Cubism Art Lesson

"Drawing/painting Our Impressions"
The O bjectives:
Practice observation drawing
Learn to compose shapes, lines, and colors
Learn about principles of composition including emphasis and unity
Encourage creative work habits
Change habits of work
Foster a collaborative art studio atmosphere
Learn about an important art style (a way of seeing), some art history, art criticism, and aesthetics

Age and G rade Level
This is a good lesson for adults or older children who have mastered some abstract thinking ability.  It is very appropriate for upper grades up through adults. This lesson is best above second grade.
Teaching the L esson
Do NOT show artwork or say the word cubism until near the end of the lesson.

Subject Matter
The teacher guides the students who learn to set up a large still life in the middle of the room or several small setups in the middle of their work tables.  They bring in sporting stuff, stuffed toys, musical instruments, some cloth, a few dry weeds, and so on.   Depending of the season, some teachers bring large sunflowers, grapes, gourds, squash, onions, eggplant, apples, and so forth from the garden.  Cut a few of these in half.  Taste and smell are excellent multi-sensory motivation.

Media
Distribute the materials before discussing the process and giving drawing directions.  This is avoids disrupting them when they are ready to start working.

Use any drawing media that students are already familiar with.  Select paper that is large enough for the drawing tools and art media being used.  For charcoal, pastels, oil pastels and paints you could use 12 x 18 or larger.  If they work with drawing pencils, ink, ball point, or with small brushes, use a smaller size so it does not take too long. This might depend on the the age and prior experience of the students.

Instructions for the Creative Process

  1. Encourage students to stand up while drawing so they use arm motions instead finger motions.  Ask them to begin by selecting an interesting area in the setup and drawing very large so things go off the edges.  Cardboard viewfinders (or empty 35 mm slide frames) are helpful in finding and sizing things. Students work for few minutes until the teacher has them move to a completely different position and continue drawing the same objects on the same paper overlapping with the drawing they started.
  2. Suggest that they try changing the size or scale when they change position.  Those that have been drawing large can add some smaller parts and those that have been drawing small can add some much larger parts.
  3. Repeat drawing and moving to a new position until the paper begins to fill with overlapping and transparent drawing content.
  4. After a few moves, invite students to slowly walk around to see how other students have worked at the problem.  Affirm a diversity of approaches.
  5. As the paper begins to fill with overlapping shapes, encourage them to shade in and color the drawing to create a pleasant overall pattern.  Encourage them to include some recognizable objects here and there, but the evaluation is to be more on overall design than on realism.  Encourage students to make adjustments in the compositions to achieve unity and harmony so that no one area becomes too dominant or different than the whole.
In-Process Critique
  1. When most of them appear to be nearly complete, or when the first to finish feel they are done, have them all stop and form groups of three.
  2. Using six eyes instead of two, ask them to look at each other's work and tell them what parts of their pictures they notice first and why.  What parts are showing most emphasis and what parts show the least emphasis.  Insist that every student participates.
  3. They are not to use judgmental terms like good or bad, just say what they see that shows the most and try to give some reasons and explanations.


Continue the Creative Process
If a student asks the teacher to tell what to do next or if it is good enough, the teacher asks them a question that gets them remember the process or to look at parts that they may have missed.  The teacher refrains from telling them what to do.  The teacher gives them open choices rather than commands or directions.  The product is not supposed to have a certain look, but the students are supposed to learn to make their own artistic choices based on criteria the teacher gives.  This is not learned when the teacher makes specific suggestions and does the thinking for the students.

Ending Critique

  1. When they are done, have them post the work for all to see.  Discuss the work by again asking what they notice first.
  2. Follow the initial response by asking for explanations of  why they notice certain things.  This is not judging, it is describing and analyzing.
  3. Sometimes it is also interesting to speculate about the meaning of their pictures (interpretation).  Making up titles helps with this.
Art History
  1. Show one or more example(s) of Georges Braque and or Picasso who invented cubism (use any general reference art history book, library books on artists, slides, reproductions, posters, and/or the internet).  It is quite easy to print color pictures from the web onto transparencies blanks made for ink jet printers (footnote web sources). These can be shown in a class with an overhead projector if your class does not have a computer projector to show them directly from the web site.
  2. Ask them to speculate about the process the artist(s) must have used to come up with their compositions.  Ask them how they think the artist was looking at the work.
  3. Ask them to speculate about the reasons the artist decided not to simply show a simple picture of the subject matter.
  4. Explain the word Cubism and give a bit of background on how innovative it was in the art world at the time it was invented.
  5. David Hockney is a contemporary British artist who has played with these concepts by using photography to make many pictures of of the same thing and putting them all together in a composition that gives what he feels is a much more realistic impression of how we perceive the world.  He likens the typical camera's photograph to the view of one eyed single impression Cyclops.  He claims that as humans we really see the world by mentally composing reality from many visual  impressions of a subject or scene.  Which is realism?
Art in Everyday Life
How does all this connect to our lives outside the artroom?  How is art and life connected?  How are the events of a day connected to each other and overlapping with each other?  Students are asked to make a list of everyday experiences that could be represented cubistically.
  1. Students are asked to make sketchbook entries that cover a portion of a typical day all in one overlapping and transparent composition.  For example, each sketch combines several aspects of the morning trip to school or the afternoon trip home.
  2. Aesthetically, they are encouraged to reflect on the differences in their feelings in the morning compared to their feelings in the afternoon.  How does is difference in feeling represented in their cubist time sequence compositions.  Could it be done with color relationships, with size, with line type, or another device?
Review
Review is very efficient use of class time.  Sometimes there is a minute or two after cleanup time before the bell rings.  Even if the bell rings before a question is answered, it is still good to raise the question.
  1. Ask a review question.
  2. Ask an art vocabulary question.  What does "emphasis" mean in a composition?  What does "unity" mean?  What are the differences between "unity" and "harmony"?
  3. How are artists similar to inventors?
  4. Ask an aesthetics question.  Is cubism more or less realistic than realism?
Review is even more effective if it is done at the beginning of the next session a day or more later.  When a teacher expect students to remember things from session to session, students thinking habits are trained to remember.


Credit: This lesson was inspired by a similar lesson developed and taught by Judy Wenig-Horswell , Associate Professor of Art, Goshen College



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© written by Marvin Bartel, all rights reservedYou are invited to link this page to your page. For permission to reproduce or place this page on your site or to make printed copies, e-mail: marvinpb@goshen.edu

Marvin Bartel, Ed.D., Professor of Art
Goshen College, 1700 South Main St., Goshen IN 46526
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updated: November 30, 2001

A link to lessons on Cubism from New Zealand

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This is a practice drawing using a three-dimensional paper duck as a study.  Note that it has been drawn from different distances and from different views all within the same space.