World happenings in the art room.

Often artists are influenced and motivated to respond to world events. The dynamics of world happenings have been the subject of many artworks. These images are seldom neutral records. Often, they position the viewer to respond as the artist feels. Subjects that seem to have an obvious message may convey mixed positions depending upon the artist, audience or patron.

The artist has often been a reporter and commentator of world events. For instance, most people consider war and fighting undesirable, horrendous and inhuman. But war has been communicated as horrible and noble through various artworks. Some artists have conveyed a repulsion for the horrors and waste of war; others have glamorized and valorized war efforts. Some artists have celebrated the hustle and bustle of the city as a wonderful and exciting place; others have shown the city as a wasteland of decay and human agony. Some artists have depicted nature as an inviting and nurturing environment; others have portrayed it as an enemy to survival and a wild place.

An Artist's Response

Picasso's Guernica is an example of an artist's response to world happenings. Before allowing my eighth grade students to look at the painting, I gave them background information on what was happening in the world at that time. I told them Picasso was a Spaniard living in France during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. I explained that Guernica was a Spanish town where there were no strategic military installations. According to history, the Germans staged a night raid on the civilian population, and it is thought to have been a practice run for saturation bombing later used routinely in World War II by both sides. I described how the fighter planes flew in low to gun down the civilians who were trying to escape.

I asked the students to think about how they would feel if they were Picasso and this was taking place in their home country. I explained how Picasso was commissioned to do a painting for the World's Fair in 1937 and that he chose this event as his subject. I asked the students what they expected to see in the work. A discussion followed about what they would include if they were doing the painting. How would they want viewers to feel about what had happened and how would they communicate how they felt?

Picasso's Portrayal

After this discussion, I displayed a slide and print of Guernica. The class was surprised and puzzled about why Picasso chose to portray the event as he did. A discussion followed about how the painting was different from what was expected and why it was different. With direction, the students identified the subjects within the painting, the composition and the emotional effect conveyed.

I had the students choose a recent news image to photocopy and laminate so they would be working in black and white, as Picasso did when painting Guernica. Magazine and newspaper pictures of the Kurds' suffering in their flight from Iraq, images from Desert Storm and other tragic events from our contemporary world surfaced. Using black, gray and white construction paper, and newspaper, the students cut and tore shapes that corresponded to their news image. The medium of collage was discussed. The compositions were arranged on a background paper and glued. Students could then use black markers to include an explanatory caption or add details to their picture.

Art as a Tool of Communication

The unit enabled the students to understand how artists respond to world events and to realize that the subjects of art are not just the "beautiful" and the "pretty." They learned that art communicates feelings and tells us about the world of the artist.