Please join my round table discussion at NCTE this weekend: Reading Art to Access Hope, Wonder, and Significance in Writing
Friday, 11/20, 2:30-3:45pm, Minneapolis Convention Center, 208CD
Here is an overview, a sample lesson, and a few writing samples:
Art can offer a grand and serious vantage point from which to survey the travails of our condition. It can put us in touch with concentrated doses of our missing dispositions, and thereby restore a measure of equilibrium to our listing inner selves
The task of artists, therefore, is to find new ways of prying open our eyes to tiresomely familiar, but critically important ideas about how to lead a balanced and good life.
From time to time, we encounter works of art that seem to latch on to something we have felt but never recognized clearly before. Art is one resource that can lead us back to a more accurate assessment of what is valuable by working against habit and inviting us to recalibrate what we admire or love (Alain de Button).
Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Ivan Albright, Dawoud Bey.
Experience beautiful art alongside other writers as we “read” images, consider how art can nurture in all students hope, wonder, and a yearning for significance in life, and then write the stories of famous paintings.
The Process: From Reading to Writing
Pre-Writing/Reading: Conduct a discussion of the image using Visual Thinking Strategy (4 steps and 15 minutes):
- Project a carefully chosen image and ask students to look at it quietly for a moment.
- Ask students to answer several specific but open-ended questions that come in sequence:
- What’s going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can we find?
- Listen to what students say, point to what they mention, respond to each comment, and paraphrase every student’s ideas.
- Link agreement and disagreement while remaining the facilitator throughout the discussion, don’t add comments, correct, or direct the students’ attention.
The discussion is an inquiry and does the work of generating ideas for writing. The composition process is the creative work of the writer to capture the meaning and render the art into text or do analytical piece of the meaning using evidence from the art.
Composing
- Consider the form: poem, story, analysis
- Consider authorial choices: point of view, voice, tone, conveying meaning, imagery, meaning, interpretation, artist’s intention versus writer’s intention
- Discuss and conference transactions (Rosenblatt): how is meaning-making happening among the artist, the art, you and others in the reading and writing choices
Below you will find examples from several eighth graders based on these pieces of art:
- Pablo Picasso’s The Old Guitarist (1903)
- Vincent vanGogh’s Prisoners Exercising (1890)
- Dawoud Bey’s A Young Boy from a Marching Band (1979)
- Ivan Albright’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida (1929)
I sit here at this corner
strumming my guitar
the only happiness in this life
and my next
I curl into my skeletal body
fighting back the wails
that threaten to come again
My ears strain
to block out every sound
except my guitar
my only friend,
my love.
I lost everything
Everything.
I have nothing left
except my guitar
and I’m alright with that
the chords give me power,
notes little spots of light
the rags hanging on my form
billow in the strong wind
taunting me
pushing me to the edge
of life and death
but I don’t mind
they can try
but I am stronger
and I always have been
I sit here at this corner
strumming my guitar
the only true happiness in this life.
This poem is based off of the painting “The Old Guitarist” by Pablo Picasso. First, I had it as a story, which was almost exactly like the poem above, but in story format. After making some minor changes, I thought this would be better as a poem. So then, I changed it up! Now that it’s in a different form, I think it’s much more powerful than it was just in paragraphs. I also added some hope a the end. Before, it was all negative, and the man grieved what he had lost. Now he is strong, and he will win the war he is battling with himself.
Story: “Prison Circles”
We walk in circles for endless hours, the stripes on our prison clothes stiffly shifting in time. The warden watches with an eye so sharp we dare not meet it. The men in dark suits have been here all day, and they are starting the look more like shadows than men. Occasionally they’ll throw out some bids, two darknesses battling over one of their own kind, followed by a string of curses if they don’t succeed, and sending one of us away. We wish we knew where we were going, but can only imagine what horrors wait for us.
My legs scream, my back aches, but I can’t stop walking. Not even for a second. There’s a whip waiting for us, just waiting to lash us ten times for the smallest slip-up. A couple of the guys have already been through this, making their natural stoops so much worse. They stagger along with a bad hunch, tripping over nothing but their own feet, practically asking for another whipping. We know they can’t help it, but the warden thinks differently. I can only hope I’m not next.
