Patricia A. Morrison
Too often in today's public school education learning and teaching are compartmentalized so that students never fully appreciate the inter-relatedness of all disciplines. When I accepted a chemistry position at Cooperative Arts and Humanities Magnet High School, I realized that, by its very nature, the school would not attract students with the strongest math and science interests, but I was excited by the mandate to introduce the arts into academic subjects. Here was an opportunity to highlight the connections between all subjects. I planned projects with visual arts, dance, theater and music teachers, but as rewarding as these enrichment activities were, they were not the truly integrated approach I was seeking. Dr. Jules Prown's seminar, "Art as Evidence," provides an opportunity to develop a unit which employs art as the key to open the door to chemistry, the scientific method, and color theory as it relates to light, pigments, and ionic compounds. This unit will develop a series of lessons revolving around a detailed examination of Joseph Wright's "The Blacksmith Shop." The approach will be used with lessons throughout the year and culminate with a visit to the art conservation laboratory at the Yale University Art Gallery.
I have always believed that the artist and scientist have much in common; Dr. Prown's method of object analysis provides an ideal means of highlighting these similarities. This method requires keen observational skills and a disciplined, orderly approach for proceeding from the general to the specific, the obvious to the more subtle.
The systematic analysis proceeds in three distinct stages: description, deduction and speculation.
The first stage reaches for objectivity by describing exactly what one sees without drawing any conclusions. This description starts with substantial analysis which, in addition to including measurements of physical size and determining prime materials, may involve using the tools normally associated with the scientist: ultraviolet lamps, infrared photographs, electron microscopes and x-ray diffraction. (Prown, 7-8) Our spring visit to the conservation lab will give students an opportunity to see these tools employed.
Iconography, or analyzing the content of the picture, comes next, followed by a formal analysis of the object's visual character. The latter includes the way that lines, shapes, textures, color and light help to organize the picture both two-dimensionally and three dimensionally. (Prown, 8) Examining something "familiar," like a painting, in this detailed manner sharpens students' ability to describe what they actually see when a chemical reaction occurs.
The second stage in the method moves, ideally, from the complete detachment of the observer to his sensory, intellectual and emotional involvement with the object. In other words it is the time for posing questions: What is the setting or where is the action taking place? How, what, would you feel if you were present in the painting? What is happening just beyond the frame? What is the purpose of the object? "Deduction must be something that reasonable people agree on, or be set aside." (Dr. Jules Prown, March 20, 2001) Just as one deduces information not specifically illustrated in a painting, students must deduce possible causes of the observations they make. Some deductions are obvious; others require further questions, research, and experimentation.
The final stage in the analysis process, speculation, activates the imagination and calls for creative interpretation and development of hypotheses and theories concerning all the data one has collected. Steeped in the first step of creative speculation, one then must move to a plan of scholarly research to substantiate possibilities that have been suggested. This is the same path that the scientist follows, only the scientist adds experimentation. (Prown, 9-10)
Because I normally have a high percentage of students with a visual arts focus, I plan to begin the year with an introduction to Dr. Prown's method of object analysis and a visit to the Yale Center for British Art to examine Joseph Wright's
The Blacksmith's Shop
. Wright painted this oil on canvas in 1771, the same period that chemistry was emerging out of alchemy. He is an ideal artist to study because he was among the first to "exploit" the "artistic possibilities" (Nicholson, Vol. I , 111) of this forward leap of science. Although not a scientist himself, his close friendships with many members of the Lunar Society, a group of intellectuals interested in the newest inventions and latest developments in science (Nicholson, 131) and with leading industrialist patrons, such as Josiah Wedgwood (Nicholson, 143-149 and Richard Arkwright (Nicholson, 162-169) kept him in close contact with the world of science and technology.
When painting a scene revolving around science, such as
The Alchemist in search of the Philosopher's Stone
, illustrating the discovery of phosphorus, (Nicholson, Vol. II, 74),
A Philosopher giving a Lecture on the Orrey
(Nicholson, 30-31), an 18th century version of a planetarium (Nicholson, Vol. I , 114), or
An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump
, (Nicholson, 35,36) he worked meticulously to assure the accuracy of both equipment and process (Nicholson Vol. I, 120). John Whitehurst, a clockmaker and Lunar Society member (Nicholson 114, 131) and Peter Perez Burdette, cartographer and specialist in aquatint techniques (Nicholson, 117-119) frequently acted as consultants for Wright's scientific pictures. These paintings intrigue the viewer by combining a clear presentation of factual knowledge and scientific apparatus with the magic and mystery of discovering the unknown. For Wright, like for most men of his age, class and upbringing, "The magic had not gone out of industry, and …it represented a hope for the future…. (Nicholson, 121) Although we will not have time to examine these paintings in chemistry, I will encourage my visual arts students who are interested in extra credit to research these works further.
On the opening day of school a copy of
The Blacksmith's Shop
, along with a series of former students' etchings which emphasize the chemistry-art relationship, will be displayed on the walls. These will provide the background for my explanation to the students of my approach to chemistry. The in-depth study of five major topics begins in
The Blacksmith's Shop
: the scientific method, laboratory safety, fundamental definitions and concepts in chemistry energy, chemical and physical changes, chemical and physical properties and the theories of light and color and their relationship to atomic structure. Because this is a very unusual approach to chemistry in a standard college course, especially in these days of extreme emphasis on CAPT scores and meeting standards, this unit shows how I incorporate the painting in an extended series of lessons and assignments rather than a detailed single lesson. A teacher using this approach might well integrate different laboratory experiments and teaching strategies. An annotated bibliography suggests enrichment material that a teacher using this integrated approach might want to investigate.