"Get to Know" an Artist
The Masterpiece, Emile Zola (1886)
Readers will "Get to Know"...
Claude Lantier, a fictional artist based loosely based on Paul Cezanne (and arguably also Edouard Manet and Claude Monet).
Essential Questions
- How do we define art?
- What is the relationship between artist and society?
- How do we transform the idea of art?
Background Knowledge: What do students need to know before reading in order to better comprehend this story?
- Brief overview of Romanticism and familiarity with the artwork associated with this movement
- Brief knowledge of the Impressionist movement, which students can build upon as they continue to read The Masterpiece
- What would an "artists' utopia" entail? Compare your ideas with those of the characters in the book.
- After comparing the goals of the fictional characters in the novel with the historical facts surrounding their real life counterparts, evaluate the success of their artist revolution.
- Many of Zola's artist friends were offended by this novel, and Paul Cezanne even ended his friendship with Emile Zola after its release. Why do you think they were so upset?
Dramatization: Start an artist revolution!
After discussing the motivations and goals of the main characters in The Masterpiece, students will apply these ideas to art today and collectively work to move art forward. Students will work as a class or in groups to determine a goal for this new art and create a manifesto for their revolution. Students should then create their own artworks as part of their new movement, embodying the ideas from the manifesto.
- Students will determine definitions and criteria for "art."
- Students will research and evaluate contemporary artworks and the ideas behind them.
- Students will collaborate to expand their idea of art and move art forward through their own artwork .
Taking it a step further...
In small groups, assign each student a role to play in this artist revolution that matches that of one of the characters in the novel:
- Claude: Hailed as the leader of the "Open Air" movement - Students playing this role should create the quintessential work of their new movement.
- Jory: The journalist of the group - Students playing this role should write an article announcing the exhibition of work from their new art movement. This should also include the reasons for breaking from current art trends and the goals and ideas behind their new movement.
- Mahoudeau, Debuche: The non-two-dimensional artists - Students playing this role should create artwork that is not two dimensional but still fits within the goals and manifesto of the new movement.
- Fagerolles, Chaine: Painters - Students playing this role should create two-dimensional artwork that meets the goals and manifesto of the new movement.
- Sandoz: The writer (based off of Zola, the author)- Students playing this role should write a short story immortalizing the creators of this artist revolution.
Dramatization: Curate a Salon de Refuses
Students will curate their own collection of "rejected" artworks. These should be either contemporary works that they do not believe fall into the category of art or deserve recognition as great artwork. These works do not have to be well known or exhibited in museums, but can also be found in smaller arenas such as street art, advertisements, etc.
- Students will determine definitions and criteria for "art."
- Students will make judgments about artworks.
- Students will justify opinions with art knowledge.
Notable Quotes
"'The ideal would be,' said Claude, after a while, 'to see everything and paint everything. To have acres of walls to cover, to decorate the railway stations, the market-halls, the town-halls, whatever they put up when architects have at last learned some common sense!'" (p. 38)
"'Think of it! Then they'll see, then I'll show 'em what I can do! It makes my hands tingle only to think of it! Modern life in all its aspects, that's the subject! Frescoes as big as the Pantheon! A series of paintings that'll shatter the Louvre!'" (p. 38)
"Dog-tired, breaking off bits with his trembling fingers and gulping them down unchewed, he went back and stood in front of his picture, so completely obsessed that he was not even aware he was eating." (p. 39)
"It was the usual story: Claude never knew when to stop working, he let himself be carried away by the desire for immediate certitude, the urgency of momentary feeling of satisfaction with the sitting, he was being assailed by doubt and despair. Ought he to have given so much prominence to the velvet jacket? Was he going to be able to find the note he wanted to give the nude figure of the woman? And he would rather have died on the spot than not have the answer at once." (p. 41)
"It was like being swept up into some sickening vortex and filled with the urge to create while everything was being swirled away from one - pride in one's work, hopes of success, the very meaning of one's life!" (p. 45)
"Their youthful arrogance set them above all sense of justice and made them deliberately ignore all the claims of social life in their mad pursuit of their dreams of an artists' Utopia." (p. 64)
"He had no desire to go to bed, he was burning with impatience for the sun to come up so that he could get back to his picture. This time, warmed by his day of good fellowship, his head aching and seething with ideas, he was certain to produce a masterpiece." (p. 80)
"'He paints like nothing on earth, of course, but what does that matter? he is at least original. He does offer something new.'" (p. 113)
"Wasn't it the sheer stupidity to believe in the intelligence of the public? . . . Here was a piece of painting without its equal in the Salon, the work of a master, but for all that he could not help feeling a profound contempt for a painter who, though so admirably gifted, set all paris laughing as if he was the craziest of crazy daubers." (p. 121)
"Nobody would admit it yet, but the ball was rolling, and the tendency was becoming more and more obvious at every Salon. What a coup it would be if, among all the unconscious copies of the untalented, and the sly or half-hearted efforts of those with the skill, a real master would declare himself, a painter who presented the new formula boldly and forcefully, refusing all concessions, presenting it as sound and complete as it should be to ensure its establishment as the gospel of the closing century!" (p. 198)
"He knew at once that a picture like that would never be accepted, but he made no attempt to tone it down and set it to the Salon as it was." (p. 199)
"What was really unbearable was the inability ever to express himself to the full because his genius refused to give birth to the essential masterpiece!" (p. 201)
Other Items to Note
- Upon reading this novel, Cezanne ended his friendship with Zola. Monet, also upset, held a dinner in protest of the novel.
