LESSON PLANS FROM 9-12 / DRAWING · LESSON PLANS FROM “Literacy and Art: The Unknown as Inspiration” ... In 1933 Louis-Ferdinand Céline was asked for a photograph of himself

L E S S O N P L A N S F R O M

“L iterac y and Ar t : The Unknown as Inspirat ion”

9-12 / DRAWING

SUMMARY

� is lesson provides step-by-step instruction on how to set up a master copy of “� e Jeune Femme”, a lithograph from the Charles Bargue drawing course. � e lesson is designed to teach how the subject of the plate has inspired artists and writers since the early 1900s, and how copying drawings improves student’s observational skills.

OBJECTIVES

Students will understand the basic • elements for constructing the contour or outline, the visual outer shape of an objectStudents will be exposed to others works • of art in� uenced by “� e Jeune Femme” lithograph

STANDARDS

High School Common Core Standards:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.3, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.7, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.6, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.9

National Arts Standards: 1.a, 1.b, 1.d, 2.a, 2.b, 2.c, 4.a, 4.b, 4.c, 5.a, 5.b, 5.e

MATERIALS

HB pencils• Kneaded erasers• 11 x 14 drawing paper• Dra� ing tape• Skewers• Rulers• Drawing boards (18 x 24)• Bargue plate handout• L’Inconnue de la Seine” handout•

Plate from Charles Bargue drawing course

www.davinciinitiative.org

Students will be able to de� ne and dentify • points, lines and anglesStudents will be able to estimate distance, • angles and relationships

“L iterac y and Ar t : The Unknown as Inspirat ion” 9-12 / DRAWING

Charles Bargue was instrumental in creating a late 19th century drawing course. Bargue believed that when students copied drawings by trained artists, that their own observation skills signi� cantly improved. Additionally, Bargue believed that drawing from antique sculptures taught design and taste to budding artists, so many of his copying plates show these subjects. Students can still learn a great deal from these copying plates today.

� e particular plate used in this lesson, “� e Jeune Femme” also illustrates how visual imagery in� uences literature, photography and even product development. It’s a great way of understanding how ideas “went viral” before the internet was so widely accessible.

See reference material for “in� uence” and Bargue plate to copy at the end of this plan under “Additional Resources” section.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Give students the Bargue handout. Ask them to identify points, lines and angles.

STEP 1: Identify elements

Look at Bargue plate together and lead a discussion about how these basic elements (points, lines and angles) de� ne the contour or outline, the visual outer shape of an object and the importance of working from broad/general to speci� c.

STEP 2: Look at example

Distribute drawing paper. Demonstrate how to measure and site angles. Have students measure, place dots at points referenced on the Bargue plate, site the angles, then connect each segment until they have the contour de� ned.

STEP 3: Practice/Application


STEP 4: Understanding In� uence

Distribute “L’Inconnue de la Seine” hand out. Read examples and lead a discussion about how an image can inspire poetry, novels, short stories and product development.

STEP 5: Understanding In� uence

Ask students to compare the di� erent forms of expression - drawing, poetry, prose, product development. Sample questions:

What is it about this image that is so inspiring? What makes an image, song, story “go viral”?

Why do the contour � rst? Why not start with interesting details?

Use the accompanying assessment materials to evaluate student work.

Students work the hardest when they know that the results will be displayed. Displaying artwork also allows students to share their artistic visions with the rest of the school. Learning how to share and talk about their artwork is an essential skill for developing artists that should be encouraged through public display.

STEP 6: Display Artwork

STEP 7: Assessment


1. How did your drawing change when each element was added to it?

2. If you could do your drawing over again, what would you do di� erently? What would you do the same?

3. What do you see other students doing that you like?

VERBAL ASSESSMENT

3 pts 4 pts 5 ptsCareful measurement Contour includes

some pointsContour includes most points

Contour includes all points

Angles Some angles are accurately sited

Most angles are accurately sited

All angles are accurately sited

Cra� smanship Student needs to more carefully consider cra� smanship

Student mostly displays good cra� smanship

Drawing displays high level of cra� smanship

Concept of in� uence Student can give one example of how the plaster cast inspired other art works

Student can give examples of how cast inspired several works of art and product design

Student creates own work based on in� uence of something that inspired them

RUBRIC

1. Does the student correctly observe points on the contour of the drawing?

2. Does the student correctly site the angles to connect the points?

3. Does the student understand the use of lighter marks for ease of correcting their work?

OBSERVATIONAL ASSESSMENT

Assessments are one of the most important tools educations have at their disposal when teaching skill-based learning. Students need specifi c feedback in order to learn and understand advanced drawing skills. Use this rubric, or write one of your own, to evaluate how well students understand the concepts of points, lines angles and estimating distance and relationships.

“L iterac y and Ar t : The Unknown as Inspirat ion” 9-12 / DRAWING


9-12 / DRAWING

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES


‘L’INCONNUE DE LA SEINE’or ‘the unknown woman from the Seine’

Death mask used for Bargue plate lithograph

At the end of the 19th century, a young girl’s lifeless body was pulled from the river Seine in Paris near the quai François Mitterrand, which was then called quai du Louvre.

As no signs of violence could be found on her, it was decided she had committed suicide, with some stories suggesting it was a case of unrequited love that prompted her death.

� e drowned woman was taken to the Paris Morgue for identi� cation. At that time it was located behind Notre-Dame, where the unknown dead were displayed for the public to see and, it was hoped, identify. � e Paris Morgue was a famous institution during its time, and attracted thousands of visitors every day until it closed in 1907. Whether the unknown young woman was publicly exhibited at the morgue is not part of the story, however it was said that her smile was so compelling to a medical assistant at the morgue that he took an impression of her face, and the great numbers of plaster casts produced and sold came from this unknown young woman’s death mask.

