LESSON PLAN: BLUE SKY, BLUE WALL

JIM DINE (American, born 1935) Child’s Blue Wall, 1962 Oil on canvas, wood, metal, and light bulb, 60 x 72” (152.4 x 182.9 cm.) Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1963

SUPPLIES

• Overhead projector
• Copies of enclosed Student Activity Sheet
• Paper and pencils
• Scissors
• Glue
• Colored pencils, markers, or crayons
• Old magazines and newspapers
• Students’ family photographs that can be cut up (optional)

PRE-DISCUSSION STUDENT ACTIVITY

• Choose one wall in the classroom and arrange different classroom objects in an interesting way against (and on) the wall.
• Ask your students to carefully examine the wall for one minute and then ask them to name and describe the objects they see.
• As they answer, make a list of their observations.
• Ask the students to describe the wall itself – its texture, color, and size.
• Using the list of observations, now ask the students about the objects. What are they used for? Would you find them anywhere else besides a classroom? If so, where?

DISCUSSION

Display the transparency Child’s Blue Wall on the overhead projector. Do not reveal the title. Ask your students to try to identify or guess what the objects are in the painting. If they are having trouble, you can guide them with questions. For example, ask if they can find a lamp, a light bulb, and a light switch. Can they identify the toy soldier in the lamp? What is the painted background supposed to be?

Explain to the students that this artwork is made up of a combination of different materials. It contains a painted canvas, a real child’s lamp, and a real light switch. Ask the students to imagine what the painting would look like if the lamp were turned off. What would look the same? What would look different?

Discuss how the painting can be interpreted in different ways. For example, the painting may be seen as part of a child’s room, or as an evening sky. Can your students think of any other interpretations?

STUDENT ACTIVITY

For homework:

• Have the students take home and complete the Student Activity Sheet. Students are asked to sketch, in pencil, their favorite wall in their home and then write a paragraph describing it in detail. Ask them to describe the actual wall and the objects around and on it, the same way they did in the classroom exercise. They should conclude their essays by saying why they like this wall the best.
• Also ask them to return the Activity Sheet with magazine/newspaper clippings of objects that are alike or similar to the objects in their sketch.
• Have students bring in a photograph of a family member or a picture from a magazine of their favorite athlete, musician, or movie star.

In the classroom:

• Have students complete their artworks by adding color with the colored pencils, markers, or crayons. At this time, they should also glue their magazine/newspaper clippings to their sketches to make a collage. Make sure they do not attach the photo/picture of their favorite family member, athlete, movie star, etc. Instead, have them cut out this figure.
• Hang the completed works up around the classroom. Allow the students to take their cut-out figures and hold them up to their work of art and the works by other students.
• Discuss with the class the differences between their work with and without the cut-out figure. Ask them to create a story about the figure with their drawing as the setting for the action. What are they doing there? What are they thinking? What are they saying?

STUDENT ACTIVITY SHEET

Walk through all the rooms in your house and choose your favorite wall. Look at the box below. Pretend this box is the wall. Sketch all or some of the objects you can see hanging on the wall and standing in front of the wall with a pencil.

In the space below, write a short paragraph about your favorite wall. What color is it? Is it rough or smooth? What is hanging on it? What is standing in front of it? Why did you choose it as your favorite wall?

FURTHER INFORMATION FOR EDUCATORS

Jim Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1935 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957 from Ohio University. As a boy, he worked in his family’s paint and plumbing supply store. In 1959, he traveled to New York where, along with other avant-garde artists, he participated in some of the early “happenings” – the spontaneous theatrical experiences that were presented to the public in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which often encouraged audience participation. Dine always preferred the term “painter’s theatre, ” which he considered a much more descriptive term than “happenings.” In 1960 he returned to painting, but retained a theatrical quality in his work by dramatically placing actual objects, either attached to the painted surface or placed before it, to interact with each other. Although he has been called a Pop artist, Pop artists of the time such as Andy Warhol (see the lesson plan for 100 Cans in this packet) tended to present commercial objects with minimal expression or emotion. Dine’s tendency is to present more personal objects in a painterly setting that elicits emotion.

The work in the Gallery’s collection, Child’s Blue Wall, is considered among Dine’s most successful and poignant of a series of similar works about children’s rooms and bathrooms. He achieves an abstract painting of a night sky, and at the same time creates an objective, realistic image of a child’s room.

After representing the United States at the prestigious Venice Biennale exhibition in 1964, Dine has since taught at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and lives and works in New York City and Putney, Vermont.

This lesson plan satisfies Standards 1, 3, 4 in Language Art, Standards 1, 3, 6, 7 in Math, Science and Technology, and Standards 1 – 4 in the Visual Arts (including the museum visit), written by The NYS Education Department.