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511 Warburton Ave, Yonkers NY 10701 • www.hrm.org • 914-963-4550

Defining Identity: Presenting Ourselves to the World Lesson Plan Length: 3 hours over 3 lessons Grade Level(s): 1-12 Subjects: Social Studies, Art, ELA

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The Neo-Victorians: Contemporary Artists Revive Gilded-Age Glamour February 10 - May 13, 2018

Decadence is often alluring in its exuberance, but it can also be sinister and subversive in its

indulgence. The Neo-Victorians explores a resurgence of interest over the last decade in ornamental

lushness that conceals pointed social commentary beneath a seductive surface technique.

There is no coherent “Neo-Victorian” movement—no manifesto or single guiding principle subscribed to by each of these artists. Rather, the exhibition highlights a wide range of artists’ engagement with the aesthetics of the 19th century, which they have shaped, molded, and transformed to reflect today’s concerns, commenting on gender roles and societal tensions under the guise of the overt beauty.

The exhibition looks at these works through three broad thematic groupings: the artist as naturalist, the artist as purveyor of the fantastical, and the artist as explorer of domesticity. Some of the artists featured in the exhibition focus on just one of these themes, while others intersect with recurring motifs layered within these broad ideas.

Artists in the exhibition include: Troy Abbott, Jennifer Angus, Joan Bankemper, Nancy

Blum, Ebony Bolt, Laurent Chehere, Alison Collins, Camille Eskell, Lisa A. Frank, Kirsten

Hassenfeld, Dan Hillier, Marilyn Holsing, Patrick Jacobs, Pat Lasch, Catherine Latson, Zachari

Logan, Davy and Kristin McGuire, Chet Morrison, Donna Sharrett, Deborah Simon, Nick

Simpson, and Darren Waterston.

Each of the artists in The Neo-Victorians rejects the notion of industrial mass production, instead visibly emphasizing and reveling in elaborate construction, a surfeit of detailed design, and a visceral appeal to the senses. The artists on view conjure a staggering array of possible approaches to the subject matter, using a wide variety of materials designed to engage the eye.

The Neo-Victorians will encourage audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with the Gilded Age—on view in the Hudson River Museum’s historic home Glenview—to look at the growing group of contemporary artists imbued with a “Victorian aesthetic” and recognize how visual influences of the past continue to shape art in the present day.

Curriculum Description

In this curriculum packet, you will find three lessons inspired by the exhibition The Neo-Victorians with

an emphasis on the theme Artist as Explorer of Domesticity. The three lessons comprise a pre-visit

discussion and activity for the classroom prior to coming to the museum, a hands-on workshop to

complement a guided tour of the exhibition, and a final post-visit activity back in the classroom, rounding

out the students’ experiences at the Hudson River Museum. The activities and discussion are geared

towards students in grades 1-12, and promote creative exploration of students’ sense of identity and

how they see themselves in the world.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES Students will be able to:

Reflect on their self-identity Consider the ways in which they express who they are, internally and externally Communicate their inner feelings and outer representation through multi-media self-portraits

NATIONAL CORE ARTS STANDARDS

Visual Arts Creating: Anchor Standard 1: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.

Creating: Anchor Standard 2: Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.

Creating: Anchor Standard 3: Refine and complete artistic work.

Responding: Anchor Standard 7: Perceive and analyze artistic work.

Responding: Anchor Standard 8: Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.

Connecting: Anchor Standard 10: Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.

Connecting: Anchor Standard 11: Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding.

COMMON CORE STANDARDS English Language Arts CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7 Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1 Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2 Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.4 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.5 Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.6 Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.L.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.L.3 Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening. History / Social Studies CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.6 Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas. ESSENTIAL QUESTION

How do artists communicate identity? SUB QUESTIONS

How do people present themselves on the outside? How do people understand themselves on the inside? Are there differences between our external representation and our internal feelings? Why or

why not? How can artists use simple lines, shapes, and colors to represent either themselves or another

person? How can artists use patterns and design to explore topics important to the period in which they

work?

