Big Ideas
"Big ideas are what can expand student artmaking concerns beyond technical skills, formal choices, and media manipulation to human issues and conceptual concerns. Big ideas can engage students in deeper levels of thinking." As a student in high school, I rarely was challenged to create something deeper than a pretty picture. Day in and day out I would show up to art class and be asked to duplicate a famous drawing or practice a still life from different angles.
After a semester or two at New Paltz and reading these articles, I find that having a big idea in an art room can lead to works from students that mean more than what you see. Some of the examples in the readings have given me a better sense of developing questions for big ideas. Criteria for essential questions may include-- distinction and substantial, realistic in terms of time allocated for the unit, and language that is comprehensible to all students. Many activities involve students investigation in artists works.
When thinking about questions to ask students to spark ideas, this site is helpful and informative with essential questions of education!
Interpreting Visual Culture
Students of all ages are able to interpret art. They are able to investigate art through phrases, designs, and images with proper guidance through the use of linguistic messages, denotations, and connotations. A linguistic message is considered the words actually seen in an image, denotations are what you literally see in a picture, and connotations are what the things and words imply or suggest by what they show and how they show it.
Michael Ray Charles is an African American artist who creates works that refer to the offensive denotations of Blacks constructed in the past.
Art teachers interpreted this piece Cut and Paste by Michael Ray Charles and "emotionally identified with the tragic meaning of the artwork."
As you can see here, as the viewer you can "cut and paste" the objects onto the paper doll. By choosing an object we are classifying this and stereotyping the character.
Towards the opposite end of the spectrum, even kindergartners would be able to join in this activity. When cereal boxes are introduced, students are quickly able to identify "adult cereals" and "children cereals." Adult cereals have fruits, flakes, and milk while children cereals have animals, bright colors, and toy images.
Do you know of any other ads that have underlying messages? I found this ad. What audience do you think this is targeted towards?
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