The Prepared Environment: Materials and Their History

he rep red n ironment M teri ls nd heir istory PHYLLIS POTTISH-LEWIS

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THE ART PREPARED ART ENVIRONMENT: Materials and Their Stories 1 Dr. Montessori said, “The first thing [the] teacher must do is to prepare the environment.”2 She believed that this environment should encompass every aspect of beauty possible.

She asserted that the teacher “must put everything in order in the environment. She must see that the material is in perfect order. She must see that everything is attractive, so that the children will like this environment as soon as they enter it.”3 Dr. Montessori’s advice extends to every part of the environment, including the prepared art environment and its materials. She believed that “my teachers should be cultivators of the fine arts”4 since in her method, “art is considered a means to life. It is beauty in all its forms which helps the inner man to grow.”5 Her words have launched our mission! We must compose our classrooms employing the beautifying elements an artist does when he arranges images on his canvas. Our classrooms are our canvases. We are not indifferently preparing an environment; we are composing a work of art.

Just as the artist has the elements of design to consider as he constructs his work, we teachers, too, have our elements of design to appraise as we strive to fashion an appealing environment worthy of our children. In an aesthetically composed classroom those elements to be purposefully considered are the walls, shelves, floors, and materials.

Walls The walls frame our composition and feature in the overall beauty of the classroom. They offer a canvas to curate a variety of charming, interesting, and lovely depictions from the worlds of art, nature, and people.

These images should be changed periodically lest they become trite and stale. Changing the illustrations enlivens the children’s interest in exploring novel impressions and opens doors to expose different particularities of the world.

Shelves The shelves are important as they house the beautiful Montessori materials. Each piece of illuminating material should be easily seen and accessed by the children, otherwise the material cannot call to them. If

1 © Phyllis Pottish-Lewis, 2023.

2 The 1946 London Lectures, 227

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3 Ibid

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The Advanced Montessori Method, Volume Two, 179.

5 Ibid

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the shelves are cluttered, the materials are obscured. The shelves should always be kept clean and dirtfree—especially the art shelves as they are easily soiled and smudged with various pigments, charcoal, and clay. To forestall any such predicament, careful clean-up lessons must be part and parcel of all art lessons.

Lovely objects from nature and different cultures can adorn this space too. These latter items serve a twofold purpose: they enhance the beauty of the classroom as well as awaken the children’s investigative urges. To further beautify the environment and the shelves, small miscellaneous materials (such as cards and beads) can be kept in colorful fetching containers from different cultures and parts of the world.

Floors Those with experience working with elementary children will recognize some children tend to spill, upset, upend—any verb you want to use—resulting in a mess on various surfaces. For this reason, it is best if messy art activities are done in areas of the classroom where the floors, counters and tables are easily cleaned and protected. Spilled ink on a rug is more traumatic for the child than it is for the rug. If this art area has access to a water source, all the better. Another good measure is to place the art shelves near the water source in the event of a mishap involving the art materials.

INTRODUCTION TO ART MATERIALS Caring for the Art Materials Art materials can be expensive. While our budgets may limit the caliber of materials we provide, we still must equip the classroom with the ones that will meet the needs of the children’s chosen tasks. A cheap paint brush whose hairs flop about can make unintended marks on the piece, thus defeating the child’s imaginative goal and discouraging him from continuing his explorations in art. No matter the grades of material, we want to ensure that the children take exceptional care cleaning them so that their lives can be extended as much as possible for maximum use. The success of this goal begins with the teacher’s clear, precise presentation of how to use the different kinds of materials properly. Not only do we need to show the children precisely how to use the materials, but we need to emphasize the cleanup process as of equal importance, as mentioned earlier. This process could be a lesson unto itself to stress how meticulous we must be when cleaning the paint out of a brush or how we position the brush upright in a container, for example, so the hairs do not get bent and hard to control.

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By giving these exact and detailed lessons on the use and cleanup of the art materials, we have defined the expectations associated with their use. To help the children succeed at these expectations, the teacher needs to have systems in place to reinforce the required particulars of the care process. The children need to be apprised of these systems and the reasons for having them. Simply put, they must be established as a means of support for the successful use of different media.

Another system that is critical for preserving the cleanliness and beauty of the classroom is the creation of the job chart. This instrument can be constructed after the children have observed and determined which tasks need to be tackled to maintain the standard of beauty set for the classroom. This chart will list those tasks and the children designated to oversee them. The maintenance of the art shelves should also be managed through this process. However, the children ultimately responsible for cleaning the art materials are the children who used them. With the clear delineation of material-cleaning lessons, the children are accountable for meeting the attending requirements. If a teacher has given explicit, straightforward lessons regarding the use of the art materials, and a child fails to meet the expectations, then the freedom to use them must be rescinded until the child feels he is ready to comply. Because making art is so satisfying and gratifying, the children quickly learn to meet the expectations, often after only one loss of the privilege.

A Montessori Artist Extraordinaire Before moving onto the Art Materials for the classroom, I want to introduce you to Golnar Casey Parry. I have known Golnar personally since the time she took the position at Marin Montessori School as my assistant—a deliberate step in her career to determine if Montessori principles suited her talents and aspirations for life. As it turned out, they did. With that realization she acquired her AMI elementary diploma and among other things went on to teach at schools devoted to providing children with a bona fide Montessori experience.

During her time with me, I soon became aware of Golnar’s notable artistic abilities. Most palpable were her artistic eye and passion for art. Each piece of material she made for the class was stamped with her ability to render the mundane into a thing of beauty and elegance. Thus, it comes as no surprise to me that she has created a video art course for teachers and parents entitled Igniting Creativity: An Art Course for Teachers and Parents, in which she not only presents the materials, but also demonstrates how to use different techniques with those materials. I heartily recommend this program to every teacher or parent working with children, especially those who think they are not equipped to present the art lessons. With guidance from Golnar and practice with the techniques she provides, you will soon unfold the “artist” suppressed within your inner self. You can find out more about Golnar and her course at www.golnarparry.com/art-course-overview.

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I want to thank her for granting me permission to share some of her practical and ingenious ideas regarding the art materials. Golnar’s knowledge of them is vast and born from experience. She knows firsthand what works and what does not work well with children.

History of the Art Materials As “Story Tellers of the Truth” before any introduction to a material, we can capture the children’s attention by giving them the stories behind the various art materials used throughout time and the world.

By doing this we put the materials into a historical context and engender gratitude and appreciation for the gifts that we have received from people who lived many years before us. Inherent in our stories are new words—words that have a history too. This history is embedded in the etymology of the word to give the true sense of its meaning. Thus, with each related art story and every new word, we reach back into time to introduce the children to the materials that peoples had at their disposal and the origin of any new term that is applicable.

History of Paper In ancient times, materials for painting and writing on were limited. The resources at hand were rocks, bones, wood, bricks—hard surfaces to carve marks in or draw on, such as stone or cave walls. Eventually, the fertile banks of the Nile River gave people another source for memorializing their lives, events, and conquests—papyrus. The history of this unique plant, Cyperus papyrus, is with us each time we use the word paper since it is derived from the Greek word ‘papuros’ meaning ‘that which belongs to the pharaoh” because he realized the wealth garnered from exporting papyrus this precious commodity. This reedy plant grew in abundance and furnished the Egyptians with food, materials to make boats as well as ropes, sails, and baskets.

But the greatest value of this prolific plant was when it was used as a surface for recording written characters and pictures. With this discovery, the Egyptians developed a valuable commercial product that was exported all over the known world. The great library in Alexandria, Egypt under the guidance of Ptolemy I was filled with 700,000 papyrus scrolls covering every subject imaginable—especially prose and poetry.

Around the bend of the Mediterranean Sea, Eumenes II, the ruler of the Greek city Pergamum, also wanted to build a great library, but Ptolemy wanted no competition for his masterpiece. Thus, to stifle any challengers, he cut off papyrus trade to Pergamum. Undeterred by this turn of events, Eumenes began searching for an alternative writing material. Over time, parchment the people of Pergamum learned how to soak, scrape, and dry the skins of young animals—kid, lamb, and young gazelles. This new product was named after the city in which it was birthed—parchment. A particularly fine and carefully processed form of parchment is vellum used for important religious and governmental documents that are worthy of the time and effort required for making it. vellum

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Far to the east in the mystical, isolated, and exotic country of China, people were busy investigating the materials that could be made into a writing surface on which to record their stories, their beliefs, their achievements. Tradition has it that Cai Lun, an official of the Emperor He Di, in 105 CE invented the process for making true paper. He discovered that the best paper was made from plants with plenty of cellulose in their fibers or from textiles that are made true paper from natural materials, such as cotton or linen. This secret of papermaking was kept for 700 years until Muslims invading Samarkand, Uzbekistan discovered an active Chinese paper mill. Once they kidnapped the workers, the secret of papermaking was unleashed in the Arabic world and Europe alike. With these ingenious inventions our children have a variety of papers to choose from as they explore the wonderful world of art materials. For those of you who would like to delve the marvelous stories of the history of paper more deeply, I recommend Mark Kurlansky’s Paper - Paging Through History.

History of Tempera Paint An obvious intial starting point when discussing paints is the ancient medium, tempera. The word tempera originally came from the Late Latin verb temperare meaning “to mix thoroughly.” Tempera paints were made useful by tempering or mixing pigments thoroughly with a binding and adhesive substance such as egg yolk, casein glue with linseed oil, and egg white with linseed or poppy oil, and sand.

The source of pigments known to the ancients were malachite, azurite, lapis, lead white, ivory black, charcoal, and red lead.—a limited palatte compared to today’s array of colors. Tempera paint was used predominately on murals by ancient dynasties such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, Romans, Greeks, and Byzantines. Besides being applied to walls, it was also employed to decorate stone stelae (commemorative pillars), mummy cases, papyrus rolls, icons, and Fayum Mummy Portrait altarpieces. With the advent of oil paints in the Renaissance, the use of tempera paint began to wane.

However, in the 20th century certain artists—Ben Shahn, Andrew Wyeth, and Jacob Lawrence—have revived the use of this ancient medium.

Secco A common wall painting technique used throughout time is called secco from the Italian word “secco” meaning “dry.” Tempera paint and whichever binder used was applied to a dry wall that had a preliminary covering of plaster—a concoction of gypsum, calcium, sand, or lime water. The advantage of secco is that it allows the artist to have a longer working time with the possibility of retouching the image. Even though

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dry plaster is absorbent, it has certain essential limitations. Secco paintings rendered on dry plaster are less durable and the colors may flake off the painting as time goes by since the pigments have not become part of the wall. A most heartbreaking and regrettable example of this deterioration is that of Leonardo da Vinci’s, The Last Supper. Other insults have been visited upon this masterpiece throughout its time, but miraculously it has survived.

The Last Supper, late-1490s, Leonardo da Vinci

Fresco—Buon Fresco Sometime around 1700 BCE, one of the Mediterranean cultures observed that it was possible to apply tempera pigments without a binder onto a freshly laid wet plaster, rather than on dry plaster. With that recognition the technique of Fresco—or more specifically buon fresco—was born. The word fresco comes from the Italian meaning ‘cool, fresh.’ The pigment was diluted in water and applied directly to the wet plastered walls. Using this technique allowed the pigment to be absorbed into the wet surface, which provided durable bonding of the pigment to the surface. The limestone in the plaster reacts with carbon dioxide in the air to form calcium carbonate and water, with the latter evaporating during the drying process. As the surface (wall) dries and sets, the pigment particles fuse with the lime and sand particles giving them extended permanence and resistance to weathering and aging.

The disadvantage to buon fresco is that it has a limited drying time. An artist knew that he had seven to nine hours (about a day’s time) before the plaster dried. The area covered was called giornata originating from the Italian meaning ‘one day’s work.’ Once a giornata dried, buon fresco could no longer be done—the image could not be painted over, and mistakes could not be corrected. Extremely well- preserved examples of frescos are found in the Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The buon fresco art flourished throughout the Middle Ages and reached its peak of excellence in the 16th century with the work of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling and Raphael’s Paintings, all in the Vatican Palace.

The Last Judgment, 1536-41 Michelangelo di Buonarroti

Rafael’s Room in the Vatican c. 1508-11, Rafael Sanzio

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Tempera Paints Now let’s turn to the paints themselves starting with tempera paints. Each of the tempera paints mentioned here have different qualities to consider for classroom use.

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Premixed tempera paints come in student grade but still have high quality pigments, high color strength, lightfast, won’t chip off, and are more affordable. Additionally, they come in different quantities allowing for the purchase of larger containers of favorite and frequently used colors. They also come in metallic colors—gold, silver, copper, and others—making them very appealing to children. Another advantage is premixed paints are convenient to use.

Tempera powder comes in many colors and is reasonably priced. The disadvantage is that the powder requires mixing with water. This makes it less practical, time consuming, a bit messy, and sometimes the intensity of the color is unpredictable depending on the ratio of water to powder mix.

Tempera cakes provide concentrated brilliant colors and are easy to manage for large, group projects. There is no spillage and only a brush and water are required. With these cakes art projects can easily be created out-of-doors.

Tempera sticks need no water, no paintbrushes, just a surface to paint on. They are fast drying, come in a range of vibrant colors, easy to use, and require no complicated cleanup. Just replace the cap and store them on your art shelf. They are particularly suitable for younger children who may be less dexterous *GGN.

History of Watercolor The oldest examples of watercolors were found in the Lascaux Cave paintings from southwest France dating back to 15,000 BCE to 9,000 BCE. In the Paleolithic Era people applied water-based pigments they found in their environments with fingers, sticks and whatever was naturally available. The color sources were ash and earth minerals mixed with water. The Egyptians used water-based paints to letter and paint on papyrus paper, as well as to decorate tombs and public spaces. The ancient Chinese also have a tradition of watercolor painted on silk and in due course on hand-made papers. The first Chinese water-based paintings were also applied with fingers. The magnificent tradition fostered in the Far East has many surviving pieces in which the painters incorporated lettering, poetry, and storytelling in most of the works.

The Chinese and Japanese production of masterpieces grew suddenly with the advent of hand-made papers

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around 100 CE. Techniques blossomed and evolved merely because of the newly discovered recipe for paper. Pieces remaining include major works of art.

During the Middle Ages, European monks used water-based paints to create elaborately decorated books.

These works are a major art form and were painted on vellum or sheepskin. “The Book of Hours” circa 1415, is one of the world’s most famous illuminated books.