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Contents PRE-VISIT LESSON IN THE SCHOOL CLASSROOM ................................................................................. 6

VISIT LESSON AT THE HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM ................................................................................. 10

POST-VISIT LESSON IN THE SCHOOL CLASSROOM ............................................................................ 14

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PRE-VISIT LESSON IN THE SCHOOL CLASSROOM IMAGE

Ebony Bolt BOTANICAL DREAMS IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE 2017 Mixed Media 26 X 48 inches Courtesy of the artist

BACKGROUND INFORMATION Ebony Bolt captures the teeming, messy nature of modern urban life and wrestles it into an elegantly sinuous organic form. Deeply influenced by the scrolling decorative prints of the 19th-century British designer William Morris (1834–1896), Bolt, who is also a textile designer, mixes ornamental elaboration with detailed observation of her everyday surroundings, the Victorian and the contemporary. With a profoundly sympathetic view of human nature, Bolt finds beauty in people from all walks of life. She is an inveterate sketcher of the New York City subway-riding public and says, “I am taking a trip around the world each time I step into a train car.” Bolt stealthily fills countless sketch pads of weary commuters, often portrayed with heads hung from a long day’s work or staring off blankly into the distance. To many, New York is both a city of dreams and a grinding concrete jungle; Bolt’s composition successfully combines the two sentiments. She renders the movement of the city as a metaphor of plant life—a colorful, entangling vine that threatens to consume her fellow urban dwellers, portrayed in linear black and white. Her drawings recall the gritty images of working class life from the early 20th century, such as the Ashcan School art of John Sloan or the later Urban Scene art of Reginald Marsh. Although depicted with tenderness, Bolt’s monochromatic people are overwhelmed, scattered amidst her vivid flowers, and appear to have had the color bled out of them—the energy and color of the individual marshalled to support the dreams and aspirations of the city. QUESTIONS FOR VIEWING

Take a moment to look at the entire artwork. What do you notice? The image is printed on Plexiglass and lit from behind. Why do you believe the artist, Ebony

Bolt, chose this technique for her artwork? What impact does it have on your understanding of the work?

Move closer to the artwork or zoom in on a detail. What do you notice now that you may not have seen from a distance?

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What do you notice about the figures? Consider the figures’ body language. None of the people are looking directly at the artist or

viewer. Why you do believe Ebony chose to portray the figures this way? What impact does this have on your understanding of the piece?

Look closely at the figure with the green shirt and grey hat. How is he different from or similar to the other figures? Why do you think he was the only one the artist chose to portray in color?

Look at the various elements that compose the pattern. What do you notice? How would you describe the objects that make up the pattern?

IMAGE

Dan Hillier GHOST 2016 Hand-pulled screen print on cotton rag paper 16.5 x 12.5 inches Courtesy of the artist

BACKGROUND INFORMATION With supernatural strangeness, Dan Hillier portrays the heads in his “portraits” as a source of creative power. The faces are obscured, yet the heads radiate a mysterious, perhaps malignant force. Like Victorian women wearing heavy mourning veils, his figures have their identity hidden and this simple act of covering may communicate emotions as varied as shame, the erotic, or the fragile eroding of the interior ego. Hillier bases his prints on collages and ink drawings created from his imagination and found imagery he gleans from old books and illustrations. The compositions he favors contain a single human figure combined with varying elements of animal, plant, and mineral forms. These “characters” act as composites of human and non-human attributes, inspired by ancient mythological beings, Eastern religious symbols, Victorian freak-shows, dream imagery, and not-so-subconscious sexual desires. Hillier’s subjects are generally abstracted into blank spaces devoid of context, either monochromatic or occasionally touched with gold. Hillier’s work embraces the power of line—the spiral black nimbus cloud of lines bursting from the head in Ellipsis, the diagonal beams radiating from the head of Akasha, and the thicket of lines that become a forest in Ghost. Interestingly for an artist working in collage, he describes his work not as accumulative, but as an evacuation. He drills down into a hyper-Victorian world to provoke wonder, humor, unease, and ultimately his own sense of truth.

