Art and math merge!
Gathered on the classroom carpet, the second graders first watched
a short BrainPOP® video describing Cubism (www.brainpop.com/
artsandmusic/artconcepts/Cubism/preview.weml). At various points,
the second grade teacher and I paused the video to allow students
time to express what they liked and disliked about the works
featured, and to ask them what shapes they saw in each of the
Cubist works. Nearly all of the students preferred Braque’s Houses at
l'Estaque (1908) over his Violin and Candlestick (1910) (figure 1)
because of its “bright, but still kinda soft-ish” colors, as one second
grader described. Many giggled at how the artists cleverly depicted
the images featured on the canvasses so strangely and
unrealistically, with one student exclaiming, “Why would you paint
something like that?” While viewing both of the Cubist works,
students were asked to identify and describe characteristics of the
shapes they discerned, which included circles, triangles, squares,
rectangles, trapezoids, cylinders, and prisms, just to name a few.
Next, the second grade teacher and I projected onto the whiteboard
two of Picasso’s Cubist paintings created during his time spent in
northeastern Spain namely, Brick Factory at Tortosa (1909) and The
Reservoir, Horta de Ebro (1909) (figure 2).
Figure 2. Brick Factory at Tortosa (1909) (Source: www.arthermitage.org/Pablo-Picasso/Brick-Factory-atTortosa.html) and The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro (1909) (Source: www.arthermitage.org/Pablo-Picasso/BrickFactory-at-Tortosa.html)
These two works provided students the visual opportunity to see how
two-dimensional shapes serve as the foundation to the creation of
three-dimensional shapes. The second grade teacher likened how
the works resembled a city’s skyline, a village in the distance, where
buildings of varying sizes and shapes appear, some in front, some
beside, and some behind others. We challenged students to count
the faces of the pastel-painted prisms, whether apparent or hidden,
challenging their visual spatial skills. The students were also
challenged to name the prisms appearing in the works. This line of
inquiry transformed into a teachable moment, as students had seen,
held, and drawn triangular and rectangular prisms, but not all were
Figure 1. Houses at l'Estaque (1908) (Source: www.unesco.org/artcollection) and Violin and Candlestick
(1910) (Source: www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/89)
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