Albrecht Dürer was the first acknowledged master of watercolor in the west. He used complete renderings in the medium as studies for other works; these studies now stand alone as great works of watercolor art. The English artists Paul Sandby, Thomas Girtin, and J.M.W. Turner in the late 18th and 19th centuries Wing of a Blue made watercolor an independent, mature medium. Before then, it was considered Roller ‘the English Art’ and the only medium appropriate for women to use. With the 1500, Albrecht use of watercolor by the three above-mentioned artists among others, the grounds Durer were laid for what became later known as the Golden Age of Watercolor.

Lindisfarne Castle 1796, Thomas Girton

Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat, 1826 JMW Turner

Windsor Castle Paul Sandby

Watercolor Paints Chemically, watercolors are pigments made from ground minerals and dyed inert powder held together generally with gum arabic made from the acacia tree. They are as durable and colorful as a more opaque painting media, such as acrylics or oil paints. Watercolors capture luminosity and transparency and offer a color range equal to and often exceeding that of other media. Luminosity is achieved by allowing the white of the paper to shine through producing a feeling of light superior to that of other paints. To produce the right amount of transparency, the amount of pigment is reduced resulting in the desired luminosity.

The more water in the wash of pigment, the more the light of the surface breaks through, as you can see in the examples above. This is the opposite approach from that of a denser painting media, which requires superimposing one layer of pigment over another increasing the amount of pigment and thereby diminishing transparency.

Watercolors come in different configurations and different prices. Cheap watercolors are a waste of money because the children cannot get the effect they desire since the ratio between the pigment and the binder

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is too little. Therefore, it is worth stretching the budget for good quality watercolors so that the children succeed at their artistic pursuits. Watercolors are versatile and allow the children to modify any images they want or to correct mistakes. The nice thing about watercolors is that if they do dry up in the palette, they can be rewet and are not wasted like more opaque paints.

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Tubes of watercolor dispense watercolor paint that can create both intensity and transparency in color. They also are useful for blending and mixing colors for any new hues needed for the piece of art. They have a silky-smooth texture and vibrant color you can apply directly from the tube to the palette. You merely squeeze out exactly how much paint you need trying not to waste any. However, as hard as children may try to squeeze out just a tiny bit, they often don’t succeed. The cost of the paint and the potential for waste is why Golnar does not prefer watercolors in tubes to use in the classroom. She offers a detailed review of a successful watercolor setup using liquid watercolors in her course*GGN. Liquid watercolors are especially brilliant and easy to work with. They are a concentrated dye- or pigment-based solutions providing brilliant, transparent color that can be diluted with water to achieve varying hues. You can have 10-12 different hues that can be dispensed from a dropper bottle.

Watercolor pan sets come in different grades, colors, and prices. While they seem handy to use, they quickly become messy, they are hard to clean up, and inadvertently the colors mix with each other muddling the hues. The brushes that come with the sets are inferior and unworthy of our children’s artistic expressions. They are best used as gluing brushes *GGN. Watercolor pencils: Watercolor pencils can be used alone as regular pencils or with water. They provide you with more control than liquid watercolor since you deliver the pigment like a pencil and not with a brush. With them you can manipulate colors and modify your artwork easily. After creating your image with the pencils, you can apply a layer of water to the surface that will intensify the pigment. Also, many lovely watercolor effects can be achieved by doing this. Adding water allows the pigment to be spread over vast areas, especially useful when making skies or expanses of grass lands. Because the water is applied after the pigment, there is no worry that the paper will dry out too soon. Since these are pencils, they can be sharpened. No need to depend on paint brushes with fine points to do intricate details. Other selling points for watercolor pencils are that they are less expensive and more convenient than watercolor paint. Golnar recommends getting the highest quality watercolor pencils your budget can afford, with specific recommendations in her course *GGN.

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Other Materials Associated with Watercolor •

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Brushes: The parts of the brush are known as the tuft, the ferrule, and the handle (the bristles, the connector to the wooden handle, and the handle). With this vocabulary, the discussion of brushes will be clear and coherent. Again, as with the watercolor paints, we should invest in good quality watercolor brushes to achieve the best results. Since there are art brushes of all kinds in the classroom, including those that use paints with binding media that will damage the tufts of watercolor brushes, we want to take care that the watercolor brushes are coded for watercolor paint alone by so designating them as such. Additionally, they should be stored separately from the other kind of brushes in their own container. Applying a defining color of plastic tape to the handle is an easy way to distinguish one kind of brush from another and protect the life of the watercolor brush. It is important that these brushes have a variety of tips to meet the demands of the desired goal. Golnar prefers the wide flat tuft, the angled tuft, the typical “moppy” tuft, and a variety of a few different sizes of the above. Her alltime favorite is the brush with a round tuft that comes to a point when wet, as this brush provides control for making fine or broad lines. She also recommends Soft Grip Golden Taklon brushes because they are easy on the handgrip and comfort to hold. They are designed for durability with their thick acrylic handles, so the paint won’t flake off if left in water too long. Accompanied by her cleverness and tenacity, Golnar has discovered a method to ‘resurrect’ dead brushes that she has called The Brush Hospital. You can find this process in her video art course, Igniting Creativity.

Palettes: Liquid watercolor needs a palette with deep wells to isolate one hue from another. White ceramic palettes are ideal because the wells are the right depth and easy to clean.

Plastic palettes are useful too and they are less expensive than the ceramic versions. They tend to stain, however.

Watercolor paper: Working in watercolors require the right kind of surface for applying the paint.

Again, this is another art material that merits spending a bit more of the classroom budget on. With cold press you have an absorbent, semi-rough surface suitable for detailed work and smooth washes. It is the most versatile and popular texture, suitable for beginners and experienced painters alike. As we know, paper is made by mixing water with cellulose fibers such as cotton, wood pulp or a mixture of the two.

Paper made from cotton and water is more pliable and stronger to withstand watercolor techniques, such as scrubbing, scraping, and applying and removing masking tape. If the budget allows, given the expense of cotton-based paper, it should be used responsibly and judiciously.

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Materials used for different watercolor techniques: Interesting effects can be obtained through using different watercolor techniques with different materials The children are intrigued by these unique special effects obtained by merely treating the watercolors with a different substance. The supplemental components needed are table salt and rock salt—you get different effects with the two kinds—rubbing alcohol, parafin, a candle, or crayons for wax-resist experiments, and straws for blowing the liquid watercolor.

History of Gouache Paints The origin of Gouache paint is not exactly known, but through documentation it has been traced back at least as far as ancient Greece and Egypt. In Europe in the 14th century a monk found that if he added zinc white to his usual watercolors, the resulting opaque effect set off his gold decoration even more brilliantly. The word gouache comes from the Italian word “guazzo” meaning “water paint, splash,” which simply means opaque watercolor. Such artwork had a matte rather than shiny finish. It wasn’t until the 20th century that gouache came into its own as a popular painting medium Book of Hours of spurred on by the work of Impressionist painters like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Catherine of and Henri Matisse.

Cleves,1440

Dancer Adjusting her Tights 1890, Toulouse-Lautrec

Blue Nude II, 1952 Henri Matisse

Gouache Paint Materials •

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Gouache Paints: In a sense, both watercolors and gouache can be classified as watercolor paints— gouache being opaque and watercolor translucent. They are especially good for use with other media, such as watercolor, India ink, charcoal, pastels, and colored pencils. Gouache comes in both tubes and pan sets with the attending advantages and disadvantages to the two options.

Paper: Since gouache is in the same class as watercolors, you can use the same paper for both, since watercolor paper is absorbent and does not warp as much as other papers.

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Brushes: The same brushes used for watercolor can be used for gouache paint since the binding materials are water-soluble. The tufts of the brushes can have either synthetic or natural bristles.

History of Acrylic Paints Once acrylic resin was invented in 1934, it wasn’t long before it was transformed into acrylic paint as a binder of pigment. This newly discovered synthetic paint was used as housepaint because it was durable, dried quickly and brought out the brilliance of the color. It didn’t take long for the Mexican muralists to cotton on to this new, long lasting, durable medium. Artists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco chose this medium for their mural paintings, some of which were subjected to the elements. This recognition spurred on the development by many companies in 1953 of artist-quality acrylic paints with the desirable qualities artists valued, including high viscosity and a water-based medium.

Diego Rivera

Acrylic Materials The advantage of acrylic paints is that painters can modify the appearance, hardness, and texture when using them. They do this by simply adding water. Acrylics can be applied in thin layers and washes to create watercolor effects, or they can be heavily layered to simulate texture. Acrylic paint also can bond to different surfaces-- paper, canvas, fiberboard, or porous objects that are prepared with a sealant. Acrylics do have some disadvantages that other paint media do not have--they cannot be rehydrated, they dry quickly and when dry they cannot be removed from the surface (or from clothes). Acrylics can be painted over, however. They can easily be combined with dry materials like colored pencils and collage. Student grade options, while having some of the same desirable characteristics as artist grade acrylics, are suitable for the classroom. But student-grade acrylics have a lower pigment concentration, fewer hues, and color mixing is less optimal since the colors are not full strength. On the favorable side, they can be used on many surfaces and are more economical.

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Acrylic Paints: They come with lid-dispensers that help to moderate the amount of paint being dispensed. When using large amounts of paint, the sets of acrylic paints come in pint-sized bottles that can be portioned out to smaller, refillable bottles for the children’s independent use. Acrylics also come in tubes, which require clear lessons on how to deliver just the right amount of paint into the palette.

Children will need reminding that the paint is fast drying and can’t be re-wet. Therefore, any unused paint left in the palette will be wasted. Moral of story—dispense judiciously.

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Palettes: The best palettes for acrylic painting should be easy to clean, flat and have a large space for mixing color. For acrylics large-welled palettes work best since they accommodate more paint used for color mixing. It is easy to clean dried acrylic from glass and porcelain palettes. If the budget is tight, white procelain plates found at thrift stores make an easy-to-clean palette. Also, white plastic picnic plates work because after the painting session they can be discarded.

Brushes: Generally, the best brushes for acrylic painting are synthetic because they are stronger and can endure the harsh resin binding medium. Synthetic brushes—those that do not have natural hair bristles—should have tufts that are firm but flexible. In the classroom a range of different brushes—different bristle sizes, textures, shapes, and handle lengths—prove to be most useful. Some will be used for applying broad areas of color, some for blending colors and some for adding details. Again, remember to code these brushes so the children can distinguish them from other kinds of brushes.

Paper: Mixed media paper has a heavier weight comparable to watercolor paper and will hold wet media and minimize buckling. Therefore, it is a good option for using with acrylics since it is heavier and can withstand the wear and tear of the heavier paint and varied techniques. Watercolor paper can also be used with acrylic paint because the textured paper provides resistance. When you drag a brush loaded with paint across its surface, the paint adheres to the texture and is held in place. However, unlike watercolor paper, mixed media paper has a smoother surface that also works well with pencils, markers, and charcoal. These properties make it ideal for projects that use ‘mixed media’ or multiple types of art media.

History of Pastels The first indication of the use of pastels was in the early Renaissance when both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vince are reputed to have used this medium. However, it wasn’t until the 18th century in France and England that pastels gained favor with artists who made pastels their preferred medium. Pastel’s popularity arose at that time because it was fashionable to have one’s portrait rendered in that medium and because pastels did not require the many days and hours for the sitting that was demanded by an oil painting. Patrons were particularly eager to have their images portrayed in pastels by Rosalba Carriera—a celebrated Venetian artist, who had moved from Venice to Self Portrait, Paris—and was highly in demand for this task. Her popularity arose because of her 1673 skill and beautiful portraits but also by dint of the status of her clientele, one of whom Rosalba Carriera was Louis XV as a child.

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Pastel’s heyday faded during and after the French Revolution since it was associated with the frivolity of the aristocracy. It was rekindled, however, in the 1800s because significant artists began using pastels in their work, thus rescuing this medium from its decline. Degas, an innovator in pastel techniques, portrayed his dancers in pastel, Edouard Manet used pastels on canvas—an unusual surface for the medium. William Merritt Chase, an American, who was renowned for his portraits, also used pastels for their depictions.

Carriera revolutionized the world of technology by binding colored chalk into sticks, which led to the development of a much wider range of prepared colors. This expanded Study of Flesh the availability and the usefulness of the pastel medium. Hard and soft pastels are Color and Gold created by grinding pigments into a paste with water and a gum binder and then rolled, 1888, William Merritt Chase pressed, or extruded into sticks. The name ‘pastel’ is derived from Medieval Latin pastellum meaning ‘woad paste.’ Woad paste is made from the woad plant that is a member of the Family Brassicaceae (the mustard plant family), formerly Cruciferae. Another theory is that the word ‘pastel’ comes from the Latin pastillus meaning ‘a small loaf or block,’ because of the form the paste of pigment and binding medium makes.

Materials for Pastels Pastels come in a variety of forms: •

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Soft pastels: This is the most widely used form of pastel and is also called chalk pastel. The sticks have a higher portion of pigment and less binder. A creamy vibrant consistency is produced for instant color and coverage. The drawing can be readily smudged and blended, but it results in more dust. Finished drawings made with soft pastels require protecting. Spraying with a fixative to prevent smudging is needed.

Hairspray, a cheaper option than a fixative, also works.

Pan pastels: These are formulated with a minimum of binder in flat compacts and applied with special soft micropore sponge tools. No liquid is involved. A 21st century invention, pan pastels can be used for the entire painting or in combination with soft and hard sticks.

Hard pastels: These have a higher portion of binder and less pigment, producing a sharp drawing material that is useful for fine details. These can be used with other pastels for drawing outlines and adding accents. However, the colors are less brilliant and are available in a restricted range in contrast to soft pastels. They, too, need a fixative.

Pastel pencils: These are pastels enclosed in wood just like pencils. They give the best control of the pastel and are useful for adding fine details as well as being less messy to use.

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Oil Pastels: These are formed into a stick of pigment mixed with a binder of non-drying oil and wax making them bold and bright. An oil pastel painting is less powdery and may not need a fixative. Their beauty is that they blend and layer well. Oil pastels applied lightly create effects like those of oil painting; when used heavily with multiple layers they create a simulated impasto effect.

Pastel Paper: To get the best effects, pastels should be used on textured paper, which has a texture called “tooth” on the surface. When a pastel stick is rubbed over the surface, the tooth of the paper grabs small clumps of pigment that adhere to the rough surface. Light will be reflected off the particle of pigment picking up nuances of color and allow for heavy layering of pigment.

Construction paper’s rough surface provides texture for pastels as well as does Mixed Media paper, but Mixed Media paper holds pastels much better.

