Birds
Project
Georges Braque
Volunteer:
Date:
Grade Level: 1st Grade
Artist: Georges Braque
Print Sculpture: Birds
Art Vocabulary:
  • Abstract
  • Collage:  A French word meaning a pasting together of odd pieces of papers and other fairly flat materials to create a composition.
  • Cubism
Additional PDF for Project
Cubism was a movement which dominated artistic experiments in France between 1907 and the outbreak of WWI in 1914.  Cubism evolved from Cezanne's attempt to render natural objects and landscapes into geometrical constructions.  It was also influenced by primitive Iberian and African sculptures with their harsh contours and sharply geometrical forms.  Two young artists invented Cubism simultaneously:  They were Pablo Picasso (born in 1881) and Georges Braque (born in 1882).  In a series of landscapes painted near L'Estaque, Cezanne's estate, in the summer of 1908, Georges Braque carried Cezanne's geometrical restructuring of nature one step further by reducing trees to cylinders, roads to parallel lines, and houses to simple cubes, stripped of details, devoid even of doors or windows.  Art critics and even the young painter Henri Matisse soon made fun of those pictures composed of nothing by "petits cubes." The name of Cubism caught on.
As they developed a more sophisticated approach to their subjects, Braque and Picasso represented two or or more angles in the same thing at the same time.  They tried to show the side and the top, the front and the back of the same object simultaneous.  One of their portraits might show a view of the full face and a profile in merging planes.
John Canady explains:  "The argument that we have neither a good profile nor a good full face by usual representational standards is beside the point.  The Cubist is not interested in usual representational standards.  It is as if he were walking around the objects he is analyzing, as one is free to walk around a piece of sculpture for successive views.  But he must represent all these views at once.
"This is the famous fourth dimention in painting.  For centuries, painters had been satisfied to represent an illusion of three dimension on a two-dimensional surface by means of a systematic distortion known as perspective.  The third dimension in painting is depth by perspective; the fourth dimension is movement in depth, or time, or space-time, by the simultaneous presentation of multiple aspects of an object.  A new systematic distortion is necessary for this new dimension, since the old one of perspective has been outgrown."
As Cubists continued their experimentations, they added more color and texture to their representations.  The collage was born.  Braque used it very successfully.  He frequently exposed the texture of the unpainted canvas:  he also inserted fake textures into his pictures, such as painted simulations of wood grain or newspaper letters; he finally added real texture to his collages by sticking onto them ribbed paper or cardboard, business cards, newspaper bits or pieces of wallpaper.
Note that the picture of Birds is NOT a Cubist work.  For examples of this art style, show Picasso's Three Musicians and Man with a Pipe, which are both in the collection of the Central School.
Birds
What do you see in the picture?
Two black shapes outlined with white against a dark blue background.  The black shapes could be birds flying in a night sky.
How do you recognize these black shapes as birds?
After all, they are nothing but patches of color.  If we isolated one of these shapes from the other, the one on the bottom, for example, if we painted it white instead of black and put it against an orange background, would we still recognize it as a bird shape?  It would look more like a little Halloween ghost!  the truth is that, without even being conscious of it, we are making a huge leap of the imagination when we see birds (and why not bats?) in the painting.  The painting of Georges Braque shows a very simplified shape, a bare suggestion of an otherwise familiar object.  It is an abstract representation of a bird.  Note that there are two types of abstractions:  the abstraction which takes as its point of departure something which is very familiar to us and which is meant to recall that familiar object; and the abstraction which has absolutely no relationship to our environment, as for instance, the picture of Alexander Calder which is known as Bow Ties.
How is the sky represented in the painting?
It is painted bright blue with a few streaks of white showing through, pieces of unpainted canvas maybe.  Since this is a poster, it is impossible to tell whether it is the canvas that is showing through or white paint.  If it is the canvas that is showing through, the texture of the original picture is much more interesting, of course,  Georges Braque liked to work with new textures.  Sometimes, he mixed sand in his paints to give them a grainy look.  Sometimes, he used a comb to create ribs in thick paint, or he pressed different kinds of materials, such as sponges, into the wet paint to give it an unusual texture.
What do you see in the sky?
Three stars and a moon crescent.  Note that a smaller outline of the moon crescent is painted into each star.
Have you ever seen a moon crescent like this one?