Her delicate beauty became popular with artists and inspired visual and written works of art. Some examples:

� e poet Jules Supervielle (1884-1960), born in Montevideo to French parents, also owned a mask, according to his daughter and wrote a rather fantastic story “L’Inconnue de la Seine,” 1931 from the viewpoint of the 19-year-old drowned woman as she is moved by the Seine’s current towards the sea:

“She traveled not knowing that on her face shone a trembling smile, far more unremitting than the smile of the living, which is always at the mercy of whatever may come.”


9-12 / DRAWING



‘L’INCONNUE DE LA SEINE’or ‘the unknown woman from the Seine’ (Continued)

Blanchot also mentions Giacometti being enchanted by the mask. In 1933 Louis-Ferdinand Céline was asked for a photograph of himself to accompany his text “L’Église” in a collection. Instead Céline gave a photograph of Le Masque de l’Inconnue de la Seine to his editor.

And around the beginning of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke’s autobiographically inspired narrator in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge passed the mask every day:

“The mouleur, whose shop I pass every day, has hung two masks beside his door. The face of the young drowned woman, a cast of which was taken in the Morgue because it was beautiful, because it smiled, smiled so deceptively, as though it knew,”.

Apparently the fi rst literary text about the smiling death mask is a short novella by a popular British writer Richard le Gallienne, who owned a copy of the mask, written in 1898 and published in 1900. In The Worshipper of the Image, Antony is a young and sensitive poet living in an isolated châlet in a clearing in the woods. He comes under the malevolent infl uence of the famous death mask: when, from the Covent Garden shop owner who sold him the cast, he brings home to his wife Beatrice and his four-year-old daughter Wonder the story “that the sculptor who moulded [the mask] had fallen so in love with the dead girl that he went mad and drowned himself in the Seine also.”

The Inconnue had a haunting effect on the imagination of many authors. In Claire Goll’s story The Unknown of the Seine, 1936, the painter Armandier dies suddenly of a heart attack when he sees the mask of the Inconnue in a small shop near Notre Dame and it reminds him of his great love Corinne and her last smile before separation: in a fl ash of recognition, he comes to believe this is the face of their daughter, of whose existence he at that instant thinks for the fi rst – and sadly the last – time. The narrator of Anais Nin’s dreamlike story Houseboat (1944), where the river is the main symbol, knowing the “mystery of continuity”, emptying “one of all memories and terrors”, points a revolver out of the window of her houseboat on the Seine -- with an uneasy feeling, “ as if I might kill the Unknown Woman of the Seine again – the woman who had drowned herself here years ago and was so beautiful that at the Morgue they had taken a plaster cast of her face”.

The fi rst factual report on the mask and a photo of it came far later, in 1926, in Das ewige Antlitz, a book of 123 death masks published by Ernst Benkard. In his description of this mask he lapses into a highly poetic tone uncharacteristic of his comments about the other masks:

“To us she is a delicate butterfl y, who – winged and lightheartedly – had her tender wings prematurely singed,”.

By 1935 the book had gone through 19 printings and had been translated into English and other languages. Soon after, in 1929, another book of death masks – Das letzte Gesicht – including the Inconnue was published. There it is claimed that the index of the Paris Morgue lists her under the name l’Inconnue de la Seine.

9-12 / DRAWING





The photographer Albert Rudomine (Kiev 1892--Paris 1975), who had a portrait studio at the Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg, made a photograph of the Inconnue in 1927 (above), using the same play of shadow and light he used for his portraits of actors of the same period . It’s title, La Vierge inconnue, canal de l’Ourcq, is a confl ation of the l’Inconnue de la Seine and the virgin Mary, as well as a reminder of the number of suicides in the canal de l’Ourcq reported in the press at the time.




Generations a� er the story’s origination, Åsmund S. Lærdal began the development of a realistic and e� ective training aid to teach mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Moved by the story of the girl so tragically taken by early death, he adopted her mask for the face of his new resuscitation-training manikin, Resusci Anne. Because he was convinced that if such a manikin was life-sized and life-like, students would be better motivated to learn this lifesaving procedure.

References

A Readers Guide to William Gaddis’s � e Recognitions, by Steven MooreFirst Edition © 1982 by the University of Nebraska PressRevised Edition © 1995 by Steven Moorehttp://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/inconnue/

Laerdal Medical AShttp://www.laerdal.com/us/ResusciAnne

9-12 / DRAWING“L iterac y and Ar t : The Unknown as Inspirat ion”


Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme Drawing Course, Gerald Ackerman (Author), Graydon Parrish,Acr Edition (Acc); 3rd edition (October 16, 2011), ISBN-10: 2867702038, ISBN-13: 978-2867702037

Classical Drawing Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice, Juliette Aristides, Watson-Guptill; First Edition edition (October 13, 2006), ISBN-10: 0823006573, ISBN-13: 978-0823006571

Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier, Juliette Aristides, Watson-Guptill (November 15, 2011), ISBN-10: 082300659X, ISBN-13: 978-0823006595

� e DaVinci Initiativewww.davinciinitiative.org


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LESSON PLANS FROM 9-12 / DRAWING · LESSON PLANS FROM “Literacy and Art: The Unknown as Inspiration” ... In 1933 Louis-Ferdinand Céline was asked for a photograph of himself