Pastel paper

Mixed Media paper

Construction paper

Inks Like the scribes of old, our children work with inks as they learn to write in a lovely calligraphic hand.

Applying ink for writing, documenting and art has been used for centuries, and so it finds a natural home in our classrooms for those same purposes. Archaeological analysis has revealed that ink and its uses were known to many ancient cultures around the world who conceived it first for writing and drawing. The earliest inks from all civilizations are believed to have been made with lampblack, a stable carbon, soot-based ink coming from burning oils, pine resins, and other organic materials. Ancient Egyptians used ink for writing and drawing on papyrus from the 26th century BCE. Chinese inks may go back as far as four millennia—the Chinese Neolithic Period—in which the people employed plants, animals, and minerals to make their inks. Medieval scribes around 800 to 1500 CE, while writing on their parchment or vellum, would follow a lengthy complicated recipe for their inks that included hawthorn branches, iron salt and wine. The ink used for the drawing of Ganesha Under an Umbrella (early 19th century) is called masi, a mixture of several chemical components that has been utilized in India since at least the 4th century BCE. Ink was a popular medium in Northern and Central Europe in the 16th century followed by a revival in the 19th century.

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Ink is a gel or solution that contains at least one colorant, such as dye or pigment and it can be applied with a pen, brush, reed pen, or quill. Although customary inks share certain properties with watercolors, watercolors are composed of solid pigment. By contrast inks formulated with dyes alone have low viscosity allowing them to be applied smoothly and fluidly although they more easily soak into the paper. Compared to watercolors, colored inks can be brighter and smoother because they don’t contain granules. Inks come in a range of beautiful colors that give a slightly glossy finish. They are lightfast, can be diluted and can be used in a variety of techniques, such as ‘ink blow’ (simply the process of blowing ink across the page). Pearlescent, iridescent, and metallic inks create striking effects that appeal to the children. Be sure to use a water dropper for dispensing ink into the palette.

A variety of writing implements can be used to apply the ink to a surface: o The ink brush is the traditional writing implement in east Asian calligraphy, which enjoys greater prestige when the ink is applied with a brush. The handle of the brush can be made from bamboo or more expensive materials like ivory, silver or gold, and the tufts of the brush can be made from the hair of different mammals. o A quill is made from the shaft of a flight-feather of a large bird--typically a goose--that is carved to a point with a slit to hold the ink. o A reed pen is cut from reed or bamboo with a slit in a narrow tip, much like that of a quill. o A dip pen has a metal nib mounted on a handle often made of wood. It must be dipped repeatedly into the ink to replenish the ink supply while writing. o An ordinary paint brush will distribute the ink in a fluid, smooth manner.

The kind of paper suitable for ink paintings are those used for other media.

Charcoal Dating back 28,000 years and recognized as the world’s oldest drawing medium, charred wood from the fire furnished prehistoric humans a source to draw contours of animals on cave walls. A sense of history and tradition is wrapped around the art done with this medium—simple burnt wood. Over time, artists have refined the medium from burnt wood to finely-ground charcoal bound with wax or gum into sticks, crayons, and pencils. During the Renaissance, artists used charcoal to make gestural

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sketches in preparation for a painting. Because of charcoal’s range of expression, it makes a beautiful medium for finished work and so has been used regularly up to the present. It also lends itself to expressive works as can be seen in Charles White’s 1956 I’ve Been ‘Buked and I’ve Been Scorned and Odilon Redon’s The Crying Spider, 1881.

Charcoal Materials Charcoal comes in a variety of forms, each with its own useful property.

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Charcoal can be made from burning sections of willow branches and grapevines. They are called willow and vine charcoals and are made from sections of willow branches and grapevine that have been burnt in a kiln without air to a precise degree of hardness. Because this kind of charcoal contains no binding agent, it erases completely and works well for sketching. Willow and vine charcoals are often very soft and powdery, so they can be less suitable for rendering fine, crisp images. Willow breaks less than vine charcoal but is also less black. For these kinds of charcoal, point out the visible physical plant characteristics of the original willow stick or grapevine *GGN. This impresses on the children the source of this art medium.

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Compressed charcoal is made when powdery charcoal is shaped into blocks or sticks and held together by a binder like gum or wax. The amount of these binders used in proportion to the powdery charcoal determines the softness or hardness of the compressed stick, which is harder than vine or willow charcoal. Because of its solid form, compressed charcoal is not easily broken, can maintain its shape better and can even be sharpened for more detailed drawings.

Its disadvantages are that it is less suitable for mixed media work and is harder to erase completely because it is darker and more permanent than other charcoals. It also comes in white, which is useful for sketching on black paper.

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Charcoal pencils allow for a cleaner application of the charcoal, which keeps the artist’s hands free of dusty particles that could smudge the work. They consist of compressed charcoal enclosed in a jacket of wood. They are easily controlled and can be used for fine, crisp detailed drawings. Some sets of charcoal pencils include all the required materials for working in charcoal.

Those additional materials are a kneaded eraser, a black dust-free eraser, a

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tortillon, multi-media drawing paper, and a fixative (hairspray). Charcoal is a nifty medium for when the children do gesture drawings, which is best done on newsprint.

History of Graphite Pencils From when early humans began writing in the Neolithic Era until the 6th millennium BCE, the tools at their disposal for making marks on wood, papyrus or stone were styluses –not pencils—made from rocks, metal tools and brushes. Aztecs, Egyptian scribes, and Ancient Romans used thin metal rods to leave a light but legible mark on their writing surfaces. Towards the end of the 16th century, the word pencil, which comes from the Latin penicillus meaning ‘little tail’ and was coined to describe the writing tool used by scribes in the Middle Ages in which hairs from animals were attached to reeds or bamboo creating small brushes.

An act of Mother Nature in a foul temper in the mid-16th century revealed the materials for making graphite pencils as we know them today. A fierce, violent storm in England’s Lake District—to be more specific Borrowdale—upended many trees, one of which had a shiny black substance clinging to its roots. At the time, the people didn’t recognize it as graphite and simply used it for marking their sheep. Because its black appearance looked like lead, some people called it plumbago from the Latin word for lead, ‘plumbus.’ Interestingly and as an aside, that is where the word plumber comes from because they are people who work with lead pipes. It wasn’t until 1789 that the black substance was called graphite coming from the Greek word graphein meaning ‘to write.’ Even though we know that we write with graphite, we still use the misnomer— ‘lead pencil’—when referring to our ‘good ol’ yellow pencil.’ To manage the graphite for writing, people would enclose it in paper, twigs, strips of sheep’s skin, or coarse string so it would be firm enough to use as a writing instrument. When Great Britain imposed a naval blockade during the Napoleonic Wars, France was unable to import the pure graphite that was required for pencil-making. Nicolas-Jacques Conté, an officer and scientist in Napoleon’s army found the solution to the problem, thus giving rise to the modern pencil. He mixed powdered graphite with clay, formed the mixture into rods and then fired them in a kiln. By adjusting the ratio of graphite to clay, the hardness of the rod would produce variations in both texture and depth of tone. The greater the amount of graphite, the harder and more silvery tones resulted. The higher the proportion of clay to the graphite, the softer and blacker the effects. The pencil’s Nicolas-Jacques Conté

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hardness denoted by a range of letters and numbers—H is for hardness and B is for blackness—going from 9H to 9B. Our well-used and well-liked No. 2 pencil is a medium tone and the equivalent of HB. Typically, its designation is stamped on pencils today. When sketching, just like with chalk, charcoal, and pastel, graphite pencils can produce a range of linear strokes and different values. Many artists have employed graphite pencils of varied hardnesses to render artful images simply by using a variation of pencil strokes— hatching, cross hatching and contour hatching.

Madame Armand Bertin, 1843 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Olga,1923 Pablo Picasso

Materials to use with Graphite Pencils Sharpeners: A variety of sharpeners should be available for the children’s use, but you must consider each one carefully lest they become ‘voracious pencil eaters.”

• A mountable sharpener is for everyday use and is convenient because it accommodates different sizes of pencils and has an automatic stopping mechanism.

• Dual-holed hand-held sharperners are very practical especially those that have

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a sharp blade and with two holes—one hole for standard sized pencils and the other for some a bit larger. They are easy to clean, durable, and have a lid to contain messy shavings.

An automatic pencil sharpener is useful to have sequestered away in the cupboard and brought out only on a specific occasion or when cleaning the office supply shelf that holds the class’s pencils. Also, this automatic pencil sharpener must have an automatic stopping mechanism built into it or else it will consume most of the pencil and subsequently the class budget.

Erasers: Erasers have their own history—a history that can stir the children’s interest in something so mundane that they may fail to even ask questions about them. This is when we can plant a little seed to motivate more appreciation for the eraser than just its ability to remove marks from a page. The first eraser was produced in 1770 when Edward Nairne was experimenting with a substance derived from a tree that was known as caoutchouc. The English chemist, Joseph Priestly, was so taken by this material and its ability to rub out black marks made from pencil lead that he called this erasing matter ‘rubber.’ Initially, all

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erasers were made solely of rubber, but it wasn’t long before scientists tinkered with the formula to include factis—a mixture of sulphur, vegetable oil and pumice, which was abrasive. It is the pumice that scrapes the marks off the paper. The color of the eraser is from the kind of pumice used. Pink erasers come from Italy’s pink pumice. Today, the popular Pink Pearl eraser formula has changed from the natural rubber and pumice to a synthetic rubber, but they are colored bubblegum pink still because the public expects erasers to be pink. Now you are prepared to answer the question (if it comes), “Why is the eraser at the end of my pencil pink?”

Different erasers bring different qualities to the artist, consequently an array of possible erasers should be available for the children’s use, as well as other eraser-related materials that enhance the children’s art experiences.

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Any dependable pink erasers—as mentioned above—for everyday erasures and art.

A kneadable eraser is a “must have” for working with different media in art.

It erases cleanly, picks up residue and is excellent for removing or highlighting pencil, chalk, charcoal, and pastels. In Golnar’s video art course, she shows how to best use this eraser * GGN. The Factis Black 18 and the Factis White are plastic rubber erasers that work especially well with charcoal, pastels, graphite, and colored pencils. These soft-textured erasers are useful for erasing on black paper and are non-smudging and non-abrasive.

Undoubtedly, having an electric eraser in the classroom is a luxury if you can swing it. It is remarkably efficient at erasing any tiny areas that are hard to get to.

Just keep an eye on how the children use it lest they take it from the art shelf to erase mathematical mistakes in their work. This has been known to happen ;-(.

An eraser shield, a handy tool for erasing small exact marks without disturbing others. The child who is serious about his sketching and drawing will often use this shield.

A unique Golnar creation: A consideration we Montessori teachers must always keep at the forefront of our minds is how to present our materials in the most alluring ways possible. This allure captures the children’s attention and often compels them to use the material just for the sake of working with something intriguing. Golnar has long known this, which is why she has designed different ways of featuring the art materials. I especially like the pencil holder she has fashioned. Made from gray felt—the perfect color for graphite pencils, don’t you think? —and a matching black and white designed ribbon, in which the pencils can be nestled together on the shelf waiting to be used. Then when chosen, the pencil holder can be

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unfurled to reveal the pencils and the hardness range and notation of each. The ‘good ol’ yellow’ HB pencil takes its rightful place in the center of the array.

History of Colored Pencils Colored pencils are one of the younger members of the art material world even though it is documented that ancient Greeks used wax-based crayons in the Greek Golden Age and Pliny the Elder recorded the Romans did the same. Evidence exists that in the 19th century, colored pencils were used for checking and marking, but not for the purpose of making art. The history of colored pencils is not long and is quite blurred in many instances since several companies claim to have been their originator--Staedtler, FaberCastell and Caran d’Arche. Not knowing the genealogy does not make colored pencils less alluring as an art medium. Adolf Wölfli, who was physically tormented as a child and incarcerated in a mental institution as a psychotic adult, took refuge in creating art from the paper and colored pencils given him by various sources.

Once his work was discovered by a doctor working with the clinic, who in 1921 published an article entitled A Psychiatric Patient as Artist, Wölfli’s art received world-wide attention. His style influenced the development and acceptance of Outsider Art, the style Juxtapoz Magazine Adolf Wölfli that includes many troubled individuals throughout time. This story is familiar as it parallels the life of Martín Ramírez who was an inmate in a California mental institution and is categorized as an Outsider artist as well. A less dramatic—but equally beautiful-colored pencil painting is Holly Bedrosian’s, Self Portrait.

Colored Pencils Materials There are three main types of colored pencils to consider: wax-based, oil-based and water soluble, the latter being watercolor pencils—already discussed under the watercolor section. All three of these types can be used with each other when working on a multi-media project.

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Most colored pencils are wax based. When wax is in the right proportion with the pigment, the pencil delivers a smooth texture of flowing color that can be blended, mixed, and layered. Additionally, the wax helps the marks adhere to the surface or to other pencil marks or watercolor without smearing the strokes. You can apply layers of color with wax-based colored pencils burnishing the pigment making the surface shiny. Wax-based colored pencils have appealed to artists for many decades due to their resistance to decay and the vividness and brilliance of the color palette. They are usually softer and easier to erase than oil-based colored pencils. Their disadvantage is that they are subject to ‘wax bloom,’ in which the wax binder migrates to the surface of the pigment producing a layer of waxy film. Since this film can be wiped away with a damp cloth the shortcoming is minor. While an artist quality set of colored pencils is pricier than student quality, it is best for the children to use the superior quality of pigments, since they can truly experience the depth of color potential in each pencil. Golnar highly recommends Prismacolor brand for the classroom. She gives a detailed explanation of caring for the pencil that can be seen in her Art Course Video, Igniting Creativity *GGN. Oil-based colored pencils use vegetable oil as a binder and tend to be harder than wax-based ones.

This makes them less susceptible to breakage and able to keep a sharper point longer. They can be layered easily without the threat of ‘wax bloom,’ but they are often more expensive as a result. They blend well, provide good color saturation, and produce a more polished look.

A pencil extender is a ‘must have’ in the classroom when using colored pencils of either kind. Through use, sharpening and breakage, the pencils will become shorter. A pencil extender will secure more use from the ‘stubbled’ pencil so the pigment will live another day to express its artful self.

