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Your students will be able to learn about a contemporary artist, still creating today, by examining his process and creating their own Robert Mangold-inspired work as a culminating activity.
Essential Questions
How Does Robert Mangold Make His Art?
Column Structure Studies, 2008 (12 ¼ x 8 in)
Graphite on paper. A sketch by Mangold used to plan a painting.
In the series of work in the exhibition, Mangold planned his paintings by creating small graphite (pencil) sketches on paper, with grids and curving lines.
Column Structure Study, 2005 (10 x 8 in).
Pastel, graphite, and black pencil on paper.
Mangold chooses colors and shapes to add to
his drawing in preparation for the final painting.
He then decided on colors and shapes for the canvas, adding them to the pencil drawings.
Curled Figure XXII, 2002. One of Mangold’s paintings from the exhibition.
Notice it has four panels
and is painted a beige color.
For the painting, he constructs the appropriately shaped canvas and paints it with color. He then paints lines that fill the space of the canvas with the mathematical regularity of his original drawings. The remarkable fact is that all of these beautiful, regular lines are created freehand by the artist, in almost a dance with the canvas.
Mangold says of his big paintings: “Your arm became like a big compass. You know where the starting point is and where the middle point is too. You end up feeling your way around, without being too far off the marks with many little refinements, because your arm isn’t really a compass.”
Grades K-2: Robert Mangold: A Line Takes a Walk Through Shape and Color
Grades 3-12: Robert Mangold: Using Math To Make a Mangold
Grades K-12: The Buffalo Project
Standards
Visual Arts Standards 1-4 (including museum visit or courthouse visit)
Mathematics, Science, and Technology Standards 1 and 3 (Grades 3-12)
English Language Arts Standards 1 and 4
Definitions
Minimalism – School of abstract painting and sculpture that used extreme simplification and the basic elements of art: line, color, shape, and texture
Graphite – A carbon substance used in pencils