Curriculum Integration Activities
Bibliography—European Modernism: 1900 - 1940
How to Create Tactile Diagrams
Curriculum Integration Activities
From the Teachers Supplement to European Modernism 1900-1940
Curriculum Area: Writing
Explore a Dream
Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis in the early twentieth century. Many Surrealists were influenced by Freud to explore dreams and their own subconscious thoughts. Write about a "scene" from one of your dreams.
Describe in detail the landscape or the environment where the dream took place. Were the things you saw in your dreams "normal looking" or were they unusual in appearance? What time of day was it? What was in the distance? What was up close to you? What were you experiencing? What did you learn about your likes and dislikes from your dreams? Once you have written about your dream, you may like to draw it or map it out using a raised-line drawing board.
Live Inside a Work of Art
If you were there . . .
It's late on a Saturday night. You're sitting at home reading a book when you start to doze off. When you wake up, you are not at home anymore. You've traveled back in time, and you've become part of the scene in your favorite painting from this volume.
You don't see a way out right away, so you decide to make the most of it and explore your new surroundings. Write a story about yourself in the painting. Base your story on what you saw in the work of art. Use your memory and imagination to picture the scene. Describe a typical day in this place and what life might have been like.
Curriculum Area: Geography and Map-Reading
Tour Artists' Homes
The artists studied in this volume are natives of different countries in Europe. Look at a map of Europe and find the countries where these artists lived: Matisse, France; Dali, Spain; and Mondrian, Holland. Using the Internet or other library resources to learn more, find out about the regions where these artists lived.
(Special thanks to the Whitney Museum of American Art for generously permitting publication of excerpts from their materials for educators, 1998-1999.)
Bibliography—European Modernism: 1900 - 1940
Texts by Artists
Breton, Andre. Surrealism and Painting. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Dali, Salvador. The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. Dover, 1993 (reprint of 1942 edition.
Dali, Salvador. Diary of a Genius. Creation Books, 1998 (reprint of 1965 edition).
Gropius, Walter. Scope of Total Architecture. New York: Collier Books, 1962.
Kandinsky, Wassily. Sadler, M.T. H., tr. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. New York: Dover Publications, 1977.
Mondrian, Pieter Cornelius. Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art . 3rd ed. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1952.
General Texts About Twentieth-Century Art
Ades, Dawn. Dali and Surrealism. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
Arnason, H. Harvard, and Marla F. Prather. History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Photography. 4th ed. New York:Abrams, 1997.
Curtis, William J.R. Modern Architecture Since 1900. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987.
Gay, Peter. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Overy, Paul. De Stijl. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991.
Richter, Hans. Dada: Art and Anti-Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Rubin, William S. Dada and Surrealist Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1968.
Rubin, William S. ed. Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art/Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1980.
____. "Primitivism" in 20th-Cenutry Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. 2 Vols. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973.
Russell, John. The Meanings of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art/HarperCollins, 1981 and 1991.
Schwarz, Arturo. The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp. London: Thames and Hudson, 1965.
Seuphor, Michel. Piet Mondrian: Life and Work. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1956.
Shapiro, Theda. Painters and Politics: The European Avant-Garde and Society, 1900 - 1925. New York and Amsterdam: Greenwood Press, 1976.
Taylor, Joshua C. Futurism. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961.
Teed, Peter. Dictionary of Twentieth-Century History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Thomson, David. World History from 1914 to 1968. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Winter, J.M. The Experience of World War I. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Technology and the Emergence of Modern Art
Hauser, Arnold. "The Film Age." The Social History of Art. Volume Four. New York: Vintage Books, 1958. (Reissued 1985).
Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. New York: Rahdom House, 1980.
Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space. 1880 - 1918. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Rosenblum, Robert. Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Harry Abrams, 1959.
Varnedoe, Kirk. A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1990.
How to Create Tactile Diagrams
In the basic process of creating tactile diagrams, a black and white flat print version of the raised line drawing is transferred onto swell paper (either using a low temperature photocopier or other means). The black areas of lines and patterns will rise when the swell paper is fed through a fuser.
So to create tactile diagrams you need Microcapsule or Swell Paper and access to a heat diffusing machine or tactile fuser.
Then follow these instructions:
- Print out the tactile diagram.
Use an inkjet printer or a fast laser printer. - DO NOT print directly onto the swell paper.
Because of the heat process involved in laser printers, the finished product can have background swelling which can cause tactile clutter and be unpleasant to use. - Photocopy an image onto swell paper using a photocopier.
Do not attempt to photocopy standard graphics to swell paper, as an exact tactile copy of a print original will NOT work in tactile form. The speed at which the machine can copy pages will affect any background swell, which can occur. Some photocopiers are designed in such a way that the paper twists and turns through the copier. The more turns a page makes, the more likely it is to get stuck. For this reason, you cannot load swell paper into the paper trays of photocopying machines. Typically the sheet feeder offers a more direct path through a copier. You MUST use the feeder tray and feed each sheet of swell paper separately through the machine. Wait for the photocopying of one sheet to finish completely and remove it from the output tray before introducing another sheet into the feeder. Otherwise, the swell paper could get stuck in the photocopier. - Find a photocopier that isn't too hot.
Photocopiers use heat to fuse ink to paper; some copiers are hotter than others. If the copier is too hot, the swell paper may overheat. When this happens, the surface (not the raised lines, but the flat areas with no pattern or lines) feels suede-like. For best results, all the flat surfaces of the image not containing lines or patterns should be as smooth as possible. The smoother the surface, the more pronounced the lines and textures will feel and the more easily your fingertips will glide over the diagram as you examine it. - Do Not Change the Size of the tactile image: The Art History through Touch and Sound diagrams are designed for 8.5 x11 paper. It is crucial that you do not enlarge or decrease the size of the images printed from this website. By doing so, you will distort the patterns and lines in the diagrams and render them illegible.
- Pass the image through the fuser.
After you've photocopied the image onto the swell paper, you need to cover the print caption in the upper-left corner with a piece of tape that you will be able to peel off easily after passing it through the fuser so that you don't tear the swell paper. If you don't cover the print caption, it will become raised and might cause confusion. Once you've covered this text, pass the image through the machine which heats the paper. The black lines, patterns and icons attract the most heat and will therefore cause the microcapsule beads to expand and rise, creating the relief we call a tactile diagram. As you pass the swell paper through the machine it's important not to overheat it. You need to heat it just enough to cause the black areas to rise. If you heat it too much, the lines, textures and icons will swell too much and become distorted. The lines will become too thick and the textures will all feel alike. - Get the fuser to the proper temperature.
Fusers can take a while to warm up to a stable temperature, so it is often a good idea to pass a sheet of plain paper through the machine first before a swell paper image. If you start with a low heat setting on a fuser you can always increase the temperature and pass the same page through again. If the setting is too high the paper will start to raise all over and make the paper feel fuzzy and unpleasant. - Something to keep in mind:
Spray varnish or hairspray on the finished a tactile diagram for a surface which is less prone to smudging.
What is Swell Paper?
Swell Paper is paper that has a coating of "micro-capsules" or very small beads of plastic that, when exposed to heat, "swell" or expand in width and height. Black ink should be used when transferring a flat print copy of a raised line drawing to swell paper. The Black areas of lines and patterns will attract the most heat and thus rise while the areas without lines and patterns will remain flat.
Sources of Swell Paper and Tactile Fusers
to come
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