History of Clay Clay has a long and interesting history since it is the oldest known ceramic material, having been used for many purposes by the ingenious prehistoric people. From pot shards dated to around 14,000 BCE, we have evidence that clay was a medium of essential importance very early on. Our children know this from their work with early civilizations, especially those with a scarcity of trees from which to construct their cities. For humanity, clay has become an omnipresent marvel—we see it in inscribed clay tablets, vessels for cooking and eating, bricks for erecting architectural structures, viaducts, roads, bridges for transportation, and today employed for a range of industrial purposes. Here’s a fact for you: between one-half and two-thirds of the world's population live or work in buildings made with clay, often baked into brick, as an essential part of their load-bearing structure.

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As practical as clay is to the developing world, it has also been used for universal ornamental art objects for rituals and celebrations. Many of the world’s cultures decorate their buildings with artistic clay motifs representing aspects of their lives. One of my favorites is the Winged Lion from the Palace of Darius I at Susa during the Achaemenid Empire that now calls the Louvre in Paris its home.

Clay Materials Raw clay consists of particles of granite, an igneous rock. Granite, and consequently clay contains—among other minerals— feldspar, quartz, and mica. Depending on the ratio of those elements in the composition, the clay’s behavior and characteristics will vary. Those include the ability to harden with heat and exhibit plasticity (how it can be molded and retain its desired shape). Because of these characteristics, clay is a very forgiving medium to work with. The kinds of clay with varying compositions that concern our work with children are earthenware and stoneware, both of which require a kiln for firing the creations.

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Earthenware exhibits a higher degree of plasticity than stoneware, which makes it easy to mold and manipulate. However, it absorbs liquids yielding it less than watertight. But if glazed, the item then becomes impervious to liquids and is useful for domestic dinnerware. When earthenware has been fired one time, the result is called bisque meaning ‘twice cooked,’ which is a conundrum since the clay has been ‘cooked’ only once. Often earthenware objects are called ‘terracotta,’ but, that is not strictly correct. Terracotta is the finished product created when using earthenware. Clay must be wedged (to remove air bubbles from the clay so it won’t explode in the kiln).

This is an extra step that requires good technique and strength. A time-saving solution is to buy pre-wedged clay even if it is a bit more expensive as it saves time and ensures that the air bubbles are Dog removed. Hint: if you don’t have a school kiln to fire your Graham Jessup children’s work in, you can find other options—many college ceramic teachers and private ceramicists, for a small price, will fire your pieces, as will businesses that feature designing ceramics with glaze. A piece of terracotta that is not glazed can still be colored. On the bisqued piece apply a layer of white latex paint (an inexpensive option) or gesso to reduce the porosity of the surface, after which you can paint it with acrylics.

Stoneware is a very hard clay and has less plasticity than earthenware rendering it harder to mold. Although stoneware is sometimes translucent, it is usually opaque. The color of the body varies considerably; it can be red, brown, gray, white, or black due to the different impurities in the clay. Typically, stoneware is glazed. Whichever of the two clays you use, be sure to store them in air-tight containers lest they dry out and become too hard to use.

Air-drying clay is another possibility when sculpting in the classroom. No kiln needed, just a bit of time.

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Polymer clay is an oven-drying clay that comes in different colors the children can use for their art projects or for extending their work in other subjects. A flower with its individual parts can easily be molded into a follow-up activity after a botany lesson. Note: tools used with polymer clays cannot be reused with food.

Assorted sculpting tools are needed when working with all stages of the clay project. They come in sets, or they can be individually purchased.

Included in the set are boxwood sculpting tools with different, flexible tips used for modeling with moist, pliable clay. For scooping out clay from different shaped spaces, the varied wire ended tools will do the job.

When the clay is ‘leather hard’ or in a condition when the clay has lost most of its moisture but is still able to be joined or carved, clean-up tools will help to refine the final details.

Once the sculpture takes on its basic form, it needs time to dry slowly. If it dries too quickly it will lose its moisture too quickly and crack throughout. To prevent this, cover the piece with a piece of plastic, only periodically leaving the object exposed to the air for short amounts of time until it is completely dried (about a week). I have found that the plastic covering laundry services use to protect cleaned clothing is perfect for this task. And it costs nothing.

Now for the best product ever! When children finish their clay projects and leave them to dry, the sculptures attract the attention of curious minds and hands. It can happen that the drying piece gets bumped, and a piece breaks off at the stage when it is too dry to be reattached. Magic Mender to the rescue! Just before placing the fragile piece in the kiln, apply Magic Mender to both broken surfaces. In a sense, the piece has been ‘glued’ back together. When the piece is fired, it will come from the kiln wholly repaired. Many a tear-lined face has been restored to its original happy countenance, just as had the valued clay piece.

If the children choose to glaze their work, a second firing in the kiln will be required. They can cover the bisqued pieces with a glaze that is suited to the kind of clay used. Glazes come in many colors, ready-to-use liquid form and dinnerware safe if the item is to be used as domestic ware. The temperature at which the pieces are fired is designated by the term ‘cone.’

The name comes from the cone-shaped piece of ceramic placed in the kiln to measure the temperature as the kiln heats up. Since different clays and glazes require different temperatures, always determine which cone strength your clay products need.

A wonderful resource! I must share with you this captivating--by the children’s standards-- book, Mudworks, by MaryAnn F. Kohl. It offers all kinds of ingenious recipes for fashioning different sculptural projects. My all-time favorite is mixing the innards of Wonder Bread with white glue and letting the results air dry. That recipe was

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a favorite with the children in my classroom. Many of the procedures featured in the book can be used in the children’s follow-up activities, like topographical maps of states, countries and the world, or different kinds of dinosaurs found on the Timeline of Life. Let the children’s imagination guide their use of the delightful recipes found on the pages between the covers of this book.

History of Print Making Engraving, etching or woodcuts can all be classified as techniques for pressing images onto a surface. Of the three, engraving is the oldest. In fact, evidence found on prehistoric bones, stones, and cave walls, suggest that engraving is the oldest art form found. The Sumerians—3000 BCE—developed a technique to duplicate images of symbols and cuneiform inscriptions by using cylinder seals.

These seals were usually made of stone with a carved image and when rolled over soft clay, they left a visible impression of that design.

The ancient Chinese have left evidence of a primitive form of woodcuts and prints dated about 2nd Century CE with the rubbings they produced. Rubbings are made by pressing paper onto a carved or incised surface and then rubbing it with a rendering material such as wax, graphite, inksticks, or charcoal. The images the Chinese chose to preserve were those of the Buddha, such as the scroll of the Diamond Sutra, 868 CE—one of Buddha’s Discourses—found in a cave in eastern Turkistan.

Playing cards ‘play’ a part –no pun intended—in the history of woodcuts and print making because the images of said cards could be carved into a wooden surface and printed on paper in the early days of printing. Playing cards appealed, and appeal still, to many different cultures, beginning with the Chinese who had the advantage of having paper on which to print the cards. Playing cards, through a circuitous route travelling from Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, eventually reached Europe around 1360.

In Japan, a unique style of print making called ukiyo-e—pictures of the floating world— gained distinction and contributed to the history of woodcuts. This ‘floating world’ referred to Edo, (modern Tokyo) and depicted aspects of the entertainment quarters and images of popular literature. Common subjects portrayed were famous geisha, Kabuki actors and familiar scenes from Kabuki plays. These woodcuts were designed for mass consumption to feed the interest and preferences of people from the merchant middle classes, who heretofore could not afford expensive pieces of art. Japanese art—ceramics,

Kabuki actor Bando Sharaku

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silks, woodcuts—were a great favorite in Europe and influenced the work of avant-garde artists like Vincent van Gogh, Mary Cassatt, and Louis Comfort Tiffany.

While many accomplished printmakers excelled in Germany, Albrecht Dürer was the quintessential artist in the process. An unparalleled draftsman and technician of all time, he raised the art of engraving to a height never to be achieved again. The subject matter for his engravings were religion, history, mythology, portraiture, and folklore. In Melencolia I, 1514, the subject matter is indicative of Dürer’s extraordinary intellectual ambition and artistic imagination. As one examines the exquisitely carved masterpiece, questions come to mind—What are the calipers for? Why a sphere and a truncated polyhedron? What is the meaning of the balance, hourglass and bell? Is there significance to the magic square inscribed on the wall? What meaning has the comet or the blazing star? Why does the winged figure appear so crest fallen? While examining the intricate details of this engraving and Dürer’s style, the children might ponder the mysteries of the varied images within to decipher the intent of the subject matter as so many historians and scholars have done before.

Their own curiosities might send them on an investigative exploration of Dürer’s work and an appreciation for his consummate skill.

Print Making Materials The required materials for making a woodcut-like print are specialized for the process, but there are some low-cost alternatives that will serve just as well.

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A printing block that could be either linoleum (a hard surface) or a Soft-Kut printing block (soft and pliable). The soft printing block is easier to carve eliminating finger cuts when using hard linoleum.

Cutters and holders are necessary to carve the image into the printing block.

You should have a variety of different cutter nibs for cutting different widths of lines.

Water-based printing inks are a must since only they can be used on the blocks. Inks with solvents will ruin the blocks. Printing inks come in a variety of colors including the primary and secondary colors as well pearlescent, which often is the children’s favorite color.

A brayer (very similar to a paint roller) is the tool that once covered with ink, will spread the ink across the surface of the printing block. The advantage to using a brayer is the ink can be applied consistently and quickly before it dries.

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A baren, the tool for rubbing across the papered surface of the designed printing block, can be substituted by using a broad wooden spoon. In fact, with some wood prints made years earlier, the tool they used for rubbing the surface was a spoon.

Printmaking paper is available for making the prints on, even though other papers can be experimented with if the budget is tight.

History of Mosaics 4000 years ago or more in Mesopotamia, when people were pushing terracotta stones into a wet substrate to make a decoration, they were creating the first mosaics in the world. By the eighth century BC, there were pebble pavements, using different colored stones to create patterns, although these tended to be unstructured decoration. It was the Greeks in the fourth centuries BCE, who raised the pebble technique to an art form, with precise geometric patterns and detailed scenes of people and animals. By 200 BCE, specially manufactured mosaic pieces called tesserae were being used to give extra detail and range of color to the work. Glass tesserae introduced vivid colors that reflected light, effecting an ambient glow within the setting. Using extremely tiny tesserae, sometimes only a few millimeters in size, meant that mosaics could imitate paintings. The artisans would decorate the ceilings, walls, and floors with mosaics. However, the tesserae made of glass were not suitable for the floors. For the floors the tesserae were mainly small cubes of marble or other stone. Sometimes bits of pottery, such as terracotta, or brick were used to provide a range of colors.

The Romans during the first centuries BCE and CE, followed the Greeks in creating breathtaking mosaics most commonly for their private homes, but also for public buildings. Decorating with mosaics continued throughout the later Roman Empire, Byzantine, and early Christian periods.

Whereas Roman mosaics were mostly used as floors, the Byzantines specialized in covering walls and ceilings. The walls of early Christian churches were lined with mosaics of colored glass, some even containing gold; This made them shiny and glittery, emanating the ‘Light of God. ‘Also, the tesserae of glass were ungrouted, allowing light to reflect and refract within the glass. Roman images were absorbed into the typical Christian themes of the Byzantine mosaics, although some work is decorative, and some incorporates portraits of emperors and empresses. The tesserae San Vitale, 526-27, Ravenna, Italy were set at slight angles to the wall, to catch the light in different Emperor and Empress Justinian & ways generating radiance and luminosity to reflect the Theodora importance of the luminaries rendered.

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The Islamic world is also known for exquisite medieval mosaics that have appeared in both Christian and Muslim architecture throughout time. Hagia Sophia, meaning Holy Wisdom, was built as a Christian church in the 6th century CE in Constantinople—now known as Istanbul--under the direction of Justinian I, the Byzantine emperor. During that time, the walls of the basilica were festooned with exquisite religious mosaics. In 1453 it was repurposed as a mosque. Following Islamic principles, mosaics in mosques are not figurative; they feature decorative patterns based on plants, architecture, or geometry instead of people and animals. Since Muslims do not believe in worshipping icons, except for the Virgin and Child all the Christian images were covered. This mosaic is still visible above a doorway in the apse. The medieval mosaics at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul are some of the most celebrated in the world. However, since Hagia Sophia was converted once again into a mosque in 2020 after having been decreed a museum, any Christian images have been hidden behind curtains.

On the other side of the world in 250-950 CE, Mesoamerican cultures were applying mosaics to the facades of buildings, masks, knives, shields, and skulls. The tesserae were made from turquoise, white conch shell, mother of pearl, black obsidian, or polished pyrite. Once again, the mosaic art form reflects the values and beliefs of the people.

Mosaic Materials The materials our children use for creating mosaics are numerable. They can come from anywhere.

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Tesserae (tiles) can include seeds, buttons, broken glass, broken ceramics, bits of marble, rocks, and even the broken tips of colored pencils.

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If the children are cutting their own tiles, they will need special tile cutters.

Safety gear is a must when cutting tiles as children are at risk for being cut by the shrapnel or the tiles themselves. The eyes and the hands especially need protection with protective glasses and gloves.

To support the weight of the tiles, a strong surface will be needed as well as the correct adhesive to accommodate the weight of the project.

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History of Collage The history of collage is a story about the wanderings, observations, and work of Georges Braque. On holiday in Provence, he wandered into a hardware store simply exploring its inventory. His eyes lit upon a roll of oil cloth with a fake wood grain design that resembled a guitar he was working on at the time, one of his Cubist pieces. On a whim, he bought some of this oil cloth and took it to his studio. As he was about to continue penciling in the grain of wood on his guitar, his eye fell, once again, on the oil cloth. Instead of completing the guitar with pencil, he cut a piece of the oil cloth and pasted it onto the canvas. Through this act, Braque introduced a new medium—the medium of collage. This new technique got its name collage from the old French coller meaning ‘to glue.’ The name was quite fitting as one material was glued onto another to create a design. Pablo Picasso soon followed with his Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912, when he pasted a piece of oil cloth printed with chair caning onto his canvas. Both Braque and Picasso placed bits of materials on canvas to break the two-dimensional feel of a painting, giving the work a three-dimensional aspect.

Collage Materials •

As with the mosaics, collage materials can vary greatly. Almost anything can be pasted to a surface—paper of all kinds, buttons, beads, seed, bits of wood—let the children use their imaginations.

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Of importance is the kind of adhesive you select for the different projects. o Glue sticks: they can be used for all kinds of artwork and are easy to work with. o Yes! Paste: a thick substance that can secure heavy tesserae on a strong surface. Also, it can be thinned with water to different consistencies and used with lighter weight pieces. This paste is one of my favorites. o Mod Podge: is a versatile and handy glue for varied projects. It is a permanent sealant that can’t be dissolved once it dries. Care must be used when using this product, especially with the brushes used for applying it. Besides being an adhesive agent, when painted over various art projects, it will create a protective covering. It comes in a variety of finishes: matte, glossy, and semi-glossy.

