Lesson plans - Turner Contemporary · Lesson plans KS 1&2 A series of 6 cross-curricular lessons inspired by the artist and ... Abstraction Surrealism. Lesson 1: Introducing Arp ...

Jean Arp

Lesson plans

KS 1&2

A series of 6 cross-curricular lessons inspired by the artist and poet Jean Arp.

Pupils will produce three pieces of art, make a joint musical composition & write poetic responses.

Turner Contemporary

Jean Arp, (1886 – 1966), was a German-French artist and poet, who expressed ideas through sculpture, words, paint and mixed media. Known as one of the most original minds of the 20th Century, his abstract style helped form the major art movements of Dada and Surrealism. See: www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htmwww.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm

Arp’s diverse practice embraced chance as a method of making and took inspiration from the natural world. With poetry and playfulness at its core, the work of Arp presents the perfect stimulus for engaging children across the curriculum.

Key words

About Jean Arp

TransformationMetamorphosis Growth

BiomorphicAbstractionSurrealism

Lesson 1: Introducing Arp

Upper KS2 variant: Give children in small groups a picture of an Arp work (see images from powerpoint) and the series of questions to interrogate it. Each group then presents their artwork using their answers to these questions.

Curriculum Links:

English - using discussion in order to learn; writing for a range of contexts

Science - everyday materials

Art and Design - knowing about great artists

If you could taste this artwork, how would it taste?If you could hear this artwork, what would you hear?If you could smell this artwork, how would it smell?What surprises you about this artwork?If we could press play on this artwork, how would it move? Can you show this with your body?If this artwork was a person, what mood would they be in? Would they be happy/sad/angry etc.?Which person that you know would like this artwork best? Why?Where in the school would this artwork look best? Why?What would you call this if you needed to give it a title?

Introduce Arp as an artist with a small amount of biographic detail (see powerpoint).

Introduce Arp’s work:

KS1/lower KS2 variant: Show slides (see powerpoint) of examples of Arp’s work and ask questions to help the children to respond. Some examples to choose from could be:

Encourage your pupils to form their own questions that the group can respond to.

Explore materials that Arp uses:

Were you surprised that all of these artworks were by the same person? What different types of art did we see?

Arp used all sorts of different materials when he was creating. We’re going to explore some of these to think about their properties and how these affect the sort of art that can be made from them.

KS1/lower KS2: Carousel between paper, cardboard, wood, brass, plaster, tapestry, string. Pupils have a couple of minutes to play with each, speaking with a partner about how they would describe the properties of each (this could be modelled before, depending on prior learning). Share thoughts at the end.

Which material would they make an artwork from? Why? What would the artwork be like?

Upper KS2: Each table has paper, cardboard, wood, brass, plaster, tapestry, string. Children classify these in order according to given categories (e.g hardness, transparency, flexibility).

Can they make up any of their own categories? Share thoughts at the end. Which material would they make an artwork from? Why? What would the artwork be like?

Plenary:

Just like Arp, the class will also be using these sessions and the artwork created to inspire poetry. These poems will be ways of responding to artwork in words. They can be about the artwork seen or made, about the learning that has happened, or about feelings.

Write a group poem: - Children can pick one of the materials and put it with descriptive vocabulary (e.g. flexible, hard, light).- Pick eight descriptions at random and work with the children to cut these down to three/four which are varied enough to be interesting together.- All the better if you can find rhymes (full rhymes, assonance, consonance).- Choose three/four of the answers the children gave to the sensory questions asked about the art earlier in the lesson.- Your finished poem could look like the one below:

Arp made artWith flexible string,With hard wood,With light paperWith heavy brassArp made artThat tastes like ice creamSounds like wavesMoves like jellySmells like the seaArp made art

Introduce quotation:

“I want my work to find its humble place in the woods, the mountains, in nature.”

We’re going to go outside to explore how Arp was inspired by nature (a wooded area would be ideal, but you could use any outdoor space).

Responding to Arp’s sculptures:

Once outside, give children pictures of Arp’s nature sculptures, including ‘Sculpture to be lost in the forest’

Where would you place this sculpture to lose it? Where would you place the others and why?

Explain that Arp sometimes started with natural forms to make his sculptures.

What natural forms can they see in the sculptures? Does any part remind them of things that they see in nature?

