Stage 5 students have been learning about power in art and what better way to discover this concept than exploring the movement of Pop Art! Throughout this unit of study, students have learned that pop artists derived some of their ideas from familiar images of popular culture, such as billboards, comics strips, advertisements and supermarket products. Additionally, students have studied and applied the concept of appropriation in their art making and made significant connections with the movement of pop art. Students’ critical studies have involved them looking at artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and the way in which their artworks posess ‘pop art characteristics’.
Students have learned about Andy Warhol’s silkscreen printmaking method and discovered how the artist was interested in famous people and using their faces to make prints. Students discovered how Warhol used repeated images in different vivid colours to create appropriated artworks such as silkscreen printings of Marilyn Monroe and the famous Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Students then applied this concept of appropriation to their own artwork, demonstrating the repetition of Pepsi cans, Vegemite, Coca Cola and even the Superman symbol. In order to make their artworks authentic, students applied pop art characteristics including bold bright colours, black outlines, spots and simple designs and patterns.
Students also studied the work of Roy Lichtenstein and understood that he moved from an abstract style of art making to pop art in the early 1960s. Additionally, students have learned that Liechtenstein’s works adopted the style of commercial art, by blowing up images from comic strips to make his artworks more distinctive and unique. Students demonstrated their understanding of this by creating their own appropriated artwork stemming from a variety of comic artworks produced by Roy Lichtenstein.
The most recent activity students engaged in involved them working collaboratively to produce an appropriated mosaic artwork of Mona Lisa. In groups of 10 to 15, students were given a section of a ‘blank template’ of Mona Lisa and asked to create various patterns, designs, textures and colours which would then unify as a recognisable mosaic appropriation of the masterpiece. In this project, students had to demonstrate essential project based learning skills by communicating, creating, critically thinking and collaboratively working together as a large group to reconstruct the image their group had created.
Below are some pictures of the amazing artworks students produced which are now on display in the open learning space. The final assessment involves students individually creating an appropriated artwork of Mona Lisa where the sky is the limit in regards to displaying their creativity. I will be looking for examples of unique and distinctive artworks which extend the imagination, possible examples include appropriating a Miss Piggy Mona Lisa, a Lego Mona Lisa or even a Spiderman Mona Lisa.
As the saying goes…..”YOU ARE ONLY LIMITED BY YOUR OWN IMAGINATION!!!”
Happy weekend 🙂
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