There are many uses for this glue in the classroom.

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o Glue gun: a glue gun is especially useful when the children are building a follow-up construction for their work in the class. When using this great care must be taken that the children don’t harm themselves. All elementary children should be given a clear lesson on its use and told of the risks involved if they are not careful. At the 6-9 level the class assistant should oversee the children’s safety, but not interfere with their work.

In the 9 to 12 class the adults need to be aware that the children are working with the glue gun and stand afar at the ready. o White glue is convenient to have on hand for any all-purpose activity the children are working on. Many of the recipes in Mudworks, call for white glue.

ADDITIONAL STORIES AND MATERIALS FOR ART Dr. Montessori said, “To confer the gift of drawing we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys and a soul that feels.”6 We confer that gift by exposing our children to the essential facets of art: for the “hand that obeys” we give the children a myriad of techniques to use with their different art media while they are drawing and painting; to create “an eye that sees,” we expose the children to the “language “ of visual art so that they can “read” it—the language of art is spoken in terms of the elements and principles. To do this we provide folders of art images for the children to analyze each for the elements and principles of design.

The “soul that feels” will unfold naturally through a systematic, focused, analytic examination of each art movement or piece that calls to them, generating an appreciation for the history, beauty, thought, skill, and talent that contributed to the work of art.

The world of art from the very beginning has served as a window to human existence and values. This world creates a multi-colored quilt covering all of humanity, the fabric of which has been woven together from events that have impacted lives--customs, traditions, practices, politics, and conventions. To read and understand each strand in this intricate mantle we must tap into the long history of art to interpret its meaning. The quilt is interlaced from stories about art movements, materials, artists, theories, and the fundamentals of design. To tell these stories we must know them. Not all of them, but enough of them to tell our children as we endeavor to engage them in an exploration of another facet of our remarkable world.

Also, we must know our children and their interests to determine which of the stories will be the most effective. We must capture their attention, not only with the stories we tell but how we narrate them. If the children are not interested or spurred to find out more, our efforts will have been futile.

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Advanced Montessori Method, Volume II, Kalakshetra 1965, 289.

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However, once we have delighted them and provoked their interest, we have more work to do. We need to guide their interests by providing images of points included in our stories. These images should be organized into folders, beautifully presented and worthy of a place in the children’s classroom.

Additionally, in keeping with the Montessori philosophy of ‘limitation’ we should select just a few folders to place in the environment at any one time. They can be rotated throughout the year based on the children’s interests. This axiom applies to folders for art movements and individual artists. For the elements and principles, we will need a folder for each one to be available for impending lessons.

WESTERN ART MOVEMENTS Because we all don’t have a background in art, I have selected the art movements to share with you that I believe best tell the chronological history of western art. Knowing that learning the total of art history would be an overwhelming enterprise, my intention is to help lighten the load and give some small measure of guidance as you choose the Art Movement Folders for you and your children. Let’s begin at the beginning.

Art Movement

Artist

Element

Principle

Prehistoric Art (40,000 - 4000 BCE) Human expression by means of art reveals much about the lives of people throughout time. As we learn more about the different art eras, the more we learn about earlier people and their cultures. To make art is a part of human nature and, as far as we know, people have been creating since the earliest cave paintings, roughly 40,000 years ago during the Paleolithic Era. Evidence of cave art reaches around the world from the continent of Australia to India, Asia, Europe, and the Americas telling of the unique human experiences of the different peoples. The images pique many questions that can only remain unanswered since we have no documentation of their meanings. However, we can still appreciate the beauty and ingenuity Manda Guéli Cave Chad, Central Africa that contributed to these astounding images.

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Ancient Art (4,000 BCE – CE 400) Advanced civilizations with an unambiguous written language such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and those in Meso-America, produced the artwork classified as Ancient Art. Depending on the civilization, the medium of art it produced varied. However, most of the artful embellishments told stories.

These could be read on decorated bowls and weapons, revealed on religious and symbolic imagery, and signify social status. Often the artwork would recount the tales and accomplishments of the civilization’s rulers and their goddesses. One such famous example is the Code of Hammurabi, c. 1792 BCE. One can see the tablet on which King Hammurabi—the sixth king of Babylonia—is carving a set of laws in stone while the Mesopotamian god Shabash observes.

Ancient Greek and Roman Art (650 BCE – 476 CE) Over thousands of years, all visual arts of the Greek culture—paintings, sculpture, architecture, and pottery—epitomized the ideals of beauty. Although Greece was a network of separate city states, the same sense of beauty (as well as their language and religious beliefs) pervaded their artistic expressions. The Greek classical period was the time art historians designated The Golden Age due to the huge building projects that exemplify that era, such as the Parthenon.

During the Hellenistic period, the sculptures were embodied with exquisite beauty, variety, power, harmony, and vitality, which is apparent in Laocoön and His Sons.

This period influenced the Roman artists who took inspiration from the Greeks and created their own powerful images and architecture

Byzantine Art (476 – 1453 CE) When the Roman Emperor Constantine declared Christianity a legitimate religion, he moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium, renaming it ‘Constantinople’—eventually to become Istanbul.

Deriving from its Egyptian, Greek, and Roman heritages, Byzantine Art continued to express a strong sense of order as did the Greek and Roman Art. However, no nudes or pagan gods were depicted because the focus of Byzantine Art was conceived to spread devotional information about God, saints, and scriptures. This was achieved by depicting figures in angular forms with sharp contours, flattened color, and gold decoration. Christ Pantocrator from the Greek meaning ‘omnipotent lord of the universe,’ is a common icon in Byzantine Art. When this image is close to that of the emperor, the implication is the emperor was divinely ordained. Also, to signal the strength and importance of the emperors, Byzantine artists would depict figures according to compositional cues, such as size, placement, and color rather than emphasizing a naturalistic impression. Under the leadership of Emperor Justinian 32

(527 – 565 CE) Byzantine architecture and art flourished. The Hagia Sophia meaning ‘holy wisdom’, is an example of one masterpiece erected during his reign. This is an immense church with a massive lightfilled dome and interior filled with many windows, colored marble, and iridescent mosaics, and glittering with gold highlighting the effects. In her beauty, Hagia Sophia has become the standard for aesthetic Byzantine architecture.

Additionally, Justinian gets credit for the development of the extraordinary mosaics in the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy. As did the work in Constantinople, the mosaics depict Old and New Testaments’ Bible figures along with the contemporary Byzantine rulers.

Medieval Art (500 -1400 CE) Not all art historians agree on how to classify the Medieval Art era since the progression of each movement varies from country to country with considerable overlapping from one movement to another. Art is a continuous exploration where one period emerges from an existing one. But a generally accepted taxonomy for Medieval Art includes Early Christian Art, Romanesque Art, and Gothic Art, with some subdivisions within these styles. These three movements stretch from the fall of the Roman empire c. 480 CE to the long Gothic period 1500 CE and have been divided by their styles of architecture.

Medieval painters focused on images of God’s supremacy and mercy rather than realistic portrayals of figures. While they emulated Greek and Roman arts, they preferred to develop their own aesthetic styles, akin to this illustration of St. Matthew the Evangelist, from the Ebbos Gospels, c. 816-835 CE.

Early Christian Art (260 – 525 CE) Because the lives of early Christians were dominated and even endangered by the Romans, who did not believe in or tolerate Christian values, Early Christian Art was done in the labyrinthine tunnels of the Roman catacombs. There some of the oldest examples of Christian Art can be found—frescoes, mosaics, and panel paintings of Christian subjects. The artisans drew upon the styles and motifs with which they were familiar—namely, those derived from Roman art.

Concurrently, Christian icons and symbols were devised to convey the religious messages to the Christian people. In 380 CE, Emperor Theophilus I designated Christianity as the official religion of the empire. This mandate allowed Christian Art and architecture with exquisite frescoes and mosaics to flourish openly with no need to conceal such evidence of the artists’ beliefs. Initially, as Christian and Byzantine Art began to meld together, no definite clear-cut lines demarcated the two styles and late Christian Art is now classified as Byzantine.

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Romanesque Art (1000 -1150 CE) The name Romanesque arises from Roman architecture, which is characterized by symmetrical composition, barrel vaults, apses, round-headed arches, and acanthus-leaf decorations—especially in churches and cathedrals. During the rise of Christianity c. 1000 CE, Romanesque Art developed as a strategy for spreading Christian values to the massive illiterate population. Since people could not decode words on paper, they certainly could decipher stories depicted in colored glass, paintings, and sculpture. Thus, Romanesque Art, often depicted on walls, in mosaics, wooden panels, and illuminated manuscripts, was simple and easy to read. The words were pictures. The paintings have bold contours, clean areas of color, and lack depth and perspective. Much of the Christian Romanesque Art is symbolic to emphasize the religious and spiritual message directed at the people. For example, the relative importance of the figures in the paintings is indicated by their size—the most significant figure would be portrayed larger; additionally, the more crucial personage would be painted in the most expensive colors—gold and ultramarine. An examination of Romanesque Art Altar frontal from Avià, most often engulfs the Madonna in this expensive c. 1200 blue. Frequently, mythical creatures are depicted in Romanesque Art and become part of the narrative in spreading the message. In the case of St. George and the Dragon, the dragon is a symbol of evil that needs to be conquered since it is the manifestation of chaos and uncontrollable nature in the Christian world.

Gothic Art (1100 -1500 CE) Gothic Art sprang from the Romanesque Era to become an expression of a new measure of freedom of thought and religious beliefs. The counterbalance of this freedom was the fear that the world was coming to an end. Both perceptions created two contrasting tensions and viewpoints within the realm of Gothic Art, which resulted in diverse subject matter that weakened the church’s stronghold on the religious foci of art. Moving away from all things Christian to scenes from actual human life is one indication of the change in diversity. The human figures were more realistic, less flat, and twodimensional. A sense of animation, which can be seen in Duccio’s Madonna and Child on Throne, c. 1255-1260, prevailed in the Gothic figures in contrast to the stilted ones in Romanesque Art. With Filippo Brunelleschi’s discovery of mathematical perspective in 1415 painters became more aware of portraying life-like, realistic images and

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scenes. Architecture and its design expansion became a measure of the development of the arts during the Gothic Era. Its flying buttresses, large stained-glass windows, ribbed vaults, pointed arches, asymmetrical composition, and highly ornate decoration elucidate the differences between Gothic architecture and Romanesque.

When visiting Europe, inspired by the Gothic arch Grant Wood included an arched window on the second floor of an American farmhouse—that typically has rectangularlyshaped windows—giving rise to the name of his famous painting, American Gothic.

Artists of the Romanesque and Gothic are Cimabue, Andrea Pisano, Duccio, and Giotto di Bondone.

Renaissance Art (1400 -1550 CE) Renaissance Art reflects the emerging interest in the new development of the arts and its proliferation based on the revival of the classical arts of the Greeks and the Romans. The word renaissance meaning ‘rebirth’ described this art phenomenon precisely. Triggering this resurgence was new knowledge—the discovery of mathematical laws of linear perspective, the invention of the printing press, a new system of astronomy, the use of oil paint and other recovered techniques that had been lost. Renaissance concepts dominated the art world as artists sought to capture human experience and emotion, along with the beauty and mystery of the natural world. Images became convincingly life-like. Over the roughly hundred or so years of this rekindling of classical ideas, the Renaissance encompasses four periods—Early Renaissance, Northern Renaissance, Venetian Renaissance, and High Renaissance. As with most bodies of newly discovered ideas, the progression of the former periods informs the burgeoning expansion of the latter periods. This is true for the art world as well.

Early Renaissance (1400 -1490 CE) A period of great intellectual and creative activity, the Early Renaissance was the period that severed the ties with Byzantine Art completely. This era was spawned by a surge of interest in classical literature, philosophy and art, commerce, discovery of new continents, and new inventions. That the Renaissance arose in Italy is generally accepted even though Italy was composed of independent city-states presided over by wealthy patrons. Consequently, these citystates became the centers for artistic patronage and development of new ideas. In this early stage no one style emerged; the artists were discovering St. George and the Dragon their abilities and tendencies of expression, but they were all interested in 1456-1460, Paolo Uccello reviving the values of ancient Greece and Rome. Once the artists linear perspective 35

perfected their knowledge of anatomy (some even studying cadavers), understood the rules of linear perspective advanced by the Italian architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, and could render draperies and three-dimensional objects realistically, the world of Italian art soared. Depicting reality can be seen easily in Sandro Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Woman, 1480. Even some of the key artists from the Medieval period were influenced by these new discoveries and employed them in their later work.

Artists of the Early Renaissance are Massaccio, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello, Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Fra Angelico. In the later part of the Early Renaissance the key artists are Pierro della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Perugino Andrea Mantegna, and Filippo Lippi.

Northern Renaissance (1430 -1550) The Northern Renaissance–also known as the Flemish Renaissance—unfolded in northern Europe with a different focus than that of the Italian Early Renaissance. The northern artists were not interested in resurrecting the values of the Greeks and Romans. Rather, they painted scenes of emotional religious works, realistic portraits, landscapes, and varied genres. Also, many of the pieces have symbolic images in which the metaphors can be deciphered for ‘reading’ the painting. Jan van Eyck’s Giovanni Arnolfini’s Wedding Portrait in 1435 is a superb example of this symbolism. There are mysteries to be discovered and deciphered in this incomparable piece. As a hint, consider the apparel of the couple, the clogs, the small dog, the orange on the windowsill, the convex mirror, the candle in the chandelier, and Van Eyck’s signature above the mirror. Finding the meaning of these will solve the mystery. Another aspect the Northern Renaissance artists achieved that amazed the southern artists were the deep colors that vibrated with life.

Traditionally, the southern painters used tempera paint for their frescoes, but to their advantage, the northern painters invented oil paints, a paint that dries slowly allowing it to be reworked, applied in thin translucent layers, to make a rich, deep color. This rich pigment also enabled the northern artists to render precise details and accurate perspective.

Artists of the Northern Renaissance are Jan & Hubert van Eyck, Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes, Albrecht Durer, and Peter Bruegel the Elder.