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QUESTIONS FOR VIEWING Look closely at this image. What do you notice? How would you describe the figure in the portrait? How does the image make you feel? How has the artist, Dan Hilliard, evoked those emotions? What emotion do you believe the figure is feeling? What makes you say that? What do you think the trees represent for the artist or the figure? If you were to tell the story of this figure, how would you describe him/her? What has led to this

moment? What will he/she do next? ACTIVITY Students will create a self-portrait focusing on color blocking and lines. They will consider the way they present themselves externally and feel themselves internally. During this lesson, they will focus on the exterior. Before beginning their drawing, students will plan out how much of their composition will be made up of their face. Taking one piece of drawing paper, they will cut it to the size of their head and glue the left edge to the second piece of drawing paper. Inspired by Ebony Bolt’s style and technique, students will use smooth, simple lines to draw their self-portrait with pencils. The portrait will span both pieces of drawing paper. They will focus on their facial expression and body language rather than on shading or depth. Once the image is drawn, students will take clear plastic sheets, layer them over their portraits, and trace the lines with black markers. Students will have the option of drawing the lines using fine, medium, or broad tip markers. Setting the clear sheet aside, students will think of their original drawing as a coloring book and the lines as the outline of solid colors. Any lines that will not be outlining a solid color, such as wrinkles in a shirt, the inside of the ears, or their nose, will be erased. Students will then use Prismacolor or other high quality art markers to fill in their portrait. This process is similar to that of artist Ebony Bolt, who uses art markers to create solid colored objects and people in her patterns and designs. Once completed, none of the portrait’s original pencil lines should be showing. Instead, the students will have one self-portrait composed of solid colored shapes and a second composed of only lines. Layered on top of each other, a complete picture of color and lines emerges. The educator should collect both pieces to be used in the next two lessons. MATERIALS

Drawing paper (2 pieces each student) Pencils Erasers Prismacolor markers Grafix plastic film Slick writer markers (fine, medium, and broad tips; 1 set for every 2 students) Scissors Glue

ASSESSMENT

Students have completed two self-portraits, one focused on color, the other on lines.

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ADDITIONAL WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION RELATED TO THIS LESSON

Chet Morrison THE CAPITALIST 2007 Epson enhanced matte paper 27 x 22 inches Courtesy of the artist

Dan Hillier AKASHA 2016 Hand-pulled screen print on cotton rag paper 44 x 29.5 inches Courtesy of the artist

Dan Hillier

Ellipsis 2016 Hand-pulled screen print on cotton rag paper 47 x 47 inches Courtesy of the artist

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VISIT LESSON AT THE HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM IMAGE

Ebony Bolt BOTANICAL DREAMS IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE 2017 Mixed Media 26 X 48 inches Courtesy of the artist

QUESTIONS FOR VIEWING

Look at this image again. What do you notice? What do you remember about it from the pre-visit lesson?

Look closely at the objects around the figures. What do you notice? Ebony Bolt is a textile designer. How do you think this background influenced her work on this

piece? What elements do you notice in Ebony’s design? Ebony was inspired by William Morris, who created Victorian textile and wallpaper designs.

What similarities and differences do you notice between the work of William Morris and Ebony

Bolt?

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IMAGE Nancy Blum TRUMPET AND PASSION 2012 Ink, colored pencil, gouache, and graphite on paper 7 x 12 feet, Triptych Courtesy of the artist

BACKGROUND INFORMATION Swirling patterns detailed in ink, colored pencil, gouache, and graphite, Nancy Blum’s works lead the viewer into energetic and engrossing fantastical realms in which flowers, normally diminutive, have grown to monstrous proportions. Her art, like Ebony Bolt’s mixed media panel and Zachari Logan’s monumental pastels in the previous gallery, is deeply influenced by the 19th-century English designer William Morris, as well as by earlier 16th- and 17th-century botanical paintings. However, Blum’s flowers are so rich and vibrant they appear almost threatening—ready to leap off the wall. Her work takes the distinctive pattern of Morris and sets it free of any formal constraints. Blum’s blossoms have been given a dose of artistic Miracle-Gro. Blum’s art is an affirmation of life force and a rejection of repression: her choice to depict the “passion flower” is not a coincidence. Like the fin de siècle writings of Oscar Wilde, the artist embraces the decadent, though to cheerier effect. As Blum has stated, she is not interested in simply transcribing nature or illustrating flowers as a “feminine,” “decorative” motif. Rather, she moves them front and center, claiming their essential role in reproduction: “My deeper intent is to conjure the ‘flower’ as an active, forceful agent, subverting a culturally conditioned point of view that often deems the ephemeral and organic as less powerful and of limited value.” QUESTIONS FOR VIEWING

Look closely at this image. What do you notice? How is this image similar or different from Ebony’s? How is it similar or different from the examples by William Morris? Looking at the details in both works, you will notice that Ebony Bolt has taken large elements,

people, and shrunken them down, while Nancy Blum has taken small elements, flowers, and enlarged them. What impact does this playing with scale have on the overall designs?

