Museum Visit Project: Howard Hodgkin's Brushstrokes

Here is a great project that will show you how to do paintings using brushstrokes. 


Did you know that you can create shapes with your brush?. See how the artist Howard Hodgkin creates shapes with his brushes.

Tape down a piece of paper. Dip your brush in some paint. Wipe it on the side of the jar. Press it on your paper. Then splash, slap, splash, slap. 


Just look at these lush prints of Howard Hodgkin, the contemporary British painter.  I discovered them online at  the Metropolitan Museum of Art's fabulous web site. (Imagine being able to visit an exhibition online.) The original prints were on view in the Print Collection galleries.

I like the "marks" Hodgkin makes using a thick brush and short stubby strokes. His brushstrokes often run right onto the frames. His paintings sometimes look like brightly-colored landscapes; sometimes pure abstract bursts of color. His paintings seem naïve, but they are actually highly sophisticated, strong statements of simple ("minimalist") ideas. After all, they are "purely" brushstrokes.

A terrific Hodgkin-inspired painting project that explores the shapes brushes make.

Buy some brushes in different sizes and shapes at the hardware store. Buy two 2 inch wide foam brushes. Buy two 1 inch bristle(?) paint brushes. Buy some large sheets of colored construction paper at the art supply store.

Tape down a sheet of construction paper. Pour some tempera paint into a saucer. Dip the front edge of your 2" foam brush in the paint. Drag it across part of the paper. Dip it again. Take a little more paint this time. Try painting a curve. Try painting small dashes. Do the same thing with your bristle brushes. Tape your painting to the wall and let it dry. Wash your brushes and dry them.

Tape down a new paper. Pour another color into a saucer. Dip the tip of your 1" brush in the paint. Drag it across part of the paper. Dip it again and try painting curves and circles. See what your brush will do. Let your painting dry. Add another color. When your painting is dry, you can add another color. You can do this with up to four colors. Remember to let each color dry before you go on to the next one. Make sure you wash and dry your brushes between colors.

You can put your artwork in pre-cut white mats and mount them on the wall. (You'll find them at the art store.) Or you can mount your paintings directly on the wall. Use the picture-hanging goop. Invite your friends and family into your "studio" to see your new art work. Arrange a playdate with a friend and do some Hodgkin-inspired paintings.




A link to the Howard Hodgkin prints at the Metropolitan Museum
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={5A77FEEC-17F1-47FA-95B6-5EEA279A349B}

Museum Visit Project: MoMA: Alberto Giacometti

A 3 year old Uma discovered a Giacometti sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. She thought the thinny thin Giacometti was terrific. We asked her how she knew this thin figure was a woman, and she answered, "she has bobos."

Alberto Giacometti b. 10 October 1901- 11 January 1966, Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman, printmaker) Giacometti was a well-known sculptor. His father was an artist. As a young man, Alberto worked at his father's studio, and learned about painting. In 1922, he moved to Paris, to study sculpture and painting. He experimented with some of the new styles of cubism and surrealism, but he preferred to draw exactly what he saw when he sat in front of a model.

From 1936 to 1940, his figures became more and more stretched out and long, and he began the unique artistic phase that made him famous.

Giacometti said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a woman. He created very minimalist figures, but you could tell their gender and sometimes even their age.

In 1962 Alberto Giacometti received the Grand Prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale.

Here is a project inspired by the sculpture of Giacometti

You'll need some play doh or clay to use as a base, some pipecleaners to use as the armatures (structure) for figures, some tissue paper to wrap around the pipecleaners to give them some detail, some library paste to dip the tissue paper in, to make it stick to the pipecleaners. It will dry hard.

Twist the pipecleaners into figure shapes. They can walk, or run, or stand still. Make a pancake of clay and cut it into a rectangle. It will be the base for your figures. Press the ends of the pipecleaners into the clay to hold them upright. Dip strips of tissue paper into the paste and press them around the pipecleaners. Let them dry overnight. You can combine several figures on one base. You can paint your figure after it dries.

Museum Visit Project: Jackson Pollock

“Pollock's technique of pouring and dripping paint is one of the origins of "action" painting. The paint flowed from a brush or a stick right onto the canvas. He placed his canvas on the floor and was able to work on it from all directions.

"Splashy Splashy" is a Pollack-inspired, dip and splash art-making project. Brush in, brush out, splash and dribble. You might want your child to do this "nudie" or in a large old shirt. Make sure you spread a large plastic drop-cloth across the floor. Put on some jazzy music. It's super fun if you make some ground rules.

Materials you will need

Table or floor

A roll of paper 18” x 20 ‘

Tape to hold paper down

Jars of non-toxic tempera paints

Sticks or brushes

The drip technique requires paint with a fluid viscosity like thin cream. Use non-toxic water-based paints tempera or gouache paint. Expect a mess. Don’t be surprised if there are footprints and hand prints along with the drips. Have fun.