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Venetian Renaissance (1430 -1550) Made rich by commerce, textiles, location at the gateway to the far east via the Silk Road, acquiring mainland territories, and establishing outposts in the eastern Mediterranean, Venice became the most powerful city in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. This growth and strength through the backing of the rich Venetian populace allowed artists to enhance the innovations and discoveries made by their predecessors in other areas of the world. Thus, the painters from the Venetian Renaissance, also became known for their vibrantly colored paintings by exploiting the knowledge of oil paints developed by their northern neighbors. The dynamic compositions and dramatic perspective were soon painted on canvas, rather than wood panels since canvas was the better support for oil paint. Among the most famous and influential artists in Venice at this time were the Bellini Family. Jacopo Bellini and his sons, Gentile, and Giovanni, numbered among the most famous and successful artists of this period. Giovanni Bellini’s abilities are apparent in St. Francis in the Desert, 1475-80.

Together or separately, the Bellinis made important contributions to the Venetian Renaissance by developing new techniques that influenced later generations of Italian painters, such as Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto.

Artists of the Venetian Renaissance are the Bellini Family, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and Jacopo Sansovino.

High Renaissance (1490 -1550) Halmarks of the High Renaissance were the ambitious compositions of famous and extraordinarily talented artists. These are the very artists that Popes Julius II and Leo X commissioned—or conscripted—to fulfill their goal to establish Rome as the influential art center of Italy thus supplanting Venice as holder of this distinction and stature. These artists had the ability to synthesize harmony with a renewed classic style of the human figure and ideals. They used their brilliant technical abilities and accurate perspective effects to create incredibly beautiful paragons of beauty that remain with us today as we pass through the portals of the Vatican. Waiting for us are the Sistine Chapel ceiling painted by Michelangelo or the masterpieces of Raphaello Sanzio da Urbino beautifying the walls of the rooms now named for him— Raphael Rooms. One singularly impressive example of Raphael’s talent and expertise is the School of

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Athens, 1510. In this jewel of a painting, he captured the most notable philosophers and mathematicians of ancient times. Plato and Aristotle take center stage, other significant personages flank them— Pythagoras, Diogenes, Euclid, Zoroaster, and Ptolemy. Of special interest is the inclusion of Hypatia— pictured at the left in a white robe—who was the first recognized female mathematician and philosopher in history.

Artists of the High Renaissance are Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Andrea Sansovino, Andrea del Sarto, and Paolo Veronese.

Mannerism (1520 -1600 ) During the 1520s a new style of painting emerged in which artists increasingly prized originality above all.

To describe the objective of this period the name Mannerism was coined from the Italian word maniera meaning ‘manner or style.’ This word was meant to describe the standard of excellence achieved in the High Renaissance to which all artists should aspire. Even so, where High Renaissance Art emphasized proportion, balance, and ideal beauty, Mannerist artists began to exaggerate qualities that were asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant. The exaggerated poses, elongated figures, distorted perspectives and proportion, and garish colors, all produced images and scenes that looked contrived and affected. Thus, in search of effect and virtuosity, the Mannerists upset the established harmony of the Renaissance by introducing what amounted to a new style rather than adherence to an old one. An example of this new style is epitomized in Correggio’s Madonna with the Long Neck, 1534-40. In fact, Mannerism became a court style, in which the artists were driven to compete for the sponsorship of wealthy patrons who used the paintings to proclaim their status and prestige. Mannerism lasted until the end of the 16th century when the Baroque style replaced it.

Artists of Mannerism are Parmigianino, Antonio da Correggio, and Giulio Romano.

Dutch Golden Age (1585 -1702 ) Upheavals in societies, be they religious, political, or cultural, affect the expression of the arts of any kind.

The visual arts are not exempt. With the significant act of posting the 95 Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church, Martin Luther initiated the start of the Reformation. This act divided the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) into two countries—Flanders remained Catholic and royalist, while the Netherlands became a republic and the center of Protestantism. This changed the face of the art world. The new Dutch republic de-emphasized religious paintings and soon developed styles that captured still life, landscapes, interiors of homes, genre paintings, as well as portraiture. This style was prominent in the Dutch Golden Age. The paintings were small-scaled and scenes of everyday life and celebration. The new wealthy merchant class in this prosperous seafaring nation were now able to afford art to display in their homes.

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The subject matter appealed to them because they believed that while things and objects might be considered insignificant, every one of God’s creatures is important and should be appreciated. Dutch artists excelled in the treatment of light in their artwork. In Frans Hal’s Merrymakers at Shrovetide 1616-1617 you can see the effects of light as it reflects off the young woman’s satin sleeves, the celebrating happy faces of the revelers, and the everyday objects laid out on the table to signify the good life—all characteristics of the Dutch style.

Another Dutch genre that flourished in the Netherlands in the 17th century is still-life painting in which a skull dominated the scene. These paintings are a part of an art form called vanitas, the name originating from the Latin word vanitas meaning ‘vanity.’ Vanitas paintings contain collections of objects symbolic of the inevitability of death and the transience and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures. Notice the precious shell signaling earthly wealth; the Japanese sword suggests a symbol of world power; the surrounding books and instruments allude to worldly pleasures; the skull is a symbol of death and the transience of life; the stream of light illuminating the skull denotes the presence of God and eternal existence. Vanitas paintings admonish the viewer to consider his own mortality and to realize that all these objects and status symbols are transient in the face of death. The still life Vanitas, th 17 century by Harmen Steenwijck, masterfully captures the essence of this genre.

Dutch Artists from the Golden Age are Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Harmen Steenwyck, Johannes Vermeer, and Pieter de Hooch.

Baroque Art (1600 -1730/50 ) The Roman Catholic church responded to the Reformation by instituting a Counter-Reformation proclaiming that art should express passionate religious themes to motivate and stimulate the viewers’ faith. In fact, at the Council of Trent, 1545, it was decreed that religious art must encourage piety and realism by glorifying the Catholic Church and Catholic images. Thus, new techniques were developed to meet this objective. For this reason, the new style was given the name Baroque, from the Portuguese word barocco meaning ‘misshapen pearl.’ While misshapen, a baroque pearl can be exquisite, as were many examples of its artistic namesake. Baroque Art is dynamic, emotional, realistic, and has a strong value differential that results in chiaroscuro—coming from the Italian meaning ‘light and dark.’ The new style embraced the values of the High Renaissance and spearheaded new varieties of secular art, especially landscapes. Aristocrats often commissioned scenes from Greek mythology for their private lives as these classical images were used to depict the patron’s interests or triumphs. The patron may have valued the finer

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things in life, such as wine and revelry, and saw Bacchus as the perfect allegory for implying wealth and excess. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who rendered Bacchus, 1596, was a bit of a hooligan and outlaw, but remained one of the most influential painters of the Baroque period despite his dubious reputation. His accomplished technique that combined intense realism with dramatic lighting was valued by many aristocrats who commissioned paintings from him.

Baroque Artists are Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, Peter Paul Rubens, Artemisa Gentileschi, and Diego Velázquez.

Rococo Art (1600 - 1780 ) Rococo Art began as an ornamental, elegant design style first in architecture followed by painting and sculpture. The name Rococo derives from the French word ‘rocaille’ meaning ‘pebble’ referring to rocks and stones that were used to embellish and decorate grottoes. This shell and stone motif commonly used in decorative, interior façades was characterized by elaborately fluent shapes and ornamentation. The Rococo fashion was driven by Madam de Pompadour, King Louis XV’s inamorata, as a reaction against the Baroque grandeur established by King Louis X1V’s court at the Palais de Versailles.

Bolstered by her position as a favored member of the French court and as a major patron of architecture, Madam de Pompadour had no compunctions expressing her preference for elaborate decorative arts and ideas. Rococo painting is characterized by natural motifs, soft colors, curving lines, a lighthearted sentiment when depicting scenes of love and nature. François Boucher’s portrayal of Madam de Pompadour and a Dog, 1756, personifies those qualities in his rendition of the powerful woman.

Rococo Artists are François Boucher, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Neoclassicism (1750 - 1830 ) Just as Rococo Art was a reaction to its predecessor Baroque Art, so too was Neoclassicism to Rococo Art. The frivolous sensuality, sentimentality, and elaborate design embellishments seen both in architecture and painting of Rococo Art no longer expressed the attitudes of the times. Since France was on the brink of its revolution of 1789, it seemed important to have art exemplify the rational thinking of the Age of Reason. This reflection turned the attention of artists to a painting style that engendered order and restraint, those very attributes that were predominate in Greek and Roman art. Another factor that inspired Neoclassicism were the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1748. The paintings unearthed

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influenced and revived the values and emphasis on the classical world that can be recognized in JacquesLouis David’s The Death of Socrates, 1789. Toward the end of the 18th century art became more serious as illustrated by its sober colors, clarity of form, smooth contours, paints applied with no evidence of individual brush strokes, and strong delineated forms.

Neoclassicism began in Rome but quickly spread across Europe aided by the custom at the time of young aristocrats taking their ‘Grand Tour’ to finalize their classical education.

Neoclassicism Artists are Anton Raphael Mengs, Pompeo Batoni, Angelica Kauffmann, Jacques Louis David, and J.A.D. Ingres.

Romanticism (1790 - 1880 ) Once again, the succeeding art movement from one to another changes its styles as a reaction to its predecessor. Romanticism, which was an artistic, musical, literary, and intellectual movement, grew from dissatisfaction with the values of Neoclassicism and eschewed the Enlightenment’s ideals of reason and order. In the 18th century, art conveyed the glorification of emotions over logic and intuition over intellect.

Thus, visual artists focused on passions, individuality, and sentiments. The goal was to inspire viewers by moving them to empathy and compassion. Additionally, in many of the various arts, Romanticism focused on an appreciation of the force of nature, both for its beauty and its unpredictable power. Rejecting the defining features of Neoclassicism, Romantic painters strove to produce imaginative spirited art pieces using bright colors and energetic brushstrokes. Artwork from this period favored color over line, dynamic compositions rather than static, and individuality over stylized images of the classical past. Eugéne Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, 1830, faithfully embodies the artistic virtues of Romanticism.

Romanticism Artists are Eugéne Delacroix, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Francisco de Goya, and Théodore Gericault.

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Realism (1830 - 1890 ) Realism was born from the rapid development in the modern world of 1850. Artists felt compelled to chronicle the changes that new machines, factories and manufacturing possibilities visited upon the people of the modern world. An agriculturally based existence was converted into one in which cities, factories, and mass transportation dominated. In a nutshell, artists wanted to depict forthrightly the new world as they saw it, portraying technical progress and social inequities without compunction. The word Realism was coined to describe the work of Gustave Courbet, whose style was divorced from the previous modes of art—Neoclassicism and Romanticism—to paint the truth of the ordinary working-class people. Realists used unprettified detail depicting the existence of ordinary contemporary life. Often the subject of their art would be commonplace scenes such as farming, city streets, cafes, and popular entertainments. Their figures would appear humble and unadorned as can be seen in Jules Bastien-Lepage’s October, 1878. Interestingly, long before the Realism movement, Roman portraiture was characterized by realism and the desire to convey images exactly as they appeared, warts and all. Realism painters strove to shed light on what society deemed as ‘revolting’ or ‘coarse.’ To accomplish this, they would painstakingly paint details and render shadows, depth perception and perspective very meticulously. The color palette of choice was warm hues such as soft browns, low-intensity reds, black, and ivory.

Realism Artists are Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, and Édouard Manet.

Impressionism (1865 - 1885 ) Fueling the changes in the Impressionism style was the invention of transportable paint tubes and the box easel. Simple though this creation may seem, paint tubes allowed artists to move beyond the four walls of their studios to the out-of-doors to paint en plein air, the French expression for ‘in the open air.’ This move offered experiences painting in and depicting the landscape simultaneously. By doing this, artists could objectively and accurately record visual reality in terms of transient light and color. The term Impressionism originated from the title Claude Monet gave to his painting Impression: soleil levant or Impression, Sunrise, 1872. A Parisian satirist and critic coined the term ‘Impressionism’ to belittle the piece by comparing a wallpaper pattern as more finished than Monet’s seascape. There is no doubt at its inception, Impressionism faced ruthless opposition from the conventional French art community. However, artists continued to reject the prevailing idealized expressions of academic painting and shifted their attention to color, tone, and

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texture. They excelled in focusing on how light could define a moment in time. They managed this by using color to provide definition, not black lines. Monet’s Haystacks are the embodiment of the Impressionism movement and the treatment of light. By the late 1860s, this approach reflected a new aesthetic—which was to be a guiding force in Impressionist work.

Impressionist Artists are Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt.

Post-Impressionism (1885 - 1910 ) The term Post-Impressionism was first used to advertise an exhibition of modern French painters: ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists.’ The name caught on and an art critic used it to describe the exhibition as ‘The Post-Impressionists of France.’ One of the principal artists under the banner of Post-Impressionism was Paul Cézanne, who became known as the father of the movement. His aim was to reduce objects to their basic shapes while retaining the saturated colors of Impressionism. This coterie, which never used the name given them, did not all subscribe to the same artistic principles other than countering the Impressionist fixation for depicting visual accuracy and unambiguous images of their subject. Rather, while united in their stand against Impressionism, the Post-Impressionists had a range of unique styles that expressed less about what they saw, and more about what they thought. However, since the group did not agree on commonly accepted principles, Post-Impressionism subdivided into subsidiary schools of thought. With Pointillism—also called Neo-Impressionism—George Seurat and Paul Signac, who painted Portrait of Félix Fénéon, 1890, preferred the scientifically oriented aspects of color theory by applying tiny dots of complementary colors for the eye to visually mix. The Pointillists believed that this approach would create more vivid and luminous colors than if pre-mixed on the palette. Vincent van Gogh is known for using vibrant colors—often complementary colors because when used together, he believed, they enlivened the canvas to the point of visual vibration. He is known as well for his strong application of paint, either by a brush or directly from the tube, resulting in a textured surface (a technique called impasto). In this way, he could convey his feelings and state of mind, which were often troubled and intense. Another sub-set of Post-

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Impressionism is the art movement Symbolism that used basic elements of art—forms, lines, shapes, and colors—to create symbols and convey hidden meaning in the painting. Paul Gaugin was a proponent of Symbolism since it concentrated on the subjective vision of the artist and represented abstract ideas.

Symbolist painters gave form to mythological and dream imagery that were personal and private; it was more a philosophy than an actual style of art. In fact, the Symbolist’s artwork created a synthesis of metaphors and symbols. This can be seen in Dance of Life, by Edvard Munch, 1899. He used colors to symbolically express different feelings: red for love, passion, and pain; white for youth, innocence, and joy; and black for loneliness, sorrow, and death. The PostImpressionism movement in all its iterations lasted until the birth of Fauvism in 1905.

