Name:__________________________________
Class: Art Appreciation
Title of Project: Cubism -
David Hockney - Cubism and the Photomontage
Media: Photography
Grade Level: 9th – 12th Length of time
for this project: 3 class periods
Objectives:
For
this project you will be creating your own photo
collage, and you will imitate the style of Hockney.
Here are the guidelines and hints for a successful
photo collage:
• Take your photos of the same person,
place or thing.
Use a minimum of 24 photos – 4x6.
• Vary the distance you are from your
subject by taking a step forward or backward.
• Take pictures of different sections
of your subject by stepping to either side or
turning your camera to a different angle.
• Create your composition carefully before
gluing it down! Think about the edges of your
composition and how much each photo will overlap.
• Add a border if you like. The color
and size of the poster board that you use to
glue your photos on is up to you.
• Carefully glue down your photo collage
and give it a title! Use a permanent marker
to sign your artwork.
DAVID
HOCKNEY
David Hockney (1937-?) is a British born artist
who lives in Los Angeles. He always wanted to
be an artist, so he created posters at school
and made drawings for the school magazine. When
he was a little bit older, he attended art school
in London. After a visit to New York in 1961,
he decided that the freedom he found in American
society suited him and inspired his artwork.
Since then he has become successful creating
many different kinds of artworks, including
oil paintings, acrylic paintings, etchings,
prints, theatre design, and photo collages.
He became successful so rapidly that he was
able to support himself by selling his artwork
when he was still in his early 20’s!David
Hockney began his career as a painter, and it
is earliest paintings that have earned him the
label of Pop Artists. Many people consider Hockney
a Pop Artist because his first paintings were
light hearted and showed common scenes, much
like the work of other Pop artists. In the two
paintings pictured here we see examples of a
Californian lifestyle. The painting on the left
is titled A Bigger Splash, and the painting
on the left is called A Lawn Being Sprinkled.
Hockney painted both artworks in 1967. Hockney
frequently documented his work with photography.
From 1973-1975 he lived in Paris and worked
with two of Picasso’s printers. During
this time he made etchings in memory of Picasso,
who he greatly admired. It is very possible
that Picasso’s cubist paintings inspired
the photo collages that Hockney began creating
in the 1980’s. His first collages were
mosaics created by laying out Polaroids in a
grid. The artwork on the left is called Kasmin,
and was made in 1982.
Hockney preferred photo collages to single photographic
images because it forces the viewer to see all
of the parts. Hockney believed that the photo
collages were like visual perception. Visual
perception is when a person looks at all of
the details or aspects of an object in order
to see it as a whole. In addition to the grid
collages, Hockney created collages by overlapping
photographs. The collage above is called Place
Furstenberg, Paris, and was made in 1985. The
artwork on the right is called Mother and was
also made in 1985. The artwork at the top of
the first page is also by Hockney and is called
Pearblossom Highway, created in 1986.
Additional
Plans:
David Hockney Lesson Plan:
Photomontage - Digital: Students will learn
and use both digital cameras, computers, perspective,
and planning techniques. The final product will
be a finished photographic piece that each student
will create individually from photos taken with
the digital cameras and printed from the computer
on photo quality paper. http://www.concentric.net/~brn2bcas/eryerson/
Teaching Linear Perspective:
Many artists are very interested in making two-dimensional
artworks look three-dimensional. During the
Renaissance, artists used mathematics and close
observation to invent "linear perspective"-a
technique that helps artists make things look
three dimensional. This lesson teaches the basics
of drawing forms in two-point perspective http://www.sanford-artedventures.com/teach/lp_2pointperspect_complete.html
Resources:
Videos: Behind the Scenes:
The Illusion of Depth (also listed as Behind
the Scenes with David Hockney (1992)) Hosted
by Penn and Teller, this video gives an entertaining
and educational summary of depth techniques.
