Art History, Art Criticism, and Aesthetics as Interesting and Though Provoking

I think that at least initially I don't want to worry to much about labels and specifics until students feel comfortable talking about and comparing artworks in their context (historical, visual, formal, etc.)

Lesson Plan 

How Do We View America?

Enduring Idea: 

Perspective

For example I won't start out explaining "Today we're going to talk about art history or visual culture.... blah blah blah," but maybe have a bunch of magazines from today and then from maybe the fifties and have students compare them.

• On one side of the room will be a variety of lifestyle and fashion magazines from the past decade.

• On the other side of the room will be some older magazines.

• In their sketchbooks students will list themes, trends, or styles they notice in both

• What do these magazines say about the USA?

• How has the view of the US changed in these magazines? How is it the same?

Historical Context:

Then we can talk about the history behind it and then refer to some of the art work from the era and see how the history we talked about may have influenced the art of the time.

• Post World War

• Cold War: Video

• The "Modern"World

• Celebrities

Artist:

Jasper Johns

"Johns painted Flag in the context of the McCarthy witch-hunts in Cold War America. Then and now, some viewers will read national pride or freedom in the image, while others only see imperialism or oppression. Johns was one of the first artists to present viewers with the dichotomies embedded in the American flag. Johns referred to his paintings as "facts" and did not provide predetermined interpretations of his work; when critics asked Johns if the work was a painted flag, or a flag painting, he said it was both. As with other Neo-Dada works, the meaning of the artwork is determined by the viewer, not the artist."

Project:
Prompt: What is America to us now? How do identify our nationality?

Collage with the magazine and paint (like Jasper Johns) to communicate and explore your ideas. Consider the Neo-dada idea that the viewer not the artist determines the meaning.

Possible Concerns:
Could this get too political?


Other Ideas to make Art History, Criticism, and Aesthetics More Fun:
For a field trip we might visit an art museum and ask the students to write down the name of a work, artist, and year that they like, that they dislike and that they don't understand. Then when we are back in the classroom we can share a few examples and discuss why. For the like and dislike we can point out possible aesthetic reasons and for the works they don't understand we can explore different areas of art criticism and art world contexts (such as conceptual art, abstract expressionism, etc.).

Perhaps also to bring art criticism to the classroom we could ask students to swap completed pieces and present each others work as if it was their own to help the artist understand what they are communicating.

Another way to include all three would be to create connecting units such as starting with landscape paintings from the Hudson River School of Painting  and leading into talking about land art and then connecting it into a making and critiquing art made to explore the relationship between humans and the earth.