Before the Play

Theatre Etiquette

Please review the following with your class prior to attending the performance of “The Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful Wizard of Art”.

(Please remember that although today’s performance may be in the cafetorium, etc., we are calling it a theatre for the sake of the experience. ~ Thank you!)
 
 

Enter the theatre quietly and with respect for the live performance you are about to experience.

Talking during the performance is not allowed.  Unlike television, the actors can hear you when you talk.  Have respect for the actor’s concentration and other audience members.  (Actors do appreciate appropriate laughter and response during the performance.)

No food, drink or gum chewing allowed in the theatre.

Once you are in the theatre, please remain seated unless it is an emergency.

You may applaud at the end of the performance to show your appreciation to the actors.

Exit the theatre quietly and in an orderly manner.

Synopsis
 

The Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful Wizard of Art is a celebration of art through the ages.  Students and teachers watch as Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz fame travels across time to look at artistic masterpieces from ancient days right up to the present.  We’ll introduce you to Paleolithic sculptures and paintings dating as far back as 30,000 B.C., then take you to the pyramids of Giza.  Medieval art will give way to the Italian Renaissance as Dorothy meets both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.  From there it’s on to the sunny Impressionists of France, Claude Monet and Georges Seurat.  No tour of western art (no matter how whirlwind) would be complete without an acquaintance with Vincent van Gogh, the tortured Expressionist painter.  And of course there’s the supremely confident genius of Modern Art, Pablo Picasso, who we encounter during his Cubist period. Dorothy’s tour picks up speed as she hurtles into the contemporary age after chatting with Georgia O’Keefe and the surreal Salvador Dali.  In quick succession Dorothy meets Andy Warhol and Annie Leibowitz, two late 20th century artists whose work reflects today’s consumer and celebrity culture.  Her journey finally ends with the dynamic Jackson Pollack giving a demonstration of his uniquely American technique—action painting.  By this time, there’s one thing Dorothy’s learned for sure, art is in the eye of the beholder….One need only look and see, and look again to understand and appreciate it.

Who and What to Look For (and where & when)

Dorothy’s whirlwind tour of art through the ages starts in the Paleolithic period of human development c.30,000 years ago and ends in the 20th century with Andy Warhol and Annie Leibowitz.  Below is a list of the artists and artworks she encounters during her journey, as well as the techniques and the movements with which they were associated.
 

Venus of Willendorf  in Austria  (28,000-18,000 B.C.)
The Venus is a 4 and 3/8th inch sculpted stone figure thought to represent female fertility and life-giving power.  The artist is unknown.

Cave Paintings of Lascaux, France  (15,000-13,000 B.C.)
Discovered by four boys in 1940, there are over 2000 naturalistic figures of animals engraved and painted in black, yellow and red on the cave’s walls.  It is possible that these images were made by hunters and/or artists for a magical function—as aid to either a successful hunt or the steady birthrate of the depicted animals (thereby assuring an ample supply of food).

Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England  (2000 B.C.)
This is a compound 97 feet in diameter consisting of 30 stone pillars weighing a total of 50 tons. Each pillar is 13.5 feet tall.  Some pairs of pillars are capped by other huge stones.  Stonehenge is most often thought to be a huge calendar for predicting changes of the sun, moon, stars and planets, and was probably linked with the celebration of seasonal festivals.

Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt  (2530-2460 B.C.)
The Pyramid was built for the Egyptian king, Khafre as his monument for eternal life and possibly his tomb.  This huge religious sculpture was made of limestone blocks covered in polished marble and took 30 years to complete.

Queen Nefertiti from Egypt  (1360 B.C.)
The painted limestone bust/sculpture of Queen Nefertiti, King Iknaton’s wife, is a wonderfully likelike portrayal of Egyptian beauty.

Madonna Enthroned Europe  (late 13th century)
Art in the Middle Ages was generally religious and intended to teach.  Very rarely (as in this case) do we know the names of the great artists who worked during this period.  The prevailing unearthy style of the age was designed to preach the triumph of spirit over the flesh.

Mona Lisa  (1503-05)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the greatest “Renaissance Man”, painted this lifelike portrait that now hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.  It is perhaps the most famous painting in the world.  Leonardo worked with oil paints, using layer upon layer to portray light.  He believed that light along with color and perspective were needed to create impressions of distance and depth.  Another of Leonardo’s
Famous works, The Last Supper, is located in the monastery of St. Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

David (1501-04) and the Sistine Chapel frescoes (1508-12)
Michelangelo (1475-1564) was another great artist from the Italian Renaissance.  He created the 13’5” marble sculpture of David, a masterpiece of human anatomy and expressiveness, from a block of marble that other artists wouldn’t use.  David is located in Florence’s Galleria dell Accademia.

Michelangelo was also a genius painter.  He decorated the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican with paintings of scenes from the Bible.  The technique he used for this was called fresco—painting on fresh, wet plaster.  The ceiling has been recently cleaned and Michelangelo’s vivid use of color can be newly appreciated.

Water Lilies (1897-98)
This painting by Claude Monet hangs in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Monet (1840-1926) lived and worked in France and helped develop the Impressionist style of painting.  He painted in oils
with short brush strokes and splashes of pretty color that looked out-
of-focus up close, but which made sense when viewed from an appropriate distance.  The Impressionist painters were innovators most interested in suggesting shimmering light and movement-- the atmosphere of a scene.  They painted what they saw and felt rather than what something really looked like.  Perhaps this freedom from the purely representational was aided by the development of photography.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte  (1884-86)
La Grande Jatte is huge—7 feet tall and almost 10 feet wide.  Seurat took the Impressionist style to a new extreme called Pointilism.  Instead of brush strokes, he painted thousands and thousands of tiny dots of color close to each other.  One looks at the picture from a distance and the colors blend to create a magical, sparkling scene.  Seurat worked on this one painting for almost two years.  You can look at it at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Starry Night  (1889)
If you travel to New York City and visit the Museum of Modern Art, you can look at this painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).  Van Gogh is considered a Post-Impressionist painter.  He went beyond the Impressionists to express his own thoughts and moods in his work.  One way he did this was through his use of color.

