Richards Middle School
Purvis – Jen Weisphal
Learning Objective/Exit Outcomes:
- Students will be able to infer meaning and emotion from a piece of visual art.
- Students will describe what they hear when they look at a piece of art, inferring the style of music, instruments used, and feeling conveyed in a piece of art.
- Students will connect Visual Art to Music, describing the art in music terms, including tempo, pitch, tone, and rhythm.
- Students will use body percussion to play a piece of art.
- Students will create Visual Art based on their favorite song.
Integration Area/Subject:
Visual Art & Music
State Standards:
VA6.CR.1 Visualize and generate ideas for creating works of art.
- Visualize new ideas by using mental and visual imagery.
- Explore essential questions, big ideas, and/or themes in personally relevant ways.
- Incorporate a variety of internal and external sources of inspiration into works of art (e.g.internal inspiration – moods, feelings, self-perception, memory, imagination, fantasy; external inspiration – direct observation, personal experience, events, pop culture, artists and artwork from diverse cultures and periods).
- Formulate and compose a series of ideas using a variety of resources (e.g. imagination, personal experience, social and academic interests).
- Document process (e.g. journal-keeping, sketches, brainstorming lists).
VA6.RE.1 Reflect on the context of personal works of art in relation to community, culture, and the world.
- Identify how the issues of time, place, and culture are reflected in selected works of art.
- Interpret works or art considering themes, ideas, moods, and/or intentions.
VA6.CN.3 Utilize a variety of resources to understand how artistic learning extends beyond the walls of the classroom.
- Make interdisciplinary connections, expanding upon and applying art skills and knowledge to enhance other areas of learning.
MSBB.CN.1 Understand relationships between music, other arts, other disciplines, varied contexts, and daily life.
- Describe the relationship between music and other arts.
MSBC.RE.1 Perceive, analyze, and interpret meaning in musical works.
- Describe the emotions and thoughts that music conveys.
Materials/Playing Space:
Students can stay near their desks
Description:
The teacher started the lesson with a piece of art from Pablo Picasso, “The Old Guitarist.” The teacher asked the students to interpret the feeling and mood of the art, then discuss their interpretations with their partner using great conversational skills, such as listening and responding with ‘that is a very interesting interpretation’ and repeating what their partner said and then adding on their own interpretation.
The teacher had students express their interpretations to the class, including things like inferring the emotion of the guitarist, why he feels the way he does, and what type of music is playing on the guitar.
Next the teacher showed a new piece, Franz Marc, “Fighting Forms.” This piece is more subjective, allowing the students to be even more creative with their interpretations. The teacher asked for descriptive words as well as what each color would be if it was representing a particular instrument. As students began sharing what they thought each color would be as an instrument, the teacher asked the students to express their reasoning. Why might red be a flute and deep blue be a saxophone? The class naturally came to a cohesive idea that the painting, if played as music, would be a jazz song.
The teacher, upon discussing what the students ‘heard’ in this painting, explained that colors have universal sound and meaning. Showing a Wassily Kandinsky, “Composition VI”, the teacher discussed how Kandinsky would hear the colors as he mixed them, that each color had its own frequency, every piece of art having its own tempo and beat.
The teacher then had the students begin considering how their favorite song might look as a visual art piece. What colors would best represent the mood of the song and how would you show the musical elements of the song as visual art?