The shapes in his work might look like pebbles, buds, or worn wood.

Lesson 2: Inspired by nature

Curriculum Links:


Art and Design - knowing about great artists; producing creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences; become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques

Making nature sculptures:

- Ask children to collect natural materials (e.g. twigs, leaves, stones) to make their own nature sculptures which they will later transform into simpler structures back at school. - Allow time for play and take photos of these when complete. - In sketchbooks, ask them to try drawing their sculptures as they are, and then with increasingly simple lines/curves until they resemble Arp’s sculptures.

Plenary:

KS1 variant: Ask the children to close their eyes and listen to the sounds they can hear, jotting a few of these down if possible (e.g. ‘birdsong’, ‘rustling leaves’). Then, ask them to write down some of the materials in their sculpture (e.g. ‘twigs’, ‘grass’, ‘flowers’). Finally, they should look at/touch their sculpture and write down some words about how they look e.g. ‘smooth’, ‘spiky’, ‘hard’, ‘soft’.

You could model, with the children’s input, writing a haiku as in the KS2 variant below.

KS2 variant: Repeat the initial exercise above, asking the children to use these words to help them write a haiku about their sculpture (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables). The first line should correspond to the first exercise, the second to the second, and the last one to something they notice as they look at their sculpture e.g.

Birdsong and warm breezeTwigs, grass, flowers and soilShadows dance above

Introduction

KS1/lower KS2:

Arp sometimes created his sculptures by sanding away at plaster until he was satisfied with the shape.

Have you ever kept working on something until you felt like it was just right?

Upper KS2:

Arp sometimes created his sculptures by sanding away at plaster until he was satisfied with the shape. He said, ‘I work until enough of my life has flowed into its body.’

Do you ever feel like that when you’re working or playing? Do you ever feel like energy is flowing from you into the task that you are doing?

Lesson 3: Making nature sculptures

Curriculum Links:

Art and Design - knowing about great artists; producing creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences

Balloon Sculptures

Show children ‘Three disagreeable objects on a face’, ‘Human Concretion’ and ‘Sculpture to be lost on a forest’ and point out how they are different shapes placed together.

Explain the process of making balloon sculptures and show a model that you have made. Ask children to use their sketches from the previous session to plan a sculpture in sketch form.

Part One: - Stretch some large balloons and fill them with plaster of paris. - The children can knead and squeeze the balloons until the plaster heats up and finally begins to harden. At this stage, the children need to hold it in position to get their desired shape. See: artfulparent.com/2014/01/plaster-balloon-sculptures-with-kids.html- The children should make several of these so that they can form an interlinking sculpture, hopefully mimicking the sketch that they made when outdoors.

Part Two: Once the plaster has hardened, you can peel off the balloons and form your smooth shapes into a sculpture. You could sand these down with sandpaper, as Arp did, or paint these bronze or black to echo the colours of Arp’s sculptures.

Plenary:

What was easy about the process? What was difficult? Did your sculpture turn out as you planned it or did it surprise you?

Finally, the children should come up with a name for their sculpture.

What does it remind them of? What do they see when they look at it?

* Please note that mixing the plaster of paris and pouring it into the balloons requires adult support, so you may need extra adults in the classroom for this activity. For health and safety guidance when working with plaster see: www.nsead.org/downloads/Plaster.pdf *

If you are located close enough to Margate, this would be a great time to visit Turner Contemporary Art Gallery to see the exhibition Arp:The Poetry of Forms.

It is on from 13 October 2017 to 14 January 2018.

Lesson 4: Visit to exhibition

Curriculum Links:



Exploring the exhibition

Try different ways to look at the artwork:- Bend over and look at it upside down- Lie on the floor and look up at it- Squint your eyes or blink quickly- Notice the spaces between the artworks

How does this change what you see?

Guess the artwork!

One selects an artwork, the other(s) asks yes-no questions to try and guess which artwork it is.

Discussing

In pairs or groups, children talk about the artwork to find out more about what they and others are thinking.

Conversation ideas:

If all the artworks in the exhibition were clothes, which one of them would you wear?

Why do you think the artist chose to use these colours in his artwork? Would the meaning of the artwork change if the colours were different?

Try to guess the title of an artwork. How would you name it? Is it important to know the title of an artwork when you are looking at it?

