Corn-dinsky

(This lesson is inspired by a genius post over here)

Artist: Wassily Kandinsky

Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913

Materials:

 paper, sharpies, liquid watercolor (red & yellow & blue), yellow, red and green tempera paint, small paintbrushes or qtips, paper cups, pencils with flat erasers, Indian corn for a visual aid, a square of toilet paper per kid

About the artist:

WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944)

Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913

Pronounced: Can-Din-Skee

Art Style: Expressionism, Abstract Art

Art Terms: primary colors, complementary colors, abstract

Powerpoint Presentation Here

Meet the Artist: A couple of brief articles about the Russian Kandinsky - considered by many to be the "Father of Abstract Art" here and here. Something especially interesting: at an early age Kandinsky’s father realized his son had an extremely unique gift, something called synaesthesia cognate. This means that he could see sounds and hear colors. He left law at age 30 to become an artist, hugely moved by the work emerging from the French impressionists. Color was always the focus of his art rather than subject, and he is thought to have created some of the earliest completely non-representational and abstract paintings in modern art.

Discussion Ideas: As you look at Squares with Concentric Circles, ask the discussion questions: (1) What's going on in this picture? (2) What makes you say that? and (3) What more can you find?

Other ideas you may want to bring out in your discussion: (1) Kandinsky thought that colors and music were very much alike and that colors had sounds. For example, to him yellow sounded like a loud trumpet. What would this painting sound like? (2) Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract art. Abstract means that the picture doesn't have a recognizable subject. What do you think is the subject of this painting? (3) Color: using the color wheel slide you can briefly explain the color wheel. Primary colors are red, blue, yellow. Kandinsky liked to play with colors, choosing combinations that were interesting to him. Opposite colors together (complementary colors) make the other one pop out more (red/green, blue/orange, violet/yellow). Sometimes it's fun to have kids wearing these colors come up and stand back to back. Have the kids point out combinations of color in Kandinsky's painting that demonstrate this.

Kandinsky once said, "everything starts with a dot." So does the painting work in this fall project.

Activity:

1. Have the kids draw the shape of a corn, with a sharpie, kind of big

2. have them draw a grid on the corn (not too tiny of squares as they need to paint inside each one separately)

3. Have them fill in the grid with an array of yellow orange red brown watercolor (encourage mixing of colors but try to also encourage a little space between the kernels so it doesn’t turn into one big blob of brown!)

4. Using the flat eraser of a pencil like a stamp, have them stamp tempera paint on their painted kernels to make circles. (The TP is to clean their eraser if they switch colors)

5. Using tempera paint, add the husks on the sides of the cob