Classroom Activities
These classroom activities illustrate a learning cycle in which students will work in a whole class setting, with a partner and in collaborative groups after perfecting their ability to look at art through the Observation Discussion Method, described above. After students have developed their visual vocabularies and ability to read a painting, the lessons provided below create a three-step process in which they can demonstrate their understanding and level of skill.
Lesson One: 90-Word Summaries
After mastering the craft of looking at art and analyzing genre painting as a class through the Observational Discussion Method, students will work with a partner to create a ninety-word summary of a specified painting. The partners will decide what is important about the work, what is worth noticing and remarking upon, and what historical connections should be drawn about the artist and their society.
This task asks for a ninety-word description because this is typical length of description for a piece of art on display, either on the wall panel or in the exhibition catalog. This type of constraint-based writing makes students focus on economy and precision of language in a deliberate method.
The number of summaries and the paintings used are at the discretion of the educator and students skill level. A list of Suggested Paintings is provided below, however, this activity can be used with any movement in art in any time period after the foundation skills have been taught to the students.
Lesson Two: Text-Context-Subtext Inquiry Case Studies
In this activity students will work in collaborative groups to research, connect and analyze the history and biography of one of four genre painters (Eastman Johnson, William Sidney Mount, Thomas Waterman Wood and Frank Buscher), all of who painted African-Americans during their lifetime.
If students are not already well versed in the Observational Discussion Method outlined, this must first be taught and practiced. Accordingly, students will then practice this strategy with their partner in a one-on-one setting with lessened teacher direction.
Presuming internet access and reference library access is available, students will collect information about each of the painters, examine several of their paintings in which African-Americans are features and examine the subtext of their painting by applying their historical and biographical understandings to the painting. From this, students will then create a summary, written collaboratively, to include their new understandings of the subtext in a ninety-word summary.
If Internet is not readily available in the classroom, the teacher can simply create a paper database by researching and printing out a variety of articles and resources for students to explore. If students are not familiar with the application of Text-Context-Subtext analysis strategies, or are in need of a refresher, a mini-lesson may need to be implemented prior to asking students to do the work on their own.
Three: Final Project – Photographic Re-Appropriation of Genre Painting
The teacher will introduce students to Yinka Shonibare's Diary of a Victorian Dandy either by projector or printouts and provide the comparative engravings from Hogarth to demonstrate the movement of narrative through multiple still scenes. This may take up to one full hour, as students will get lost in observing and making connections between the pieces of art.
After students have had ample time to absorb the art they have been given as model, the instructor will set students out into groups to create a appropriation of at least three of the genre paintings that have been viewed during the unit. Changes to settings, time periods, genders and other details are left to the student's discretion. Students will use their photographic reenactments to make commentary on issues surrounding depiction of race in genre painting, the art and representation presently, racial topics of the present or any other multitude of interpretations that can be imagined.
The end results can be published via classroom website, printed and displayed in the classroom or distributed electronically, depending on access to resources.
This activity is suggested for high school students only, as some images depict excessive drinking and vice. Additionally, the final photograph in Shonibare's Dandy, entitled 0.300 hours is probably to risqué for many secondary institutions.
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