Word play

Put together 2 words you would use to describe an artwork and create a new word. If an artwork is shiny and atmospheric, the artwork is shinospheric! What other words did the group come up with to describe it?

Making

Ask the children to create a sculpture that relates to something they have seen at the gallery, using a piece of paper or other materials you have brought with you. It can be an interesting shape or a theme they saw, or an emotion they felt when they were looking at an artwork. Get them to guess which artwork inspired their friend’s sculpture.

Introduction:

Towards the end of session 3, we talked about whether your sculptures had come out as planned or not.

Arp was interested in sometimes letting things fall to chance when he was creating. Sometimes, he would cut out pieces of paper and colour them, laying the scraps on to a piece of cardboard and shaking them then letting them lay where they’d moved.

At other times, he would rip pieces of paper, drop them onto a larger sheet and stick down each scrap wherever it happened to fall. (see powerpoint).

Lesson 5: Chance collages and music

Curriculum Links:

Art and Design - knowing about great artists; producing creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences; become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques

Music - learn to create and compose music on their own and with others; perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions

Activity 1:

Give the children time to experiment with making chance sculptures, both with cut and coloured squares of paper that they shake onto a piece of cardboard and by ripping pieces of paper and allowing them to fall onto the cardboard from the air.

Do they like their chance collages? Are there any changes they’d like to make? Allow the children to change the position of one or two pieces of paper. Is that an improvement?

Activity 2:

John Cage composed a piece of music inspired by Arp’s crumpled paper, which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWeTHA61mms

As you listen, what sounds can you hear? How are these sounds being created? Is this piece constantly noisy? Ask a member of the class to raise their hand whenever there is silence.

As a class, see if you can make your own piece of music like this one. Give everyone a sound to make using objects around the classroom, including paper to rip, water to pour and various ways of creating percussion sounds. Everyone should close their eyes and can make their sound up to 3 times over a 3 minute period.

Encourage the children to allow moments of silence. Listen back to the recorded piece and evaluate it, then try again to see if they can improve the effects.

Other musicians have also been inspired by the poetry and practice of Jean Arp. Composer Helen Caddick has created Amphora in response to Arp: The Poetry of Forms, using chance to help determine the overall structure. See examples of her work here: www.helencaddick.com

Plenary:

Listen to the music again and close your eyes.

Where does it remind you of? Where does it take you to in your imagination? Are you in a wood at night? Are you looking out over a hill? Are you cosy in bed?

Collect the children’s ideas and put them together into a group poem about the piece of music you have created.

Arp’s chance collages were about letting life surprise you. What has surprised you today?

The children have now produced two pieces of artwork, plus sketches and photographs of the outdoor sculptures, as well as several poems and a piece of music.

Ask them to organise an exhibition to show their work to the rest of the school and their families.

Where will they hold the exhibition? How will they display their work? What words will the exhibition need? Will they include some pictures of Arp’s work and information about him? How will they advertise to people to come?

KS1 variant: Plan the exhibition together, and then model making a flyer for children to make to give to their family, inviting them to the exhibition.

KS2 variant: You could allocate tasks to small groups e.g. one group to make flyers, another to write labels, another to design how the exhibition will look, and another to write up some information about Arp.

Lesson 6: Optional exhibition

Curriculum Links:


These lesson plans have been created to accompany the exhibition Arp: The Poetry of Forms at Turner Contemporary from 13 October 2017 to 14 January 2018. The exhibition has been co-curated by Frances Guy and Prof Eric Robertson, author of numerous works about Arp.

Commissioned by Royal Holloway, University of London, the lessons have been informed by Turner Contemporary’s use of Hands on Philosophy, a method to engage audiences in conversation rather than telling people what to think about art.

Content has been devised by Dr Emma Miles, a former primary school teacher who currently works as a gallery educator.

Image Details & Credit Lines:

Hans Arp with Navel Monocle, c 1926Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin/Rolandswerth Image © DACS 2017

Jean (Hans) ArpEtoile, plaster, 1939Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Image © DACS 2017

Turner Contemporary

Lesson plans - Turner Contemporary · Lesson plans KS 1&2 A series of 6 cross-curricular lessons inspired by the artist and ... Abstraction Surrealism. Lesson 1: Introducing Arp ...

Documents