5 Artist I will use in my Classroom
Leonardo da Vinci
I will use this artist to integrate science, literature, and art in my classroom.
Leonardo da Vinci may seem an unusual topic to study in science. But the more you learn about this remarkable Renaissance man, the more you will realize that he was a terrific role model for applying the scientific method creatively in every aspect of life including art and music. Although he is best known for his dramatic and expressive artwork, Leonardo also conducted dozens of carefully thought out experiments and created futuristic inventions in a time before modern science and invention had really begun.
I will begin my classroom investigation of Leonardo da Vinci by asking my students what they have read or heard about him: Where did he live? When did he live? Why is he famous? I will want them to make a written list of their initial ideas for comparison at the end of their study of Leonardo.
Georgia O'Keefe
I chose this artist because I saw one of her pieces in the High Museum and absolutely loved it. Her pieces can teach about the types of struggles women faced in history.
Summary: Determined from her early years to be an artist, O'Keeffe's career received a boost from famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who promoted her paintings in New York City after seeing her work. They married in 1924, beginning one of history's great creative partnerships. Some of Stieglitz' best work was of O'Keeffe, his muse, and in turn he promoted and encouraged her art throughout his life. Georgia O'Keeffe was an American original, living as she chose, painting what she wanted. It is said that her art is uniquely American, shining with a bright modernism and energy. The lyrical flowers, the New Mexico-inspired vistas of light and shape, the hard-edged, energetic urban landscapes all somehow could only have been painted by an American woman. O'Keeffe painted all her days, committed as always to what she loved: "Art is a wicked thing. It is what we are."
Pablo Picasso
This artist can be used in my classroom to discuss feeling when the “blue period” and the “rose period” are discussed. This artist can also be used as inspiration for my students because he produced complex works of art at an early age.
Brief Summary: Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) was a Spanish artist who revolutionized painting, drawing, sculpture, and ceramics (pottery). Picasso was born in Malaga, in southern Spain. His father was an artist and art teacher. Picasso was a child prodigy, producing complex artwork at an early age.
During his life, Picasso painted in many styles, including realism, cubism (1906-1918), and other abstract styles.
Pablo Picasso was trained as an artist in Spain, but moved to Paris in 1900, when he was 19 years old. In his early career, Picasso worked and lived in Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid. His early paintings were melancholy and featured the color blue, so this period is referred to as his "blue period."
Picasso's "blue period," (1901 to 1904), was followed by his "rose period," (1904-1906), during which Picasso used warmer colors in his paintings. Later, he helped develop cubism (with his friend Georges Braque), a newly-invented style in which objects were represented by cubes, cones, and cylinders. He also experimented with surrealism (a dream-like style with unexpected juxtapositions), abstraction, collage (attaching bits of paper and other scraps to a canvas), mural painting, sculpture, and ceramics.
Norman Rockwell
This artist can be used in my classroom when we are studying American culture, patriotism, and history. Rockwell focuses on the people and the children need to know more than the facts, but how events affected the people.
Summary of Rockwell’s Life: Born in New York City in 1894, Norman Rockwell always wanted to be an artist. At age 14, Rockwell enrolled in art classes at The New York School of Art (formerly The Chase School of Art). Two years later, in 1910, he left high school to study art at The National Academy of Design. He soon transferred to The Art Students League, where he studied with Thomas Fogarty and George Bridgman. Fogarty''s instruction in illustration prepared Rockwell for his first commercial commissions. From Bridgman, Rockwell learned the technical skills on which he relied throughout his long career.
Rockwell found success early. He painted his first commission of four Christmas cards before his sixteenth birthday. While still in his teens, he was hired as art director of Boys'' Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America, and began a successful freelance career illustrating a variety of young people''s publications.
At age 21, Rockwell''s family moved to New Rochelle, New York, a community whose residents included such famous illustrators as J.C. and Frank Leyendecker and Howard Chandler Christy. There, Rockwell set up a studio with the cartoonist Clyde Forsythe and produced work for such magazines as Life, Literary Digest, and Country Gentleman. In 1916, the 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, the magazine considered by Rockwell to be the "greatest show window in America." Over the next 47 years, another 321 Rockwell covers would appear on the cover of the Post. Also in 1916, Rockwell married Irene O''Connor; they divorced in 1930.
The 1930s and 1940s are generally considered to be the most fruitful decades of Rockwell''s career. In 1930 he married Mary Barstow, a schoolteacher, and the couple had three sons, Jarvis, Thomas, and Peter. The family moved to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939, and Rockwell''s work began to reflect small-town American life.
In 1943, inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt''s address to Congress, Rockwell painted the Four Freedoms paintings. They were reproduced in four consecutive issues of The Saturday Evening Post with essays by contemporary writers. Rockwell''s interpretations of Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear proved to be enormously popular. The works toured the United States in an exhibition that was jointly sponsored by the Post and the U.S. Treasury Department and, through the sale of war bonds, raised more than $130 million for the war effort.
Mary Cassatt
This artist can be used in the classroom when we are studying America and the people of America at different times. Students will also be encouraged to focus on the events of everyday life and their importance in the art world.
Summary: The daughter of an affluent Pittsburgh businessman, whose French ancestry had endowed him with a passion for that country, she studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and then traveled extensively in Europe, finally settling in Paris in 1874. In that year she had a work accepted at the Salon and in 1877 made the acquaintance of Degas, with whom she was to be on close terms throughout his life. His art and ideas had a considerable influence on her own work; he introduced her to the Impressionists and she participated in the exhibitions of 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1886, refusing to do so in 1882 when Degas did not.
She was a great practical support to the movement as a whole, both by providing direct financial help and by promoting the works of Impressionists in the USA, largely through her brother Alexander. By persuading him to buy works by Manet, Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Degas and Pissarro, she made him the first important collector of such works in America. She also advised and encouraged her friends the Havemeyers to build up their important collection of works by Impressionists and other contemporary French artists.
Her own works, on the occasions when they were shown in various mixed exhibitions in the USA, were very favourably received by the critics and contributed not a little to the acceptance of Impressionism there. Despite her admiration for Degas, she was no slavish imitator of his style, retaining her own very personal idiom throughout her career. From him, and other Impressionists, she acquired an interest in the rehabilitation of the pictural qualities of everyday life, inclining towards the domestic and the intimate rather than the social and the urban (Lady at the Teatable, 1885; Metropolitan Museum, New York), with a special emphasis on the mother and child theme in the 1890s (The Bath, 1891; Art Institute of Chicago). She also derived from Degas and others a sense of immediate observation, with an emphasis on gestural significance.
