Dada (1915) and Surrealism (1930)

Click here for a sample collection to use with instructor's lecture

Student collection of Dada and Surrealist art Evaluation:

Uses a minimum of two works (Can not use works seen in teacher collection) to illustrate each of the major themes talked about in the lecture. ( The rebellious nature of the Dada movement, new ideas/childlike ideas, psychological issues in art, double meaning/double images...)

Brief paragraph (in the student’s own words) about each work including artist, date, culture/geographic location, interesting fact(s), attribution information (where the work was found, MIA, WAC, Tweed museum of art, etc.). The student’s opinion of the work. What the student likes, what the student dislikes and why.

Correctly created an art collection, placed images in chronological order, published and turned in the URL to teacher.


Photography:

Photography has been mentioned briefly in other lessons and could be made into a unit in itself, depending on the teacher’s preference and time constraints. Photography is covered briefly as a transition to the small Digital Surrealist student exercise.

Digital Surrealist Exercise:

The Digital Surrealist Exercise is a chance for students to play with psychological ideas and Surrealist concepts. Using photo editing software like Photoshop, students are to take parts from a variety of black and white photographs (from the Arts Connect Ed collections) and put them together to form a completely new composition. (In essence, they will be creating their own surreal photograph.) Students should then create a title that describes the image they just made. Similar to Dali’s explanatory titles.

To give students a little background in photography, teachers may wish to lecture on a collection of photographs as has been done for other time periods in this class. Get the Picture (http://www.artsmia.org/get-the-picture/) may be a helpful resource for a photography lesson as well. A small lesson in the software being used should be covered as well as how students can save images from the web to the computer.

If photo editing software is not available a similar exercise can be done using modern word processing software. The assignment is then modified to be a collage of images that represent a psychological or Surrealistic idea. The exercise could also be done using magazine cutouts and traditional materials.

Digital Surrealist Exercise Evaluation:

Original photographs handed in with finished work. (so that the teacher knows where the “pieces” came from.) This would not be a requirement if students are making a collage of magazine cut outs.
Uses a variety of photographs
Composition
Creativity
Descriptive and creative title.