Post-Impressionist Artists are Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Georges, Seurat, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Signac.

Art Nouveau (1890 - 1914 ) The imminent turn of the century inspired artists to rethink the direction that their predecessors adopted and to consider taking a more versatile modern approach to art—one that would create a new tenor for the impending century and arouse a singular appreciation for the manifestations of art in all aspects, be it painting, architecture, sculpture, glass, ceramics, jewelry, etc. This goal was christened Art Nouveau, or the New Art. Art Nouveau would become an international style in both the decorative and applied arts, removing the traditional distinction between fine arts (painting and sculpture) and applied arts (interior design, graphic arts, furniture, glass art, textiles, ceramics, jewelry, and metal work). To be clear, these artists were intent upon raising the status of arts and crafts to the level of fine art, where it rightly belonged.

Among the defining characteristics of Art Nouveau were the sinuous, flowing designs often inspired by and reflected in botanical designs. Artists wanted to capture a sense of dynamism and movement through asymmetrical compositions or what is known as ‘whiplash lines,’ a term taken to describe the curvaceous roots and stems of the cyclamen, iris, orchid, holly, and water lily as well as the stylized lines of the swan, peacock, and dragonfly. These luscious curves can be seen in the interior of the Hotel Tassel in Brussels designed by Victor Horta. Art Nouveau found expression in glass, especially with the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose style and fashion have captivated many art lovers over the years. This medium of art prompted consuming experimentation as artists sought to find new effects of transparency and opacity. Tiffany’s mastery over the medium is apparent in his lamp, Dragonfly of 1906, and reaffirms the objective of the Art Nouveau movement— an object’s function should dictate its form.

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Art Nouveau Artists are Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and René Lalique.

Expressionism (1905 - 1930 ) The mood and undercurrents pervading Germany before, during and after World War I, had a stark and grating impact on the values artists conveyed in their artwork. They no longer were interested in extolling the importance of harmony and balance, since those characteristics had become irrelevant in the perverse, war-like climate of the times. Instead, by introducing a new art movement referred to as Expressionism, artists wanted to give voice to the internal turmoil and angst their political environment foisted upon current society. While this new approach was initiated in many large cities in Germany, it became an international movement. The artists wanted to expose the disquieting feelings about human behavior and the contemporary world. They also wanted to visually underscore the apparent loss of spirituality and the degradation of honest human values. That voice was powerful, and it screamed of anger, violence, and frustration. These attitudes are reflected in the works of many Expressionists who were determined to reveal the base, vile and immoral face of society by selecting representations of disaffected people, prostitutes, or mask-like faces. Here, James Ensor, often described by critics as ‘weird,’ in The Intrigue, 1890, has captured the emotionalism that the Expressionists wanted to convey by masking the individual’s identities.

In Dresden in 1905 a group of four Expressionist artists formed a peripheral movement called Die Brücke (The Bridge) because they were staunchly opposed to Germany’s established social order. They expressed this opposition in woodcut prints, wooden sculptures, and primitive modes of painting by using heightened color and direct and simple forms. The ignominy that these artists believed was wrought by the establishment is expressed in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street with Red Streetwalker, 1914-1925. Also worthy of note, their resolve became a progenitor of the movement later known as German Expressionism.

In a counterpart to Die Brücke's distorted figurative style, another group of disaffected Expressionists in Munich formed the movement entitled Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Even though both styles sought to confront a burgeoning alienation in the modern world, Der Blaue Reiter strove to pursue the spiritual value of art that would express their inner emotions and thoughts, by representing images unnaturally. They believed that color and form consisted Das Blaue Pherd 1911, Franz Marc of tangible spiritual values motivating them to separate form and color into 45

discrete elements by applying non-naturalistic color to recognizable objects. In fact, their name and philosophy centered around the belief that blue was the most spiritual color and the rider a symbol for moving on.

Expressionist Artists are Edvard Munch, Paul Klee, Georges Rouault, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele.

Die Brücke Artists are Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Erich Heckel, Fritz Bleyl, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, and Kees van Dongen.

Der Blaue Reiter Artists are Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, and Alfred Kubin.

German Expressionism (1905 - 1935 ) Influencing the emergence of German Expressionism, a movement not easily distinguished by a singular style or method grew out of the Expressionism movement, in which the two pioneering art movements, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter shaped the objectives of the movement. The passion and fervor that gripped those styles along with past painters with similar sensibilities—Matthias Grunewald, a German from the Flemish Renaissance, Edvard Munch, and Vincent van Gogh—had a significant impact on the Berlin-centered movement. As the possibility of war loomed, the German Expressionists captured in images their disillusion with society and the disintegrating morality.

Otto Dix named the painting above Metropolis or Life as it Comes, 1927-28. He expressed his intentions with these words, “I want to come uncomfortably close to the times we live in…I need the connection with the world of the senses, the courage to portray ugliness, life as it comes.” The German Expressionists’ artworks were profoundly emotive, unrestrained, and even shocking as they attempted to convey the reality they were experiencing before and during the war.

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Within German Expressionism in the 1920s, post-World War I, a group arose known as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). The artists characterized the resignation and cynicism generated by the war in their artwork. Their images were a realistic visual complaint against the corruption and demoralization of the times. One could say that their artwork became a self-conscious form of protest, which comes as no surprise since many of the German Expressionists were traumatized from their war experiences. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Giving Visual Form to Shell Shock, 1915, illustrates the distress and pain he suffered as a soldier in the war that caused him to be removed from the intense fighting.

Expressionist Artists are Ernst Barlach, Käthe Kollwitz, Alfred Kubin, Ernest Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Beckmann, and George Grosz.

Fauvism (1905 - 1909) Fauvism, a short-lived art movement, was led by Henri Matisse who was intrigued and influenced

by Vincent van Gogh’s expressive brush strokes, Paul Cézanne’s exploration of solid figures, and Georges Seurat’ use of pure, juxtaposed colors. The more Matisse studied and experimented with these concepts, the more he rejected traditional renderings of space and color and adopted a very different style. When he and a group of his followers exhibited their paintings—ones that embodied the new ideals exemplified by Matisse—in the Paris Salon d’Automne in 1905, the art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, was extremely offended by what he considered the violence of their works and dubbed them Fauves from the French for ‘wild beasts.’ The name stuck! This so-called ‘violent’ artwork used intense, non-natural colors on figures and objects; used color to describe light and space to convey invigorating emotion. Woman with a Hat, 1905, was Matisse’s offending piece that generated so much antipathy at the exhibit. Unquestionably, this piece challenged the way art was viewed by critics and the public. Brisk color strokes of reds, greens, and blues created an energetic, expressive view of the woman. The crude paint application appalled viewers threatening their preconceived ideas of what art should look like. It was the Fauves practice to paint directly from nature as had the Impressionists, but their renderings of the subject were infused with vigorous, expressive brushstrokes (sometimes applied directly from the tube) and application of vivid high intensity colors. André Derain’s The Turning Road, 1906 illustrates this quality. Their flat treatment of figures and objects contributed to the succeeding movement, Cubism. The Fauves tended to dismiss the conventional treatment of space and define it, instead, by the movement of color. To them, the new approach was more important than academic theory or approval.

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Fauvism Artists are Henri Mattisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, and Ablert Marquet.

Cubism (1907 - 1914) There is much to be admired in the work of Paul Cézanne whose style attracted the attention of Pablo Picasso and George Braque. They were among the first to recognize the characteristics of Cézanne’s technique that would be pivotal in the establishment of the Cubism movement. In Cézanne’s Mont Sainte Victoire, 1895, (a mountain he loved and painted dozens of times) the strong, rectangular colored brush strokes are fractured angular shapes with warm reddish browns advancing on the canvas and cool colors receding to render an informal perspective. Combined with different viewpoints pictured in Cézanne’s two-dimensional Basket and Fruit (The Kitchen Table), 1899-90, it is easily understood why some might credit him as the ‘Father of Cubism.’ To see the different viewpoints in his two-dimensional work, note how some of the ceramics present a frontal view and others present a three-quarter view. Further, draw your eye along the front edge of the table from right to left and observe the edges do not line up. The tabletop appears titled toward the viewer on the left, but not so on the right. It seems like the large basket of fruit at the back right might tumble off the table’s surface because it appears perched precariously on the edge rather than squarely supported by the table. Braque and Picasso expanded on Cézanne’s use of distortion by simultaneously presenting multiple views of the same subject from varied positions. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon, 1907 foreshadowed the new style in his fractured, angular depiction of five female nudes. The masked heads of two of the women were inspired by an African exhibit that Picasso attended while painting this piece. The reaction of a group of his friends—Henri Matisse and André Derain among them—was so negative and mocking that Picasso rolled the canvas up, stored it in his studio, and did not exhibit it to the public for almost a decade. Interestingly, this new style came by its name from the same critic and in the same derisive way as did Fauvism. Louis Vauxcelles, when viewing Braque’s Houses at L’Estaque, 1908, with its full volumed houses and cylindrical forms of trees, described the houses as being composed of cubes. Thus, this illustrious art period was baptized Cubism.

Cubists deliberately emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface while rejecting traditional perspective techniques and foreshortening. Further, they were not bound to the natural representation and uses of form, texture, color, and space.

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Cubist Artists are Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Metzinger.

Futurism (1909 - 1914) The Futurism art movement, which originated in Milan, Italy, emphasized dynamism, speed, and modern technology such as cars, airplanes, and new industry. It was the beauty of speed that grabbed their interest and motivated them to represent that fascination in both sculpture and paintings. Their intent was to obliterate the traditional artistic values from the Renaissance. Many of their subjects were portrayals of urban landscapes, speed, violence, and the working classes. From these emphases and representations, the Futurists hoped to change the face of art. Their theories appealed to many who were disaffected with society—note the Futurism movement grew in the years preceding and during World War I--, thus it spread to countries in which the people were willing to break with the past to establish new traditions, customs, and mores. One of their approaches for upending the conventions of the past was to imbue everyday subjects with motion and speed. Giacomo Balla adroitly captured both dynamism and speed in his Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912. The woman’s feet and legs, along with those of the dog and his body, are multiplied to convey forward momentum. Umberto Boccioni encapsulated the energetic, vigorous forces of Futurism in Cyclist, 1913. He fractures the painting using compositional turbulence and receding or emerging shapes to convey dynamics. Futurism anticipated the sentiments and aesthetics of Art Deco as well as influencing German Expressionism.

Futurist Artists are Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, and Giacomo Balla.

Suprematism (1915 - 1925) Kazimir Malevich, a Russian artist, introduced one of the earliest avant-garde abstract art movements to date. Based on the fundamentals of geometry—circles, squares, rectangles—and painted in a limited range of colors, Malevich’s precepts took root with his contemporaries who had identified with his ideals.

Because of these restricted qualifications Malevich called this movement Suprematism since it was founded upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling,” rather than a visual depiction of objects. His hope was that the fundamentally pure colors and shapes would encourage viewers to contemplate ideas beyond superficial appearances. Seen as a complete purification of art, Suprematism reduces form to its essential qualities—geometric shapes, the simplest of which he believed was the square—and

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removes the distractions of descriptive color. Malevich’s pioneering ideals of reducing shapes and colors to their essence became the ‘grammar’ Supremacist artists spoke and strove for. Black Square, 1915 is an exemplification of Malevich’s ideology and convictions. Even when moving from the abstract to representational images, Malevich retained and observed those attributes he held above all others. In his Self Portrait of 1933, you can see he has reduced his clothing and body to basic geometrical shapes. The color palette he has chosen is limited to red, green, white, black and shades of tan. Thus, he has preserved the visual structure of his own professed philosophy.

Suprematist Artists are Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Lyubov Popva, Olga Rozanova, and Ilya Chashnik.

Dada (1916 - 1930) Dada artists were intent on making a dramatic statement in their opposition to the horrors visited upon society by World War I. It seemed to them that Europe was losing its hold on reality and sinking into the realm of absurdity. Every aspect of life appeared to be coming ‘unglued.’ In search of a name for their movement, which was anti-war and anti-bourgeois, they gathered in the well-known Zurich nightclub, Cabaret Voltaire, and perused a French-German dictionary to find the precise word to describe their movement. They settled on Dada, which means ‘yes, yes’ in Romanian, ‘rocking horse’ and ‘hobby horse’ in French, and nothing at all in most languages. For Germans it suggested the foolish naiveté and preoccupation with a baby carriage. In rejecting hitherto accepted conventions and breaking every aesthetic rule with capricious and preposterous creations, the Dadaists hoped to draw attention to the world’s degrading situation. Their sarcastic, nonsensical, and disparaging images quickly spread to other art-centered cities such as Paris, Berlin, and New York. The Dadaists did not rely on any unifying art medium to illustrate their work. No, anything was acceptable. Thus, ‘ready-mades’ or objects designed for other purposes were commandeered for their use.

Marcel Duchamp’s R. Mutt, 1917, is a classic example of Dada art.

Dada Artists are Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and Kurt Schwitters.

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Neo-Plasticism/DeStijl (1917 - 1931) The two names for this Dutch-born movement arose from references—written and spoken--by the central and most influential members of the group who embraced the same philosophy regarding the direction art should take in the wake of World War I. Piet Mondrian used the term Neo-Plasticism to describe his work that was starkly pared down to include only horizontal and vertical lines and the three primary colors plus black, white, and gray, as can be seen in Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black, 1921. In 1917 the painter and writer Theo van Doesburg, the ambassador of the movement, published a journal called DeStijl meaning ‘The Style’–the source of the second name for the style—and a means to advertise Mondrian’s ideas of which he approved and admired. For his efforts, Van Doesburg is known as the ‘Father of DeStijl’ even though Mondrian is the preeminent and best-known member of the group. Using this journal as a vehicle Mondrian advanced his art theory and ideas. He asserted that “As a pure representation of the human mind, art will express itself in an aesthetically purified…abstract form…this new plastic idea will…find its expression in the straight line and the clearly defined primary color.” The foundation of Mondrian’s ideas was catalyzed by his belief in Theosophy. From Theosophical teachings, he sought pure, intrinsic, universal harmonies and spiritual order through his art. DeStijl artists employed their guiding principles not only in fine art, but in applied arts as well with the goal of fusing form and function. The artists applied their insights to architecture, industrial design, furniture, literature, and music—in effect making De Stijl the ultimate style.