No!  It's the kind of moon that makes one dream of a dragon's tail with a hook on the end of it.  The moon is one of those symbols that we have learned to recognize with the barest of outlines.  Give me a sliver and I will think of the moon.  But Braque has taken this symbol already abstracted in our collective imagination and made it more complicated than the real thing.  Here is a case of an abstraction that does not simplify the natural object but on the contrary complicates it.
Would you say the night here is peaceful, serene, or on the contrary – hostile, unfriendly?
It is peaceful and yet there is a motion in the sky, the suggestion of a breeze, or a sense of harmonious cosmic movement.
Show a reproduction of Van Gogh's Starry Night.  (Available in Central School collection)
How different are the nights in Braque's and Van Gogh's paintings?
there are large swirls of paint in Van Gogh's sky.  Powerful and threatening cosmic forces are at work here and make the little village of men on the ground below appear very small and vulnerable.
Are the two birds in the painting of George Braque identical?
No, they are not.  The tail of the top bird is shaped like a keyhole; the wings of the bottom bird are more rounded, with a dented edge on the right wing.  So the birds are individualized.  Maybe there is a male bird and a female bird.  Notice how the two heads come together towards the center of the picture.
Where is the center of the canvas?
It is that square-ish patch of blue sky made by the outlines of the wings and heads of the birds.  A little to the right of the center, the two heads come together with the dented prong of the moon.  From a composition point of view, this is a very happy meeting of disparate elements.  It creates a sense of balance and harmony.
What are the birds doing?
They seem to be dancing in the night sky to the sound of some beautiful music.  We get a feeling that they play an important part in the ballet.  The village of Van Gogh's Starry Night is list in the whirlwinds of space; but the birds of Braque seem to own the night.  It belongs to them.
If we translate the words printed on the poster, we'll find out that this picture was used to advertise concerts that took place in the park of a museum of modern art.  The top of the poster reads:  "Nights of the Maeght Foundation."  The Maeght Foundation is a museum in the South of France, in the little town of Saint-Paul de Vence.  It harbors a big collection of modern paintings, and it is located in the setting of a magnificent park.  Amid the trees and bushes, the fountains and the ponds, there are grand sculptures by Alexander Calder and many other artists.  The Maeght Foundation is surrounded by mountains, and is a truly beautiful place to walk and enjoy.  The bottom of the poster reads: "Music of the Twentieth Century."
What does the white outline around the birds do?
It brings out the stark blackness of the birds' bodies.  It also acts as a sort of halo around the birds, a symbol of the magnetic field that emanate from them.
I. The Artist
1882-1963, French, Things that were invited while he was alive:  Cars, radio, TV.  Friend of Picasso.  Painted together in the summers.
Both tried new forms of mediums of art.  Other artists made fun of all the little cubes in their pictures, which then became known as Cubism.
II. Composition of Picture
Explain that Braque tried other things, not just Cubism.  Picture, Birds, is an example of abstract art.  After looking at the picture, we had them list everything they saw in it.  Asked them why they saw birds, instead of, say ghosts or something else.
Talked about imagination.  What is it?  what are:  birds, ghosts, angels, bats?  What time of day?  What are they doing?
III. Artists Materials and Techniques
Describe how Braque tried many different ways to achieve texture or a different look.
IV. Student's Self-Expression:  Guided Activities.
PROJECT:  Make a collage on a given theme such as a musical instrument, birds or toys.  Give each child a piece of poster board to glue his collage on and let him choose cutouts from magazines which relate to the chosen theme and a variety of other materials:  bits of string or yarn, wallpaper, construction paper, tin foil, sequins, feathers, cotton balls, tissue paper, netting, etc.  Make sure all the magazine pictures are already cut out before the children begin their activity and provide them with cut out letters or words from magazines as well as photographs or cartons.
PROJECT:  Ask the children to paint a large abstraction of a bird or other animal without any preliminary sketching.
PROJECT:  Cut shapes from many colors of paper – have the children use their imagination.  Put together a picture from the various shapes given.
PROJECT:  Brought all kinds of things for them to paint with:  Toothbrush, comb, sponge, etc. and let them paint a picture, which they really enjoyed.
PROJECT:  Make a collage.  There will be spring – brainstorming ideas – birds, flowers, Easter eggs, other animals, rain, trees.  Will pass out materials much or as little as you like.  Show samples.  Can be abstract or not.  Use a pattern or not.  Think of an idea.  Arrange on your paper if you glue.

Additional PDF for Project