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Louise Nevelson |
Louise Nevelson |
Before beginning the lesson with your students, please be sure to read the lesson plan all the way through.
SUPPLIES:
Cardboard or cereal box bottoms; tan or gold paper; white paper; scissors; gluesticks
or white glue; masking tape; flashlight
Introduce the difference between painting and sculpture. Painters create flat, two-dimensional objects called paintings that hang on a wall, while sculptors create objects called sculptures that exist in three-dimensional space as we do. Sometimes sculpture is meant to be walked around; sometimes it is meant to stand in front of, or even hang on a wall. Have a student stand against a wall. Discuss what each student can or can’t observe from his/her perspective. Then, have a student stand in the middle of the room and have the same discussion.
Please remember that all answers to these questions should be accepted, as students are responding to what they see and how they interpret what they see. You can add information from your teacher information when it seems to be appropriate.
Next, compare the two sculptures, side by side. Ask questions like:
You can make a chart so that each comment a student makes can be addressed while regarding the other sculpture:
| Title | Drum | Royal Game 1 |
|---|---|---|
Materials |
|
|
| Colors | ||
| Shapes | ||
| Where it would stand | ||
| Shadows | ||
| Mood | ||
| Shape of the base | ||
| Texture-How it would feel | ||
| It reminds me of: | ||
| Other: |
Make a base out of cardboard for each child (2 inches by 4 inches is a good size). Even better - cut the bottom of a box of cereal so that it looks like this:
Give half the students one small (4 1/4" x 5 1/2") sheet of gold or tan paper and the other half of the students the same size white paper. Have them draw some basic shapes and cut them out. Have them experiment with different methods of folding and cutting the shapes and making them stand on their base. You may need to show them how some shapes can be made to stand up or attach (see Paper Sculpting Techniques). Do not let them glue yet!
Have the students make a sculpture – NOT a flat painting! Have them glue the pieces of paper onto their base any way they like. Remind them to decide whether their sculpture will go against a wall or whether it will stand on their desk. They must use all the paper they have to complete their sculpture any way they like. Remind them of the texture that they saw in Nevelson’s pieces. Suggest that they concentrate on the way the work is attached to the base – the sculpture needs to be sturdy enough to stay together and stand up when dry. Students may need to change some of their choices to make sure this will be true of their sculptures. Title each sculpture.
Things you can do with the completed sculptures:
"From earliest childhood, I knew I was going to be an artist. I felt like an artist." By age nine Louise Nevelson knew that she wanted to be a sculptor. She achieved her goal, eventually becoming an international figure in contemporary art. She is best known for works that stand against a wall and are made up of boxes filled with various wood fragments, then painted black. This type of work began in the 1940s, when Nevelson began collecting wood objects and putting them together in unusual and innovative ways. In 1957, a box of liquor she received for Christmas, with its interior partitions, gave her the idea to put her assemblages into boxes. When her studio became too crowded, she stacked the boxes on top of one another and noticed that this space-saving technique had created a new form of sculpture.
Later Nevelson began painting her sculptures gold, as in Royal Game 1. Nevelson chose gold because of the ceremonial, voluptuous mood that it evokes, recalling the festive golden atmosphere of Italian art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Royal Game 1, based on the number three, is composed of three shallow rectangular units almost identical in size. Within each unit an oval element and an open rectangular box, filled with vertically arranged elements, are repeated. The theme of three is repeated in the three flat circles and the three groups of equilateral triangles. The composition is asymmetrical, yet balanced. Each of the boxes functions well as part of the whole, but could also exist as a complete work of art. Her creation process was intuitive and rarely involved drawing plans in advance. Choosing from various stockpiles of wood fragments, she arranged them together with relative spontaneity, adjusting as she progressed. The previous contexts of the wood fragments are hidden by the fact that everything is painted one color. This takes away their individuality and stresses their new function as part of a larger whole.
Drum illustrates a way that Nevelson worked later in her career. Whimsical and exuberant, the elliptical, irregular leaflike forms balance with geometric shapes in an asymmetrical configuration. They protrude from vertical elements at rakish angles and create different rhythms as one walks around the sculpture, perhaps relating to the title, Drum. Nevelson’s approach has always been that of a collagist, joining disparate elements of found or cut materials into a new whole. When she began working with sheet metal in 1966, her technique was similar to the one she used with wood. Indeed, many of her early aluminum pieces were constructed from scraps left from the works of other artists who used the foundry where her metal sculpture was fabricated. The direct welding method that Nevelson used in Drum might be compared with her process of gluing or nailing when working with wood.
Nevelson herself was outgoing, independent, and self-assured. Although admired by feminists, she said, "The creative concept has no sex or is perhaps feminine in nature." She felt that her works were "feminine" and "delicate: it may look strong, but it is delicate. True strength is delicate. My whole life is in it, and my whole life is feminine."
This lesson plan was written by Esperanza Altamar
and Nancy Spector and was published for use in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Looking and Learning program, a component of ARTStart.
Looking and Learning has been made possible by a generous grant from the
Cameron Baird Foundation.