Club de estudio de imágenes Art Smarts (11-15)

Enhance your art smarts with this quick ongoing class where we enjoy classic artworks from great artists.  During class, I will share some background information about the artist and the culture in which they lived.  Students will then study the painting closely before I remove it from view and we discuss our observations.  After this, we will look at the painting again and then either discuss or sketch* a second round of observations.  Please note that this class is very interactive and it is important that the students not only participate fully, but also leave their cameras and microphones on.  While I require participation, there are no wrong answers and every observation is valued.  

"...the first and most important thing is to know the pictures themselves. As in a worthy book we leave the author to tell his own tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as else-where we shut out the middleman."  ~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 216

**Schedule**
September 14th - Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
September 21st - The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai
October 5th - Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
October 12th - American Gothic by Grant Wood
October 19th - Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies by Claude Monet
October 26th - The Scream by Edvard Munch
November 2nd - The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali
November 9th - The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn
November 16th - The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck
November 23rd - Las Meninas by Diego Velasquez
November 30th - The Janitor Who Paints by Palmer Hayden
December 7th - Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap - Pieter Bruegel the Elder

***Break*** - December 14th-December 4th

January 11th – A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat
January 18th – Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso
January 25th – The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer
February 1st – The Banjo Lesson by Henry Ossawa Tanner
February 8th – School of Athens by Raphael
February 15th – The Dessert: Harmony in Red by Henri Matisse
February 22nd – The Son of Man by Rene Magritte
March 1st – Whistler’s Mother by James McNeill Whistler
March 8th – Dance at Bougival by Pierre-Aguste Renoir

***Break*** March 15th

March 22nd – Self Portrait (1790) by Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun
March 29th – The Broken Pitcher by Adolphe-William Bouguereau
April 5th – Me and My Parrots by Frida Kahlo
April 12th – Primavera by Sandro Boticelli
April 19th – Dance Class at the Opera on Le Peletier by Edgar Degas
April 26th – Little Girl in a Blue Armchair by Mary Cassatt

*Focus is not on the artistic quality of student sketches but on reproducing loosely any observations they made.  Stick figures and sloppy sketches are normal here!