Digital Media: Light Painting

In Digital Media we are learning the Light Painting technique uses some fee smart phone apps in class.  Above is the demonstration image I created in 4th period class and below is the free app I used to create it.

Each student should create their own light painting image but you can work with others to create them.  This technique has been around for many years, below is an example of Picasso painting with light!

Studio Art: Artist Inspiration

This week in Studio Art we will complete our first art history unit by creating a work of art in our sketchbook inspired by one of the artists we learned about in class.  This is done by professionals as well such as the portraits above by Picasso and Matisse who showed their work to each other and were rivals and friends.  The piece is due today on Wednesday.

Art Honor Society: Field Trip to the Met Museum

Yesterday the Art Honor Society joined the upper level Spanish students for a group field trip to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC as well as lunch at Azulejos.  

We had a chance to stroll through the Modern and Contemporary sections checking out work from a number of the artists we learned about in class from Chuck Close and Alex Katz to Picasso and Van Gogh.  



We also had a chance to see some of the work that won this years Scholastic Art Awards which gives some insight into what the expectations are for the awards.  

AP Art: Artist Biographical Films

As the testing week approaches here's a list of a few terrific films on art and artists for inspiration that all happen to be available on Netflix streaming right now along with a few others below that aren't but are worth getting a hold of in helping to keep the creative juices flowing. 

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Director: Alison Klayman

This compelling documentary explores three years in the life of celebrated Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who uses social media and his art to inspire protests against the state, and suffers government persecution for his actions.

 

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Director: Banksy

Filmmaker Thierry Guetta's project to chronicle the underground world of street art takes a fascinating twist when he meets elusive stencil artist Banksy, who turns the project around to film Guetta while he reinvents himself as a street artist.

 

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Director: Tamra Davis
Controversial, charismatic artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is the subject of this insightful documentary from director Tamra Davis, who has uncovered a never-before-seen interview with the artist conducted before his untimely death at the age of 27.

 

Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies

Director: Arne Glimcher
Director Arne Glimcher (The Mambo Kings) and narrator-producer Martin Scorsese present this art-filled documentary that explores the connection between cinema and the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Extraordinary film clips from Georges Méliès and others offer a cinephile's delight, as interviews with filmmakers, artists and historians, including Scorsese, Chuck Close, and Julian Schnabel, give insightful commentary.
 

And Everything Is Going Fine

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Spalding Gray, known for his radically minimal solo shows staged on equally spare sets, is the focus of this unconventional documentary that compiles rare footage of what amounts to a posthumous monologue by the writer and actor.

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye

Director: Heinz Bütler
Exploring the life and work of influential French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, this captivating documentary tells the story of a camera-shy photographer whose vision quietly shaped the emerging field of photojournalism. Focusing primarily on the artist's career from the 1940s to the '60s, the film features memorable images of Marilyn Monroe, Henri Matisse, the liberation of Paris and the death of Gandhi.

Waste Land

Director: Lucy Walker, Karen Harley, João Jardim
Renowned artist Vik Muniz embarks on one of the most inspired collaborations of his career, joining creative forces with Brazilian garbage pickers who mine treasure from the trash heaps of Rio de Janeiro's Jardim Gramacho landfill.

Rivers and Tides

Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer
This astonishing documentary from Thomas Riedelsheimer shadows renowned sculptor Andy Goldsworthy as he creates works of art with ice, driftwood, leaves, stone, dirt and snow in open fields, beaches, rivers, creeks and forests. With each new creation, he carefully studies the energetic flow and transitory nature of his work. The film won the Golden Gate Award Grand Prize for Best Documentary at the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Crumb

Director: Terry Zwigoff
Director Terry Zwigoff spent six years compiling this portrait of the underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, an animation cult hero whose characters Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural became counterculture icons. Candid interviews with Crumb's friends, family and the artist himself render a compelling profile of a tormented man who transcended a harrowing upbringing. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Between the Folds

Director: Vanessa Gould
Filmmaker Vanessa Gould takes you on a provocative odyssey into the mesmerizing world of modern origami, where artists and scientists use the ancient art form to craft works of delicate beauty and to model cutting-edge mathematical theories. Pushing the envelope of origami to include caricatured portraits and elaborate abstract designs, these experts examine how paper folding can reveal the profound connection between art, science and philosophy.

Sketches of Frank Gehry

Director: Sydney Pollack
In this intimate documentary, Sydney Pollack explores the signature style of architect Frank Gehry, whose famous works include the Fish in Barcelona, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and various residences. Pollack starts with Gehry's original sketches and follows their evolution from a 3D model to a computer-assisted rendition, on to construction and, finally, to the polished finished product.

Helvetica

Director: Gary Hustwit
We use it every day on our computers, we see it on street signs -- and we take it for granted. Now, Gary Hustwit's unique documentary introduces us to Helvetica, a font whose readability has made it the most popular font in the world.
Basquiat

Director: Julian Schnabel

Director Julian Schnabel's biopic won an Independent Spirit Award for its depiction of Jean-Michel Basquiat's meteoric rise in New York's art world, his anguish over his family, and his hatred of a society that both courted and exploited him. In 1981, Basquiat (Jeffrey Wright) was a 19-year-old graffiti artist living on the streets. Eight years later, he was a world-renowned painter -- and the tragic victim of his own addiction.

 

My Architect: A Son's Journey

Director: Nathaniel Kahn

Documentarian Nathaniel Kahn examines the life and career of his father, architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974), whose work included the Salk Institute and the Parliament and Capitol Buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Among other surprising facts, the Oscar-nominated film reveals that the elder Kahn died of a heart attack in a Penn Station bathroom, unidentified and broke despite having been one of the century's most influential visionaries.

 

 

 Also worth checking out:

• Pollock
• Frida
• Surviving Picasso
• Art 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century
• The Gates

 

 

 

 

AP Art: Reinterpreting Historic Subject Matter

In AP Art this week we will be exploring subject matter and themes in art history that has been interpreted by a number of different well known artists.  Religious and mythical subjects like Madonna and Child and the Birth of Venus have been regular subject for hundreds of years but even in modern times Picasso reinterpreted Matisse as well as Lichtenstein had his version of an abstract expressionist painting.  This week each student will be asked to choose a subject that artists have explored and to create their own interpretation of it and in doing so you may change the context of the original in order to create new meaning.