Looking at examples by Ebony Bolt, William Morris, and Nancy Blum’s, what common elements do you notice in Victorian and Victorian-inspired designs?

Thinking about today, what elements would you want to include in a pattern to represent today?

ACTIVITY Inspired by the two Neo-Victorian artists along with William Morris, students will create their own modern-day textile or wallpaper design. Students will take elements that are meaningful in their own lives and incorporate them into their pattern. They will be encouraged to play with scale, enlarging some elements and/or shrinking others. This pattern will serve as the cover of their personal identity

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book, with their portrait from the pre-visit lesson as the second and third pages. Students will design reveals within their cover pattern, leaving holes for their face and other elements present in their portraits. Older students will cut out their openings using exacto blades while younger students will use scissors, cutting from an outside edge. They will then use tape to close the edge, leaving a hole in the middle of the paper, similar to the images below:

Source: http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-peek-inside-my-latest-class-art.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+Alisaburke+(alisaburke)

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/heidillustration/5553797515/

Students will work with black card stock and art colored pencils to create their pattern, designing brightly colored elements on a black field, similar to artist Zachari Logan. MATERIALS

Black card stock Pencils Bright Prismacolor colored pencils Scissors, for younger students Tape, for younger students Exacto blades, for older students

ASSESSMENT

Students have completed a personal textile or wallpaper pattern using elements that are meaningful in their lives.

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ADDITIONAL OBJECTS IN THE EXHIBITION RELATED TO THIS LESSON

Zachari Logan POOL 1, AFTER MARY DELANY 2015 Pastel on black paper 59 x 95 inches Courtesy of the artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York, NY Zachari Logan POOL 3, AFTER MARY DELANY 2017 Pastel on black paper 59 x 90 inches Collection of Randy Pi, San Jose, CA

Nancy Blum 5 DOGWOODS 2017 Ink, gouache and colored pencil on paper 42 x 90 inches Courtesy of the artist

Nancy Blum MAGNOLIA 2017 Quiver, ink, colored pencil, gouache, and graphite on paper 3 ½ x 7 ½ feet Courtesy of the artist

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POST-VISIT LESSON IN THE SCHOOL CLASSROOM IMAGES

Ebony Bolt BOTANICAL DREAMS IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE 2017 Mixed Media 26 X 48 inches Courtesy of the artist

Dan Hillier GHOST 2016 Hand-pulled screen print on cotton rag paper 16.5 x 12.5 inches Courtesy of the artist

Nancy Blum TRUMPET AND PASSION 2012 Ink, colored pencil, gouache, and graphite on paper 7 x 12 feet, Triptych Courtesy of the artist

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ACTIVITY The post-visit lesson will be the time for students to complete and bind their books. This includes anything from the pre- and the visit lessons they were unable to complete earlier. Students will also fill in the blank space under their portrait flap. The exterior was completed as a part of their external portraiture, and now students will incorporate their inner thoughts and feelings. Once the book is complete, students will be able to open this smaller page to reveal their inner world, similar to the image below:

Source:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jordangraceowens/5377110936/in/set-72157625708208980

Students will decide how they want to represent this interior portion, either through words, images, symbols, collage, marker, etc. Once all the elements are complete, students will layer their pages and staple their books together. In addition, students can add color or patterns to the space around their portraits. MATERIALS

Construction paper Newspaper Tissue paper Pencils Erasers Prismacolor markers Bright Prismacolor colored pencils Scissors Glue Slick writer markers (fine, medium, and broad tips)

ASSESSMENT

Students have a completed book with a patterned cover, clear portrait using only black lines, and a color blocked portrait with internal reveal page.