Student Activity Guide

What is Pop Art?

POPSTARS!

Andy Warhol, "Campbell Soup II"

September 18  - December 14, 2006

from the Godwin- Ternbach Museum @ Queens College

About the ExhibitWhat is Pop Art?It is an art movement that began in the U.S. in the 1950s and reached its popularity in the 1960s.  The subject matter represented the everyday, standardized, and banal iconography of American life, such as comic strips, billboards, commercial products, and celebrity images.  These works of art were typically created on forms like oversized paintings, silkscreen reproductions, large-scale reproductions, and soft sculptures.

Look and Discover

Have students walk to one piece of art work and answer the following the questions:

What is your first impression of the artwork?

What is going on in this work?

What in this piece makes you say that?

What choices did the artist make in creating this work? (color, shape, medium)

Discuss

What does the word "popular" means?What do you notice in these works of art?Where do you think each artist got their ideas from?How are these works similar? How are they different?

Words to knowRepetition- something repeated.

Popular- Widely liked or appreciated.

Silk Screen- a method of printing in which a design is produced by forcing colored ink through a piece of fabric that has been treated so that the ink cannot pass through some parts.

Sculpture- the act, process, or art of carving or cutting hard substances, modelling clay or other plastic substances, or casting melted metals into molds to create works of art.

Banal- not original, fresh, or exciting.

Icon- Someone or something that is the object of great attention and devotion; an idol.

Reproduction- to produce a counterpart, image, or copy of something.

Andy Warhol, "Electric Chair"

In Museum Activity

Create a drawing that focuses on one image from your everyday life, using repetition.  The images in each box do not need to be the same.  You may change the image by creating a new pattern or texture, using a new color or changing the size.

1. Name the object. 2. How is this different?

3. How is this different?

Back at School

Create and Make

Activity OneAs a homework assignment have each student find a label from a can, mount it on a sheet of paper and give it a title. They should bring it in and discuss with the class why they selected this particular label and why it might be considered a work of art by analyzing it using the elements of art.

Activity TwoPass out magazines and scissors and ask students to cut out 2 or 3 pictures of objects that would be symbols of their everyday life.  Tell them to look at their pictures and choose an image to draw.  Once the image is chosen, have students create a drawing of the front, side and back view of this  object.  Then create a sculpture using found, ordinary, everyday obejcts.

Create and Make

Activity OneAs a homework assignment have each student find a label from a can, mount it on a sheet of paper and give it a title. They should bring it in and discuss with the class why they selected this particular label and why it might be considered a work of art by analyzing it using the elements of art.

Activity TwoPass out magazines and scissors and ask students to cut out 2 or 3 pictures of objects that would be symbols of their everyday life.  Tell them to look at their pictures and choose an image to draw.  Once the image is chosen, have students create a drawing of the front, side and back view of this  object.  Then create a sculpture using found, ordinary, everyday obejcts.

Reflection

Which art work was your favorite or most memorable piece? Why?

As a class, brainstorm about current popular culture images.  Some categories that can be used as a guidline include people (e.g. Britney Spears), objects (e.g. Beanie Babies), and themes (e.g. the Internet).  After brainstorming, each student should chose one item from the list (or another pop culture image) to use as a basis for a writing assignment.  Students should write 1-2 pages, explaining the significance of this image in popular culture and why they chose to represent it artistically.  Such questions that should be answered in writing are:Is this image "worthy" or "unworthy" of becoming art? If so, on what basis is such an object defined?What do you think is the importance of popular art? What can we learn from it?

This guide is made possible by generous contributions from the Godwin-Ternbach

Museum and  Penny Hammrich, Dean of Education,  Secondary Education and Youth

Services Department, Queens College

Dr. Amy Winter, Director and Curator, Godwin-Ternbach Museum

Dr. Rikki Asher, Director of Art Education, Secondary Education and Youth Services Department

Nicole Jannotte, Co-Curator

Deirdre Whiston and Vanessa Trivlis, Writers; Candidates: MS in Art Education;

Vanessa Trivlis, Designer

POPSTARS!from the Godwin- Ternbach

Museum @ Queens College

September 18  - December 14, 2006