The shadows start bidding again, calling out insanely high numbers toward each other, keeping us wondering who the money is for. Finally the noise stops. One of the shadows shakes the wardens hand, just as I come around toward them. A couple steps later, he grabs my shoulder with no thought of being gentle. I’m nearly flung to the feet of my new owner, but I manage to keep my balance. I couldn’t see much of his face under his top hat, but from what I could tell, it wasn’t kind. The glimpse of his eyes I saw were dark– almost black. I’m starting to think he might be the worst nightmare. Shadow takes my chains, and tugs me away, out of the prison, and into another cruel, terrible life, to a death I can’t escape.
I based this story off of the painting “Prison Circles” by Vincent van Gogh we looked at in class. Before, I just wrote about what I saw and made up a character, but here I turned it into a full-on realistic fiction piece. I tried to put myself into the shoes of this prisoner to connect a little better to what it might actually be like in this situation. The “shadows” are the slave owners. I used shadow to convey the inhumane characteristics of them, instead of making them seem like just a mean human. I hope it added the depth I was looking for!
Essay: A Young Boy from a Marching Band
This photo is titled A Young Boy from a Marching Band and it is by Dawoud Bey. Here is my reading; I see a young boy, very skinny who lives in a poverty stricken area, his sidewalk crumbles just as he feels his life does. He does not have many important valuables except for one thing: his instrument. His instrument is his dignity, is the only thing he carries with the clothes on his back. The main things that are white in this photo are the trash that litters his neighborhood, bringing attention to the life he may live in. He holds a strong front for most of his life, but you can clearly see his emotions of sadness. You can see how he looks into the distance, staring at a world better than the one he is living in, searching for an answer to escape poverty. He see’s past the poverty, past this world of corruption to somewhere far away, a place that no one else but himself can see.
To extend my reading, I did some additional research:
The first article is “Dawoud Bey, Harlem U.S.A” The summary is that Dawoud was born and raised in Queen but has roots in Harlem where he often visited as a child. After going to a museum when he was young he realized he wanted to be a artist so later on in his life he began to take black and white photos of different people he saw on the streets of Harlem. His goal for these pictures was to show different personalities of Harlem residence. He made a complete set of photos titled “Harlem USA” which The Art Institute later inquired some of the photos. My view on this is that it’s very interesting that Dawoud had enough stride and passion to follow his dreams and pursue the career choice of being an artist. I also enjoyed how is work felt very real and personal like it came from some place we can all relate too. I think that his idea of having real not posing pictures that can show so much personality is better then having posing pictures since it can better relate to the viewer.
In the second article is “Early portraits a sign of things to come” The summary is, In Dawoud Beys early he revolved a lot around poverty and stereotypes. Young Boy from a Marching Band is really the work that started all of his collection. And is a real symbol of his early work. A little bit later on in his work he had the people he was taking pictures of doing things more awkwardly and staring straight into the camera too show the dominoes. Every wrinkle is very obvious in his work, it all being very precise and zoomed in. In all of his work the people seemed to show how they are strong. In his later work that wasn’t as successful people he captures tend to be looking away instead of right into the camera lens. My view on this is that some of his earlier work may be better because they stare right at you like they can actually see you and you see them. Like you can look right into their soul and see their life story and how they are strong despite it all. I believe that he is an excellent artist as he is very precise and able to capture. Every small detail in spectacular ways.
All in all I believe that Dawoud Bey is a very good artist who has a lot of talent and some of his earlier work such as the picture I choose does a very good job at capturing the streets.
Essay:Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida
The artist of this painting is Ivan Albright. The name of the painting is called Into the World Came a Soul Named Ida. Albright has made many similar pictures to this one and I think that he makes these kinds of pictures to show people that everyone is unique and beautiful inside and out no matter how old you are. In most pictures that he has drawn similar to this one everyone is trying to cover up how old they are and think that they will be judged.
This picture to me looks unusual than how I expected it to be. I saw this painting in the museum and I got to see it more closely and one thing that I didn’t recognize when I saw a picture of it but when I saw the real one I saw that she is going bald at the top of her head. I also see that an old woman is trying to cover her wrinkles in make up and trying to make herself more beautiful. She is looking in a mirror at her reflection. She thinks that she is not good enough so she should hide it in make up and not trying to be herself. The colors I see in this painting are like dull colors that make the mood sad. Like the old women is sad because she thinks she’s ugly and tries to cover her ugliness underneath but that doesn’t really show who she is truly. This painting really inspired me because it showed it doesn’t matter how old you are but you are beautiful just the way you are and nobody can change you.
How do you use art to inspire writing, to work against habit of mind, to access something both within and beyond?