Lesson Objective: To teach children about the surrealist movement and their techniques.

Transcription

1 Lesson Objective: To teach children about the surrealist movement and their techniques. Vocabulary: (If the vocabulary words have been provided on poster boards, refer to them here. Otherwise, write the words on the board before you start the discussion on vocabulary) Surrealism: An art movement and a literary movement that was based on images from dreams and the subconscious mind. The actual definition of Surrealism is more art than real. Movement: A style or period of art usually created when a group of artists get together. Sigmund Freud: A psychologist that influenced the surrealists. He claimed that people did things because of what was hidden in the unconscious mind. Unconscious: A part of your brain that senses or reacts without you knowing. Juxtaposition: An artistic device of combining common, everyday objects in unusual or unexpected ways. Realism: A piece of art that is drawn realistically; the way it really is, not how it is in your dreams or imagination. Abstract Art: Art that does not represent scenes, objects or figures from the real world. Abstract artists use geometric shapes and lines as well as bold colors. Cubism: An art movement in which artists made paintings and collages showing a distorted (altered) view of reality by using geometric shapes such as cubes, cylinders and cones. Symbolic: An image that suggests something else. For example, we associate the symbol of a heart with the idea of love. Collage: A combination of materials, such as paper, fabric and photos mounted on a background. Prints Provided: Time Transfixed, Rene Magritte, 1938 Soft Watch at Moment of Explosion, Salvador Dali, 1954 Page 1 of 5

2 Reinforcement Activity Materials Provided: 2 sheets of white paper per student x 14 collage sheet Page 2 of 5

3 Lesson Script: Hello. My name is. Today we are going to talk about Surrealism. Imagine a lobster on top of a telephone or an apple the size of a room! Or how about a person with butterflies for eyes or giant red lips painted in the sky! The surrealists loved these bizarre themes. Their strange, dreamlike visions stunned the art world. Surrealism is an art movement that was started in Paris in The movement was inspired by Sigmund Freud who was a psychologist that interpreted dreams and felt that people were motivated by their unconscious mind. It was an art movement that expressed dream and fantasy worlds. Surrealistic artists expressed themselves in two different styles. Some used abstract art or cubism and others used realism with the images juxtaposed in unusual ways. Surrealistic artists believed that artists shouldn t copy reality. Some artists painted directly from dreams while others created impossible scenes by combining objects or events that had nothing to do with one another. They put everyday objects in unexpected places and mixed together very different ideas and images. Surrealistic art was full of surprises and contradicted our idea of reality. Surrealist artists thought up a whole new way of looking at things. They painted mostly what they remembered from their dreams or anything that popped in their minds. The surrealists hoped their strange works of art would make people think and discover feelings they never knew they had and show them a new way of looking at things. Let s look at some art and talk about the ideas we have discussed. Time Transfixed, Rene Magritte, 1938 Our first picture is Time Transfixed by Belgium artist Rene Magritte. Does this artist paint in a traditional way or an abstract way? Traditional. He Page 3 of 5

4 paints realistically using ordinary objects with simple colors and shapes. He had several favorite subjects which appear over and over again in his paintings. Some of these are steam trains, derby hats, umbrellas and fruit. He often used words in his paintings and made familiar objects seem strange by changing their scale (size in relation to things around them) or by putting them in impossible settings. As you can see in this painting, Magritte has used both of these visual tricks. Can you name them? A steam train would never fit in a fireplace, nor would you ever find one there! Magritte created strange combinations of objects in his paintings that sometimes seemed funny, surprising or even frightening. He wanted you to think about his paintings and enter a mysterious, magical world. Sometimes he combined two objects to make up a third new, weird one. He wanted to show thoughts in his artwork and purposely made his paintings difficult to understand. The titles of his paintings made them even more confusing. Does the title of this painting, Time Transfixed, make sense to anyone? His paintings show an interest in everyday life, but it is a world in which very strange things happen. The stories of his paintings are always weird. Magritte did not paint in an art studio. He painted in his dining room and usually wore a suit while he worked. Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion, Salvador Dali, 1954 Our second painting is Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion by Spanish artist Salvador Dali. Dali was the most famous of all the surrealist artists. His paintings are filled with mysterious objects or familiar objects that have been oddly changed. What do you see in this painting? One of his favorite visual tricks was to make soft or melted objects. Many of his paintings are hard to understand because they came right out of his dreams. He also painted things he remembered from his childhood, even things that frightened him. Does Dali paint in a realistic or abstract style? (Like Magritte he paints in a realistic way). In fact, if you look at Dali s paintings close up, they almost look like photographs. Dali usually worked with tiny Page 4 of 5

5 brushes so you wouldn t see any brush marks. He called his paintings handpainted dream photographs and filled them with odd, dream-like details painted with great care. Dali was fascinated by the idea of seeing two different pictures in one painting. Do you see two pictures in this painting? Dali, the man, was almost as famous as his paintings. He was very flashy and did things for attention, like arriving at an event in a limousine filled with cauliflower or giving a lecture about his art while wearing a deep-sea diving suit! Besides being a painter, Dali was also a film maker, writer, designer of clothes, fancy perfume bottles and ads for magazines. He even worked in Hollywood with Walt Disney. Now let s be artists and try some of the things we learned today. Reinforcement Activity Materials provided: paper, collage sheet Children provide: scissors, glue, markers, pencils or crayon Give each child two pieces of paper and the collage sheet. Have the children cut out the objects from the collage sheet. On the first piece of paper have the children arrange or juxtapose these objects in unusual combinations to make a surrealist collage. If there is time, on the second piece of paper, have the children draw a scene from a dream they had or something from their imagination and not from reality. Page 5 of 5