DESCRIPTION: Students initiate the expressions of portraits.

OBJECTIVES: The objective is to learn how paintings can convey emotion or feelings.

PROCEDURE: We show people how we feel by the expressions on our faces. Every part of our faces--eyes, nose, mouth, forehead, cheeks--tells how we are feeling. Let's choose partners and sit facing each other. Show your partner that you are feeling happy, sad, sleepy, etc. Now let's make a series of different expressions and your partner will guess how you are feeling.

When an artist creates a painting or sculpture of a person's face, it is called a portrait. Let's look at some portraits and decide how each person is feeling. (Ask them to imitate the portrait.) How does it feel to be that person? What is that person thinking about?

VARIATION: I would like each of you to stand next to an artwork and imitate its expression. (You may use a Polaroid camera to photograph the children as they imitate different expressions. If you use Warhol's 16 Jackies, be sure to have the children imitate the expression of each of the faces. Perhaps, have children pose in rows in front of the work.)

VARIATION: What is another way, besides facial expressions, that you could show others how you are feeling? What about what you are holding in your hands, could that tell us how you are feeling? What about certain colors. What color would you choose to show us how you are feeling? (Ask them how materials, textures, props, lines, shapes, colors or any other element could help symbolize how someone is feeling.) All of the elements that we have just talked about, are clues. Without actually telling us what the feeling is, these clues help us understand what kind of emotion or even idea an artist is trying to express in an artwork. Let's go take a look at some artworks and see if we can discover some clues that tells us what the artist was feeling or thinking (Go to non-representational artworks.)

MINNESOTA GRADUATION STANDARDS:
(1) Read, View, Listen
(2) Write and Speak
(3) Literature and the Arts
(5) Inquiry

Age level: Appropriate for grades 1-4.
Artworks used: Use works that represent people or that utilize symbols to help illuminate a mood or feeling.
Props needed: No props needed.
Related to Minneapolis Sculpture Garden: Yes


© 1998 WALKER ART CENTER