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overview
Lesson 1 | Summary
Activity Pages
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lesson 1 | ode to a view
activity | ode to yesterday
History is often a source of inspiration for contemporary artists,
who frequently draw upon the ideas and styles established by the
writers, artists, and thinkers that came before them to create something
new. Josiah McElheny has been strongly
influenced by the Modernist theories
posited by Buckminster Fuller and has
also incorporated the iconic stylings of Christian
Dior and Isamu Noguchi into his
glass work, creating visual odes to historic figures that he admires.
Introduce your students to McElheny’s work and sources using
his Art:21 video segment, interview and Web links (see link above),
and images of “Modernity
circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely” and “Model
for Total Reflective Abstraction (after Buckminster Fuller and Isamu
Noguchi)," pieces which McElheny describes in the following
quote:
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"I made a series
of works about a conversation between Noguchi and Buckminster
Fuller—an aesthetic proposal from 1929—in which
they talked about a kind of sculpture abstraction that could
exist without any shadow. They said it would have to be a
perfectly reflective environment—the ultimate aesthetic
utopia where the context and the object are unified completely.
And so I've been fascinated by the idea I've been making some
models of it—like Noguchi's landscape model sculptures—trying
to turn those into a manifestation of this idea." |
How does McElheny’s work function as an ode to his sources
and to the cultural landscape of the Modernist era? Why do you think
McElheny feels particularly connected with the Modernist movement
and to these particular figures? How have other artists paid tribute
to their sources or predecessors? How does McElheny translate his
inspirational sources into something new? Is his work new?
Discuss the idea of originality using the following quote from McElheny:
"Some people have asked me whether I have any desire to do
something original. I often explain that a lot of my work, all of
my work, is derived from some previous source at some level and
that what I'm doing is re-imagining something or shifting or transforming
it slightly but always very much in connection to its source. It's
never occurred to me– this idea of, quote-unquote, originality
being important."
Is McElheny's work original? What makes an artwork creative or original?
Is original art possible now, or as McElheny questions, important?
Ask your students to think about these questions as they translate
the work of an important historical figure: T.S.
Eliot. Students should read “The
Waste Land,” a major literary work of the Modernist era
by Eliot, and write in their journals about what they think the
poem means and how they relate to it personally. Students should
then write their own poem, song, or rap translating Eliot’s
concerns to contemporary issues using their own writing styles.
Ask that your students then create a visual interpretation of their
piece as a homage to Eliot, or ask them to choose another writer
that has been influential in their lives as the basis for their
visual ode. Students should then write a short essay describing
how their piece relates to their inspirational source and why or
why not they would consider it to be original. |
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the next activity for this lesson
Ode to the Land
This lesson introduces the work of artists Sally
Mann, Collier Schorr, James
Turrell, and Paul Pfeiffer as
the basis for a long term project in which students read poems by
Frost, Wordsworth, and Emerson and design an outdoor installation
or structure for a site of their choosing.
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