“Splashy Splashy” will teach children there are many ways to create paintings. They will learn that even the most casual drip or blob, can be seen as a form. Parents and children will discover the fun of “messing around” together.

Gallery Visit:Bonakdar Gallery: Sarah Sze

Sarah Sze (Born in Boston in 1969) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in New York City. She uses ordinary objects and junk, to create site-specific installations. Sze graduated  from Yale University in 1991. She received a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1997. Sze is 2003 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program "genius grant."

While at Yale, Sze studied with Judy Pfaff. Roberta Smith's, New York Times review Roberta of Pfaff's recent show at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, points out that Pfaff's "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink attitude has had its share of influence on current art."

Since the late 1990s, Sze has been creating immense, intricate, site-specific installations that penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings and grasp the ground. Her work is informed by sculpture, painting and architecture. She uses everyday objects in her installations, milk cartons, takeout cups, bars of soap, feathers, lamps, ladders, pebbles, potted plants, pens, plastic bottles, tools, twigs and other objects, arranged like precious artifacts of a lost civilization, on cantilevered platforms in tower-like formations that rise to the top of the gallery space. 

Sze's style is similar to Pfaff's, but Sze's work has more of an emphasis on bravura architecture, while Pfaff's work has a more tender quality, especially in Frio, where she takes a group of "birch trees" right out of the woods and mounts them directly on a wall.

Museum Visit: MassMOCA: Sol LeWitt

I have always loved Sol Lewitt's wall drawings. They are amazingly gorgeous; they are big; and they are conceptual.

They are ideas that come to life on the interior walls of buildings. They are executed by teams of artists who follow LeWitt's meticulous plans, detailed instructions to draw certain types of lines at specified spacing, length, color and thickness,

or to smoosh watery inks in geometric layouts,

or they project the image of curvy lines in order to enlarge it to wall-size.

The wall drawings are truly beautiful. (Did I say that before?) And they are impermanent. They exist for the duration of the exhibition, then (gasp), they are painted over. Happily, this exhibition will remain in place until 2033.

Yale University, MASSMoca, and Williams College have created the largest ever show of Sol Lewitt wall drawings in a recently acquired mill building in Boston. It is truly wonderful. Go and see it!!

Gallery Visit: Marian Goodman: Gerhard Richter

There is a five-decade survey of drawings by Gerhard Richter at the Drawing Center in Soho. Mr. Richter is an artist of many styles. His idea is to keep his meaning unclear. Traditionally trained, Mr. Richter became involved with Conceptualism early in his career. He took basic techniques apart and rethought them.

This is the way he developed a drawing called "Mountains." First, he took a photograph of a grand, romantic, mountain. Then he turned the photo into a slide, which he projected and then drew. The drawing lost the image in translation, becoming a blobby form that looked like an amorphous creature as much as a mountain.

Richter likes to blur the boundries of each medium. Some drawings in graphite look like paint strokes. Small watercolors look like large oil paintings. They were actually done by dripping paint and moving it around.

Some drawings are graphite scribbles. Yet he has drawn academic studies of a skull, and a female torso.

He wants you to feel unsure of what you will see. He works in many styles without committing to any one. I liked the four very large drawings from 2005 that hang together on one wall.

The show is organized in clusters of ideas, a good way to see the ideas Mr. Richter is developing over a period of time. The Drawing Center is a great place to see all his drawings, large, open, and neutral, it is a quiet place that lets you study the work slowly, and arrive at your own thoughts.

Gallery Visit: Marion Goodman Gallery: Rineke Dijkstra:

Rineke Dijkstra, the Dutch artist, photographer, videographer, is best known for her portraits of teens. Her recent show at the Marion Goodman Gallery on 57th Street in New York, caught their awkwardness included three brilliant videos and some still photographs of British adolescent kids visiting the Tate Liverpool galleries.

Most of her portraits are close-ups of a single subject. Her close-ups of adolescents are moving. They are set against a white backgrounds, causing you to focus on their expressive and open faces, to notice what they feel, their slightest reactions.

In the 12-minute video "I See a Woman Crying," nine British school children view Picasso's "Weeping Woman," a portrait of Picasso's wife Dora Maar broken into glass-like shards.

The kids are asked what they feel about the portrait. You never see the painting; the camera stays on the faces of the kids.

Another video shows one of the girls sitting on the floor drawing the painting.

A third video shows adolescents dancing at a club, a subject that Dijkstra explored earlier.

In other series, she photographed a row of adolescent boys, and a row of girls at the beach, with the sea as the background.

Most of her portraits are close-ups of a single subject. Her close-ups of adolescents are moving. They are set against a white backgrounds, causing you to focus on their expressive and open faces, to notice what they feel, their slightest reactions.