General Information: During the introduction to the unit, at the Yale galleries, and during critiques the above historical information and background of the above four portraits will be featured. The lead-in to the studio work will include visits to each of the Yale galleries.
I. Initial visits to the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery will introduce the students to the four, featured portraits. In addition, students will discuss portraiture, as a genre.
II. To place this unit on portraiture in context, some brief preliminary material will look at some similarities and differences in the way different cultures read gestures, acknowledging the importance of that awareness. Students will view a video from the University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning,
A World of Gestures
, and take part in a follow up discussion.
III. As an additional warm-up activity, students will observe and discuss the photographs of then first lady Hillary Clinton, in the December 1998 issue of Vogue magazine. The article featured a series of photographs by famed photographer, Annie Leibovitz, who photographed her subject with an eye to establishing the public image of a multi-faceted Hillary.
Any number of other examples of image making may be selected for follow-up discussion. These examples may be selected from magazine articles and/or from advertisements. This discussion may be concerning student-selected images, with discussion driven by each student selecting the given image.
The discussion will follow the four levels of critique:
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1. Description – What do you see? How would you report facts, avoiding editorial comments?
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2. Analysis – How did the artist make use of the design principles to take advantage of the design principles?
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3. Interpretation – What is the meaning of the work? What is communicated by means of gesture? Are there any objects that might represent the sitter's attributes? Does the environment suggest characteristics of subject? What is the perspective of the viewer? How does the point-of-view depicted effect your interpretation?
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4. Judgment – What aspects of the work do you consider the visual and/or conceptual strength of the work?
For this purpose, discussion of the above images will emphasize
description
and
interpretation
.
IV. To continue the reflection of the historical images, students will compare and contrast Reynolds' portrait of Mrs. Abington and Kauffman's portrait of David Garrick, as introduced in the unit write up.
V. The first warm-up studio activity will involve rotational figure drawing. This session will work something like musical chairs. Students will establish stations around a model and each student will select different color of conte crayon. The drawing stations will remain stationary, only the students will move to new locations, taking with them their individual conte crayons. The initial drawing session will last for twenty minutes then the students will rotate to new positions. The subsequent sessions will last approximately 5-10 minutes each. Students will be encouraged to draw on top of existing lines to modify the drawing to reflect their viewpoints. The wrap up critique will focus on the impact of the changes that took place, during the activity.
VI. The second studio activity will allow the students to remain at their own stations for the duration of the drawing session. First, the students will add to earlier discussions about attributes and objects that could be added to suggest the given attributes. The set-up for drawing will be the same, as activity IV, with the students in a circle around the model. The students will collaborate on giving the model a basic pose. Each student will draw the model, adding objects as attributes and any environmental features to reinforce the image desired. Students will ask each other about their image-making work, how viewers might read their work, and whether or not the work resulted in desired effect.
VII. The culminating studio activity for this unit will be self-portraits, with each student establishing his/her individually, desired image. The students will create either real or fictitious settings, utilizing any number of references. Each student/artist will include one or more objects to suggest personal attributes. The basic medium will be graphite pencil, but may include one or more of the following: colored pencils, watercolor, watercolor pencils, gouache, collage, and/or transferred images.
VIII. The students will complete the unit by presenting their own work and by participating in class discussion, based on the levels of critique.