The group was not long lasting, and many factors contributed to De Stijl’s demise, but the exact reason is still being debated by art historians. It seems that a difference of opinion arose between Mondrian and Van Doesburg regarding the direction of the lines to be used in a painting. Mondrian never accepted diagonal lines—he only used vertical and horizontal ones. Van Doesburg argued that diagonal lines added a dynamic aspect to the piece, and in fact he introduced them into his art piece, Counter Composition XIII, 1929. With this act, Mondrian quit the movement. In any case, DeStijl had fragmented by the time World War II broke out.

Neo-Plasticism/DeStijl Artists are Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Bart van der Leck, and Georges Vantongerloo.

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Magic Realism (1920 - 1960) Following German Expressionism and World War I, Magic Realism unfolded as an art movement that juxtaposed strange objects and unlike things. The name was attributed to the writer, Franz Roh, as he described some of the paintings in a Mannheim art exhibition in 1925. The artists engaged in this style wanted to evoke unearthliness and mysteriousness of everyday reality. The original movement dawned in the 1920s in Germany with the goal of exploring the strangeness and incongruity of existence. Magic Realists conveyed the wonder of observable reality by often using exquisite detail, intense colors, the distortion of perspective and space, or hyperrealism to convey the mysteriousness of everyday life. Artwork was representational and comprised ordinary scenes mixed with elements of fantasy and dreams. Thus, there is much realistic detail along with some magical elements to illustrate reality. Unlike its literary counterpart, Magic Realism does not often include overly fantastic or magical content. Rather it studies the mundane through a hyper-realistic and mysterious lens. Examples of well-known Magic Realist art are The Subway, 1950,

by George Tooker, Wilma, 1932, by Carel Willink, and Fire Escape II, 1953, by Colleen Browning.

Magic Realism was often described as ‘surreal,’ but independent artists distinguished themselves from the avant-garde group of Surrealist painters. It was not their intent to probe the unconscious dreams or personal interior states. Their intent was to relate the invariable strangeness of outward experiences. Frida Kahlo is often classified as either a Magical Realist or a Surrealist, but she has taken issue with this categorization and confinement of her work into a specific style. She, herself, has said, “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” There is no doubt her own reality was painful due to her tumultuous physical and emotional traumas. By painting her reality, she attempted to exorcize her own real demons and reconcile her existence. This resolution can be observed in Two Fridas, 1939, in which she paints her dual existence: the Frida on the left is garbed in a colonial white European-style dress and the one on the right is dressed in a traditional Tehuana costume. This interpretation seems

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viable since Frida’s father, Guillermo Kahlo, was German and her mother, Matilde Calderón, was Mexican.

The stormy background behind the two figures represents Frida’s tormented life.

Magic Realism Artists are Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, George Tooker, Colleen Browning, and CarolWillink.

Surrealism (1924 - 1966) Although Surrealism artists recognized the distortion of reality and images that deliberately defied reason in the Dada movement, they were still inspired by the style. However, the Surrealists were not focused on the idea of anti-art, but rather on a positive expression of nonsensical, unreal depictions of common world impressions. André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 in which he asserted that Surrealism was a means to unite conscious and unconscious realms of experience. This concept resulted in a world of dream and fantasy joining the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” Thus, the movement was named. Not only was Surrealism influenced by Dadaism but also by the Flemish Renaissance painter, Hieronymus Bosch, who is known for the grotesque and fantastic images seen in the Garden of Earthly Delights c.

1500. Odilon Redon, the French Symbolist, also had a hand in fostering bizarre, implausible, inconceivable images that appealed to the Surrealists. An example of such an image is The Cyclops, 1914. No one style encapsulates the ideals of Surrealism and therefore, they resist a typical categorization. It can be said that their work holds interest for the viewer. With his Philosopher’s Lamp and The Hesitation Waltz, René Magritte, a Belgian Surrealist, holds the fascination of children with his paintings of familiar, but curiously and humorously composed images that can easily devolve into optical illusions. The Spanish Surrealist, Remedios Varo was influenced by and especially recalls the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch in her work as you can see in The Encounter, 1929.

Surrealist Artists are René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Remedios Varo, André Masson.

Outsider Art/Art Brut (20th century) Although the term Outsider Art was introduced in 1972 by the British art historian Roger Cardinal to describe an art form that was not constricted by any style or convention, artists had been making artwork that fit this definition for decades. Recognizing that this art as “art created at the furthest remove from established culture,” Jean Dubuffet termed it Art Brut or Raw Art. By the 1980s the term Outsider

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Art was introduced to encompass a larger range of vernacular and marginal arts. Thus, the two terms Outsider Art and Art Brut became synonymous. Since there are no common characteristics that define Outsider Art the range of aesthetic differences is extensive. Each idiosyncratic style has prompted a new name: folk, tribal, naïve, and schizophrenic art, to name a few. Dubuffet rejected those terms as they did not meet his definition or criteria. However, the well-known and influential artist, Henri Rousseau, is classified as a naïve artist due to his lack of formal education and training. What does unite many of the artists in this genre is their introverted, isolated, and imaginative personalities. They work outside of any prescribed tradition—not always by choice but instead sometimes by circumstance. Undereducated with unconventional The Repast of the Lion views of the world, they come from a culturally and socially 1907 Henri Rousseau marginalized existence. Outsider artists have not been formally trained as artists, but their passionate feelings ignite their efforts to express themselves by navigating emotional conflict to create outward paths to find inner peace. The Outsider Artists humbly ask only to be left alone and uninterrupted to make their art. What can be seen in many of these artists’ works is recurring patterns and obsessive repeated design features. See Morris Hirschfield’s use of repetitive lines to create a pattern in Girl with Pigeons, 1942. It has been posited that the recurring motifs and patterns reveal an awareness of the passage of time—the past, present, and future or to introduce a sense of order into the artists’ lives. This may be the case with some Outsider artists but may not apply to others. The art materials that some of these artists use are those that they can get their hands on. Mud, blood, crayons, simple ink pens, tin, paper bags, newsprint, and wood are some examples they use to translate the physical into the metaphysical. The immediacy of selecting whatever materials are at hand, illustrates that they must create. Making art satisfies an inner need to express their inner selves or to purge the pernicious thoughts that plague their well-being.

A classic example of Outsider Art is Martín Ramírez, who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia after leaving Mexico for the US in 1925 and consequently was incarcerated in the De Witt State Hospital in Auburn, California in 1931. The nurses who cared for him discovered that drawing had a calming effect on him, so they began to provide him with pencils, crayons, and old paper bags that he would tape together to make a larger drawing surface. He was a prolific artist. Once he finished one piece, he would put it under his bed and begin another. When the piles got too high, the artwork was discarded. It wasn’t until Dr. Max Dunievitz, the medical director of DeWitt, discovered Ramírez’s work and recognized it for what it was, that the renderings were saved. Dr. Dunievitz ensured that Ramírez got the materials he needed to continue making his art and collected it all between 1960-63. He was also instrumental in arranging

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an opportunity to show Ramírez’s art at the Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento in the early 1950s describing it as the work of a mentally ill patient, not as an artist per se. The subject of Ramírez’s art was based on his personal cultural iconography and idiosyncratic symbols that had meaning for him. To this end, he drew horseback riders, trains and tunnels, landscapes, prosceniums, Madonnas, and animals. His subject matter also memorialized his hard life in Mexico and as an immigrant in the US, as he was navigating the two different existences. He presents his world through pattern and repetitions all executed with precise, dense marks and shapes. Ramírez repeated the tunnel imagery in many of his approximately three hundred remaining drawings. The New York Times declared Ramírez “one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.”

Outsider Artists are Henri Rousseau, Niko Pirosmani, Grandma Moses, Alfred Wallis, Henry Darger, Howard Finster, J.B Murray, Martín Ramírez, and P. M. Wentwork.

Abstract Expressionism (1943 - 1965) While Europe was struggling on the heels of World War II, the art world was similarly impacted. The spotlight and influence that European artists had enjoyed for so many years was dwindling, thus opening a door for new art movements to emerge. They did so, and they did it in the United States. Abstract Expressionism was a newly-formed art movement—first named the New York School –to have an international impact. Consequently New York replaced Paris as the center of the western art world. Before the emergence of Abstract Expressionism—sometimes referred to as nonobjective, non-figurative, or non-representational art—artists had been producing works that exhibited the same rudiments attributed to this new movement. Wassily Kandinsky is often credited with creating completely abstract art pieces associated with emotions, patterns, and linear forms. PostImpressionism, Fauvism, Surrealism, and Cubism embraced techniques that eventually influenced Abstract artists and spawned a complete freedom of expression. So, these concepts had been hovering in the psyches of many artists before the formalization of the new art movement. The artists who worked under this banner, Abstract Expressionism, had very different approaches but were united in similar beliefs and outlooks. Abstract art does not attempt to reproduce visual reality; rather artists strove to simplify subject matter beyond recognition. Their objective was to create emotionally charged paintings that reacted to contemporary events and portrayed psychological states of being by using bold colors, distortions, and exaggerations. It was their intent to imbue their work with energy and dynamism sometimes painted on significantly enlarged surfaces. With some abstract art, no tangible 55

reference point exists as it is based on thoughts, feelings, ideas, religious beliefs, or simply the artist’s imagination. Sonia Delaunay’s Electric Prism, 1913 exemplifies the effects that abstract artists pursued in both her rendering of the design elements and in the naming of her work. Electric Prism, is, indeed, electric, and prismatic. No matter our not knowing the thought process behind the abstract piece, we can appreciate the results. Many aspects other than truly knowing what the artist had in her mind can arouse our admiration. Chief among these aspects is recognizing how the artist wielded the fundamental elements and principles of design, such as color, composition, pattern, texture, form, and shape. However, if a viewer somehow knows or can glean the artist’s intent, then another layer of information is provided for fathoming the abstraction. In Philip Guston’s, As It Goes, 1978, both the title and the circular images give us some indication of the meaning behind the painting. But, when all is said and done, it is merely conjecture based on our interpretation of what we see.

The work of abstract expressionist artists who painted in vast swathes of intense color triggered a related, highly individualized abstract style known as Color Field. Artists would suffuse their canvases with a limited number of colors creating ‘fields’ of color.

The pigments would combine and meld together on the canvas creating soft edges and blurring the distinctions between colors. The solid planes of color, unbroken surface, and flat picture plane freed color from objective context to become the subject itself. Without figurative elements to consider, the viewer is left to wonder reflectively about the meaning behind the seemingly simplified rendering of color. Mark Rothko is a key figure in this movement. His No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue), 1954, characterizes the essence he sought to portray. Visually, the piece is striking.

Abstract Expressionism Artists areJackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner, Arshile Gorky, and Franz Kline.

Color Field Artists are Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and Clyfford Still.

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Pop Art (1955 - 1970) Pop Art had its inception first in the United Kingdom as an attempt to return to more objective and representational art after the ascendency of Abstract Expressionism. The chosen subjects of this new movement were elements of American pop culture that seemed to affect whole patterns of life. Pop Artist artists used irony and parody to accomplish their goal by using American iconography taken from television, comic books, movie magazines, and advertising images. Credited with being the first piece of Pop Art’s iconic status is Richard Hamilton’s tiny collage entitled Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? 1956. In close examination the images—clipped mostly from American magazines—represented those very items that Americans in the 1950s were favoring. Some assert that the name Pop Art came from the fact that the icons were from ‘popular culture.’ Others think that the Tootsie Pop replacing the dumbbell the body builder is holding, gave the movement its name. In any event, Pop Art held appeal for artists in the United States and soon there was a complement of painters who took up the prescribed motifs established in England.

Thus, portrayals of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, American flags, hamburgers and hotdogs, Campbell soup cans, comic strips, and movie magazines, permeated the imagery of this new movement. These pictures were presented emphatically and objectively to reflect the optimism that people hungered for after World War II. No underlying meaning to the pieces existed other than an iconoclastic effort to reject the supremacy of what was considered ‘fine or high art.’ In contrast to the Dada movement’s disdain, satirical, and even anarchic convictions of its predecessors, Pop Art artists put a positive spin on the culturally accepted icons. And, perhaps to entertain the viewers as it received widespread popularity. On the other hand, Pop Art’s critics characterized the artwork as vulgar, nonaesthetic, and a joke. In response to Life magazine’s published profile in 1964 with the headline “Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?” Roy Lichtenstein produced a painting he entitled The Worst Artist in the U.S.? The dialogue in the bubble predicts Lichtenstein’s future despite the detractor’s deprecating remarks: “WHY, BRAD DARLING, THIS PAINTING IS A MASTERPIECE! MY, SOON YOU’LL HAVE ALL OF NEW YORK CLAMORING FOR YOUR WORK!” Who could have predicted that future purchases of Lichtenstein’s work would skyrocket to $56 million at the time his work was being belittled? I can attest that Pop Art is one of the children’s favorite movements.

Pop Art Artists are Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Keith Haring, and Jasper Johns.

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ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN When we systematically introduce our children to the Elements and Principles of Design, we give them essential tools to better understand, recognize, and appreciate the art that surrounds them, be it architecture, sculpture, or painting. Even those aspects that pertain to the children’s personal lives—how they have arranged their rooms at home, how they have chosen to wear different color combinations, how they comb their hair—in other words, knowing these aspects will give the children an instrument to expand their awareness of themselves and their environment. Knowing these aspects will also serve the children when they begin to create for themselves in some realm of the visual arts.

Dr. Montessori realized the value of offering children opportunities to create an artwork that has been guided by their grasp of the elements and principles of design. She said, The ability to see reality in form, in colour, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one’s own hand-that is what is necessary. Inspiration is an individual thing, and when a child possesses these formative elements, he can give expression to all he happens to have.7 When the children have been introduced to these features, they begin to “see” differently, not just in their artwork but the whole world around them. We facilitate this awareness of the Elements and Principles of Design by providing folders of each for the children to investigate, analyze, appreciate, and reflect upon.

Thus, there are seven folders for the Elements: line, shape, form, space, value, color, texture, and an associated art concept, perspective. The Principles folders are emphasis, balance, movement, rhythm, contrast, pattern, and harmony/variety, also with a related concept, composition. You can find guidance on how to introduce the Elements of Art and Design and activities the children can do with each in my previous two art pamphlets, The Art Elements and Principles of Art. These are available through Montessori360.com.

CONCLUSION Art is integral to our lives: it enhances it, it enlivens it, it invigorates us, it surrounds us! I hope this pamphlet has encouraged your efforts in presenting art to the children in your class. You will indeed be giving them a gift for life.

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The Advanced Montessori Method, Volume II, 287.

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