Van Gogh also applied his oil paints quickly in thick, textured brushstrokes in order to capture the immediacy of his emotions and perceptions.  We call his style Expressionism.

Girl Before a Mirror  (1932)
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a creative genius who experimented throughout his lifetime with various styles of art.  He is perhaps most noted for his development of Cubism.  Picasso’s cubist paintings offer a new way of seeing subjects—broken up and shifted around, showing all sides at once.

Red Poppy  (1927)
Georgia O’Keefe (1887-1986) painted in watercolors and in oils, and found her inspiration in nature.  She is famous for her huge paintings
of flowers, sometimes painted so close up that the viewer might feel like he/she was deep inside.

The Persistence of Memory  (1931)
Just as the invention of photography helped inspire Impressionists to take a new look at the world, so the development of psychoanalysis encouraged painters like Salvador Dali (1904-88) to explore the riches of the unconscious mind.  A close look at Dali’s paintings reveals strange and unbelievable things happening to ordinary objects (clock and watches bending and melting, etc.).  Dali belonged to the Surrealist movement in art, and like many other artists from other periods of art history, he aimed to make people see familiar scenes in completely new and surprising ways.

Campbell’s Soup Can  (1965)
The Pop artist, Andy Warhol (1930-87), has been called a mirror of his age.  In his silkscreen prints on canvas he used everyday objects like soup cans or dollar bills to give a picture of contemporary industrial, consumer society.

Whoopi Goldberg  (1984)
Annie Leibowitz (1949-) is an American photographer famous for her portraits of celebrities—political figures, musicians, athletes, actors.

 “action painting”
Jackson Pollack (1912-56) belonged to the Abstract Expressionist movement characterized by slashing and dripping paint onto a canvas from sticks or hardened brushes.  He was an “action painter”, putting a huge amount of energy into his work, using wide arm gestures, moving his whole body, and becoming completely absorbed in his work.

Matching

Match the artist to their artwork:
 

___Michelangelo	a.  Campbell’s Soup Can
___Jackson Pollack	b.  Mona Lisa
___Georges Seurat	c.  Water Lilies
___Leonardo da Vinci	d.  David
___Andy Warhol	e.  Red Poppy
___Vincent van Gogh	f.  The Persistence of Memory
___Claude Monet	g.  La Grande Jatte
___Salvadore Dali	h.  Starry Night
___Georgia O’Keefe	i.   action painting

               
Answers:  Michelangelo (d); Jackson Pollack (I); Georges Seurat (g); Leonardo da Vinci (b); Andy Warhol (a); Vincent van Gogh (h); Claude Monet (c); Salvadore Dali (f); Georgia O’Keefe (e).

Materials

A piece of twine or strong string 6’-10’ long
Hooks to hang the string as a clothesline
Tags punched with a hole
Tape, paper clips, black marking pen
Small pictures of famous artworks clipped from resources, such as art magazines, museum catalogs, art postcards

Process
1. Fold the string in half 3 or 4 times and make a mark at the folds.  When unfolded there will be equally spaced sections (7 marks if 3 folds were made, or 15 marks if 4 folds were made).  Equal spaces can be marked with a ruler, if desired.
2. Make date tags for the art era of choice.  Make a marker for each 500 years, starting with present day and going backwards (1500 AD, 1000AD, 500AD, and so on).  Tie a date tag onto the string at each equally spaced mark.  If studying a more recent period of history, adjust the date markers accordingly (for instance, a marker for each 100 years between 1000AD and today, or a marker for every decade from 1900 to today).  Create a time line to fit the art choices.
3. As new artists and works of art are explored, cut a small example from a magazine or museum catalog and write the date of the artwork on the back.  Then, using a paperclip, hang the picture on the clothesline at the appropriate location.

A la Picasso

Materials

White drawing paper
Crayon, colored markers, paints and brushes
Scissors
Drawing paper, any color
White glue

Process
1. Ask a friend to act as a model for this portrait.  The friend should sit or stand in an open area near the artist.  The artist looks at the model and paints a painting on the paper.  It doesn’t have to look exactly like the friend.  Paint the way it feels best.
2. The painting can be cut apart free-hand with scissors, or lines can first be drawn with a dark crayon and then cut.  If drawing lines, mark out some large shapes like puzzle pieces on the painting.  Squares, triangles, and other Cubist shapes work well.  Cut the painting apart on or near these lines.
Note:  The pieces should be bold and not small.
3. Next, glue the pieces of the painting onto the remaining sheet of paper.  They can be glued in order or out of order.  Upside down pieces work well too.
4. When satisfied with the artwork, it is complete.  The friend will be fractured in Cubist shapes, just like Picasso would appreciate.

Artist, Model, Clay

Process
1. Divide students into groups of three.
2. Tell them that one person will be the artist, one will be the model, and one will be the clay.
3. Arrange each group of three so that the artist stands in front of the clay who stands in front of the model.  The clay, who is in between the artist and the model, faces the artist, and must never look at the model.
4. The model strikes a pose which the artist tries to get the clay to duplicate.  The artist may not talk to or move the clay but must simply try to communicate his/her wishes through gesture.
5. End the exercise after 2-3 minutes.  Let the clay see the model’s pose.
6. Rotate jobs until each group member has had a turn at being artist, model, and clay.

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