Wednesday, December 22, 2010

CONTEST!

Fences Project

Any art student is allowed to enter the contest upon completion of their fence project. Students are allowed to do an extra fence project AFTER everyone has had the chance to do their first project.

Three Categories:

Most meaningful and/or symbolic
Craftsmanship
Elements & Principles (2/3rds rule/“Fill the frame,” texture, value, symbolism…)

1st place winners will receive homemade cookies & a cowboy coupon!
2nd & 3rd place winners will receive a cowboy coupon!

Deadline to enter is February 1st. Entries must be accompanied by a written statement about your artwork.

Art Movement ~ Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.

Impressionism also describes art created in this style, but outside of the late 19th century time period.

~ Source: Wikipedia



Claude Monet
The Cliffs at Etretat
1885


Mary Cassatt
Lydia Leaning on Her Arms (in a theatre box)
1879


Edgar Degas
Tänzerinnen an der Stange
1888


Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Bal du moulin de la Galette
1876

Artist ~ Claude Monet


Photo by Nadar
1899

Waterlilies
1906

Haystacks, (Sunset)
1890-1891

Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son
1875


Claude Monet: French painter, initiator, leader, and unswerving advocate of the Impressionist style. He is regarded as the archetypal Impressionist in that his devotion to the ideals of the movement was unwavering throughout his long career, and it is fitting that one of his pictures--Impression: Sunrise (Musée Marmottan, Paris; 1872)gave the group his name.

His youth was spent in Le Havre, where he first excelled as a caricaturist but was then converted to landscape painting by his early mentor Boudin, from whom he derived his firm predilection for painting out of doors. In 1859 he studied in Paris at the Atelier Suisse and formed a friendship with Pissarro. After two years' military service in Algiers, he returned to Le Havre and met Jongkind, to whom he said he owed `the definitive education of my eye'. He then, in 1862, entered the studio of Gleyre in Paris and there met Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille, with whom he was to form the nucleus of the Impressionist group.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) he took refuge in England with Pissarro: he studied the work of Constable and Turner, painted the Thames and London parks, and met the dealer Durand-Ruel, who was to become one of the great champions of the Impressionists. From 1871 to 1878 Monet lived at Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris, and here were painted some of the most joyous and famous works of the Impressionist movement, not only by Monet, but by his visitors Manet, Renoir and Sisley. In 1878 he moved to Vétheuil and in 1883 he settled at Giverny, also on the Seine, but about 40 miles from Paris. After having experienced extreme poverty, Monet began to prosper. By 1890 he was successful enough to buy the house at Giverny he had previously rented and in 1892 he married his mistress, with whom he had begun an affair in 1876, three years before the death of his first wife. From 1890 he concentrated on series of pictures in which he painted the same subject at different times of the day in different lights---Haystacks or Grainstacks (1890-91) and Rouen Cathedral (1891-95) are the best known. He continued to travel widely, visiting London and Venice several times (and also Norway as a guest of Queen Christiana), but increasingly his attention was focused on the celebrated water-garden he created at Giverny, which served as the theme for the series of paintings on Water-lilies that began in 1899 and grew to dominate his work completely (in 1914 he had a special studio built in the grounds of his house so he could work on the huge canvases).

In his final years he was troubled by failing eyesight, but he painted until the end. He was enormously prolific and many major galleries have examples of his work.


Born Nov. 14, 1840 in Paris and died Dec. 5, 1926 in Giverny

Source: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/

Between Fences Project and Extra Credit!

Meeker's White River Museum has the privilege of having a Smithsonian exhibit on display until February 26th! As a class we will be making some fence posts for our first project of the semester.

We live between Fences.

The United States as we know it could not have been settled and built without fences. They continue to be an integral part of our Nation. Fences stand for security.

FENCED IN or FENCED OUT

WE may hardly notice them, but fences are dominant features in our lives and in our history.

Fences are more than functional objects. They are powerful symbols. The way we define ourselves as individuals and as a nation becomes concrete in how we build fences.

FENCES ARE POWERFUL SYMBOLS

We use them to enclose our houses and our neighborhoods. They are decorative structures that are as much a part of the landscape as trees and flowers. Without fences, agriculture and industry would be difficult to imagine. Private ownership of lands would be an abstract concept.

BETWEEN FENCES IS A COMPELLING LOOK AT PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE HISTORY. ~ Source: White River Museum brochure

For more information, please check this link out:

Smithsonian

EXTRA CREDIT: Visit the White River Museum and write about your experience. If you present it to the class you earn additional extra credit!

EXTRA CREDIT: Read and write a book report about any of the following books for extra credit. Make sure you make reference to our fence project in your report.
Barbed Wire: A Political History by Oliver Razac and Jonathan Kneight
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
The Magic Curtain: The Mexican-American Border in Fiction, Film, and Song by Thomas Torrans