|
 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
• Students will research how conceptions of nature are embedded in visual art forms. • Students will look at the art of specific artists to explore the relationships between humans and place. • Students will look critically at the images we create today to describe our relationship to landscape and the environment.
Art:21 Web Site • Printmaking & Natural History Artists—Walton Ford interview & clip • Political Humor & Colonial Critique—Walton Ford interview & clip • Collodion Process —Sally Mann interview & clip • Deep South series —Sally Mann art work • German Brutality & Roman Sensuality—Pictures of Soldiers in the Landscape— Collier Schorr interview & clip • Roden Crater— James Turrell interview & clip • Revival Field— Mel Chin interview & clip • Building Surfaces —Vija Celmins interview & clip Additional Web Sites • http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa15.htm Visions of the Frontier: American Landscapes..., High Museum of Art • http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/americansublime/ American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820-1880, Exhibition at the Tate, Britain • http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa269a1.htm The West’s Best at Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Bierstadt and Moran • http://www.artchive.com/artchive/hudsonriver.html Hudson River School • http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/moran.html Thomas Moran • http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/bierstadt.html Albert Bierstadt • http://www.madbbs.com/~rcw/US_history/manifest_destiny.htm Manifest Destiny • http://www.americanwest.com/pages/wexpansi.htm History of western expansion • http://metmuseum.org/special/Thomas_Struth/struth_images.htm Thomas Struth photographs • http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_141.html Bernd and Hilla Becher • http://www.albrightknox.org/pastexh/Becher/becher.html Bernd and Hilla Becher Industrial Facades • http://www.newyorkartworld.com/reviews/esser.html Elger Esser • http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ National Geographic • http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/ Smithsonian Magazine • http://www.audubon.org/ National Audubon Society • http://www.discover.com/ Discover Magazine • http://www.walkerart.org/education/aom/99sept/ Art by Bernd and Hilla Becher - German Düsseldorf School of Photography • http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartthumbnails.asp?gid=1&cid=6828 Art by Bernd and Hilla Becher "Typologies", 2001 • http://www.jiffysquid.com/gursky.html Art by Andreas Gursky - German Düsseldorf School of Photography • http://metmuseum.org/special/Thomas_Struth/struth_images.htm Art by Thomas Struth - German Düsseldorf School of Photography Classroom Materials • Current Newspapers and Magazines
• How does art convey the connections between humans and place or landscape? • What are the relationships between (environmental) ethics and aesthetics? Between politics and art? • How are conceptions of nature embedded in art forms? • What are the ways that art serves as a form of communication and as moral education? • How do particular artists and art movements engage in the issue of environmental ethics? • What are the visual images we create today that reflect current environmental issues, concerns, and agendas?
Manifest Destiny and the American Sublime 19th Century landscape painters like the Hudson River Group were creating landscape images that reflected religious and political agendas such as Manifest Destiny and westward expansion. The term "sublime" refers to the aesthetic experience of being overwhelmed, filled with awe at something so majestic that it evokes a sense of infinity. The paintings created by the Hudson River Group in the 1880’s, including artists such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, were typically large in scale, depicting vast mountain ranges, sunsets, waterfalls, and storms. The work of these 19th century artists responded in large part to the physical features and scale of nature in the New World as well as to the aspirations of Americans in the century following their independence from Britain. Ask students to identify specific connections between particular landscape images from the 19th century Hudson River Group artists and the policies of Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion being created and advocated for at the time. (Time: One 45 minute session) Contemporary Relationships Discuss the work of other contemporary artists like Mel Chin’s Revival Field, Vija Celmins’s paintings, and James Turrell’s Roden Crater, who incorporate the landscape or natural surroundings in their work. How might their images and artistic projects translate into political or moral agendas, philosophies or policies about the environment? Compare and contrast specific images by different artists. How are the images they create participating in a conversation about the environment? What is the conversation about? What is the tone? Where is it going? Are these conversations political? If so, how? (Time: One 45 minute session) The American South The artists Sally Mann and Walton Ford each have personal connections to the landscape and political and cultural legacy of the American South. Living and working in Lexington, Virginia, Mann’s series of landscape photographs, Deep South, create eerie, almost haunted images of lushly overgrown and unpopulated rural fields and ruined houses. Walton Ford paints colorful, comical and satirical images of humans and animals cavorting in unnatural, often disturbing scenarios in Audubon-esque landscapes. With a family history that includes plantation and slave-owners, Ford makes images that address the traumatic history of colonialism and the dynamics of power while Mann’s personal relationship with her images stems from the immediacy of her surroundings. View the images of Deep South and several of Ford’s images such as Compromise and The Sensorium and discuss how each of the images presents a narrative about the landscape. What are these narratives and how do they reflect actual events or issues from the past? (Time: One 45 minute session) The Dusseldorf Academy and the Landscape of Germany In the 1960s and ’70s, a group of photographers from Germany emerged with an interest in documenting the German industrial and pastoral landscape. Centered at the Dusseldorf Academy in Dusseldorg, Germany, the principal teachers and founders of this school of photographic thought was the couple Bernd and Hilla Becher who influenced successive photographers such as Thomas Struth and Elger Esser, among others. The photographic landscapes that emerged from this school were often unpopulated, quiet, and romantic images of landscape or architecture. Reacting to these images, the artist Collier Schorr describes her interest in re-approaching photographic landscapes, specifically the German landscape, as an effort to recapture the landscape as a site of tension, politics, even violence. Read the interview German Brutality & Roman Sensuality—Pictures of Soldiers in the Landscape where Schorr discussess her relationship to previous photographic projects capturing the German landscape and discuss how her images relate to the photographs being taken by members of the Düsseldorf Academy. Compare and contrast both the aesthetic qualities of the images and the motivations for taking them. How do the Düsseldorf Academy images reflect the political and social concerns of the time? How do Schorr’s images reflect both her own political and social concerns as well as the larger social and political concerns of the day? (Time: One 45 minute session) Make an Archive Using magazines, newspapers, the Internet and other sources, create an archive of images that depict the natural landscape and our relationship to the natural world. Categorize and organize your archive according to the major themes that surface in the images you collect. Write accompanying text to describe the themes and the connections to current environmental issues and policies. (Time: Two 45 minute sessions)
• Have students demonstrated an understanding of how conceptions of nature are embedded in visual art forms? • Have students demonstrated a critical perspective about the ways that artists have represented the relationships between humans and place? • Have students created an archive of images and accompanying text that describes their ideas on relationships between humans and place and the natural environment? Find out if this lesson plan correlates to your state's education standards! On PBS TeacherSource do a search for "Art in the 21st Century" and click on the Standards Match icon.
The following lesson activities could be extended to include other examples of visual representations of political and historic events and policies such as images from the 19th century imperialist countries such as England, Portugal, Belgium, or France. In addition, this lesson could also be expanded to form a unit or a longer course of study with the following lessons: Ode to a View In the Landscape Traditional Crafts and Contemporary Practice Did you use this lesson or generate your own activities based on ideas inspired by the lesson? Submit student art work, new lesson plans, and your comments to Art:21 and have them posted on the site. Help the Online Lesson Library grow!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
