology, and painted landscapes at his Andean Jesuit high school from which he was expelled because of his nonconformist interest in Picasso. He finished his baccalaureate in painting and later left Colombia to live in Spain, New York, Mexico City, and Paris (Botero, 1998). Botero believed that art is communication and deformation. People found his work satirical, such as his inflated figures represented the ruling class who cannibalized the land and its people (Benton & DiYanni, 1999). He however, was concerned with form plasticity and enlarged sensual body types (Ratcliff, 1980). Botero studied and reinterpreted the works of such European painters as Leonardo, Velasquez, Cezanne, and Manet). His studio is now in Bogota.
Global Awareness:
a. Compare the works of Velasquez (his mentor), Leonardo (whom he admired), and Robert Colescott (Afro-American), for form and parody (USA).
b. Discuss how people in other cultures view the USA and stereotype beauty by viewing TV.
"On weekdays she watched The Bold and the Beautiful and Santa Barbara, where brittle blonde with lipstick and hairstyles rigid with spray seduced androids and defended their sexual empires. Baby Kocahmma [middle class, Asian India--Ayemenem] loved their shiny clothes and the smart bitchy repartee" (Roy, 1997, p. 28). [In Brazil-Xuxu (shoe-sa), Pele's girlfriend]
Roy, A. (1997). The god of small things. New York: HarperCollins. [Winner of Booker Prize depicts life and struggle of social classes in India.]
Chapter: Light: Moral Beauty. Culture is a moral-aesthetic venture to be judged ultimately by its moral beauty" (p. 240). Moral beauty is "a spontaneous act of generosity preformed with unselfish consciousness and grace (240)/ It contains aspects of courage & genuine modesty. Moral beauty flourishes in societies that nurture it, E.g. Buddhism (241). Moral beauty of words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" (243).
Obsession with thinness is driven by Fashion Magazine on Assignment
E; the 6:00 o'clock Evening News with Lesza Gibbons, 2/14/00