- Vincent van Gogh was an avid reader of Zola's work.
The Yellow House, Martin Gayford (2006)
Readers will "Get to Know"...
Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin throughout their relationship as roommates and collaborative artists for nine weeks in Arles, France.
Essential Questions
Background Knowledge: What do students need to know beforehand to better comprehend this story?
Discussion Questions
Dramatization: Collaborate with your fellow artists
Apply van Gogh's idea of artist collaboration as a pooling of ideas and techniques by having students make art from observation. Students should draw or paint the same subject. Once this is complete, students should engage in a class critique, noting similarities and differences between the artworks depending on individual style and positioning in relation to the subject, much like van Gogh and Gauguin compared their artworks. Students should use this experience to create artistic goals for their next observational drawing. In pairs, students will collaborate by finding ideas in their classmate's artwork that they deem successful and apply them to the next observational drawing, which should occur soon after the collaborative conversation.
Notable Quotes
"Few considered Gauguin other than formidable. No one seems to have thought the same of Vincent. Theo was perhaps the only person in the entire world who believed he might become a significant painter." (p. 11)
"' By collaboration,' he informed Emile Bernard, he did not necessarily mean several painters working on the same picture. He meant a pooling of thoughts and techniques, so that the community of artists would create 'paintings that differ from one another yet go together and complement one another.'" (p. 76)
"That was precisely what was happening in the Yellow House: new images, novel ways of seeing the world were emerging ou of nthing ness." (p. 192)
"In the Painter of Sunflowers, consciously or unconsciously, Gauguin had done what painters quite often do - given his subject some of his own features. As a result, the portrait was a perfect metaphor for the intermingling - the exchanging of ideas and methods, the blurring of identities - taking place in the Yellow House." (p. 254)
Other Items to Note
Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin throughout their relationship as roommates and collaborative artists for nine weeks in Arles, France.
Essential Questions
- Where do artists get ideas?
- What do artists learn from other artists?
- What makes a successful artist?
Background Knowledge: What do students need to know beforehand to better comprehend this story?
- Students should have a brief familiarity with the lives and artwork of both artists before they lived together at the yellow house in Arles, France.
Discussion Questions
- How does their relationship affect each of their artwork over the course of the 9 weeks?
- What did these two artists learn from each other? How do we know?
- Whose work do you prefer? why?
- What affect do the decorations in the house have on the artists? Why was it so important to them that they decorate the house?
- What means are the artists taking to achieve their artistic goals?
- To what extent did van Gogh and Gauguin succeed as pioneers of this new art they were striving for?
Dramatization: Collaborate with your fellow artists
Apply van Gogh's idea of artist collaboration as a pooling of ideas and techniques by having students make art from observation. Students should draw or paint the same subject. Once this is complete, students should engage in a class critique, noting similarities and differences between the artworks depending on individual style and positioning in relation to the subject, much like van Gogh and Gauguin compared their artworks. Students should use this experience to create artistic goals for their next observational drawing. In pairs, students will collaborate by finding ideas in their classmate's artwork that they deem successful and apply them to the next observational drawing, which should occur soon after the collaborative conversation.
- Students will draw from observation and participate in class critique.
- Students will set artistic goals for themselves.
- Students will apply ideas from collaboration to meet their own artistic goals.
Notable Quotes
"Few considered Gauguin other than formidable. No one seems to have thought the same of Vincent. Theo was perhaps the only person in the entire world who believed he might become a significant painter." (p. 11)
"' By collaboration,' he informed Emile Bernard, he did not necessarily mean several painters working on the same picture. He meant a pooling of thoughts and techniques, so that the community of artists would create 'paintings that differ from one another yet go together and complement one another.'" (p. 76)
"That was precisely what was happening in the Yellow House: new images, novel ways of seeing the world were emerging ou of nthing ness." (p. 192)
"In the Painter of Sunflowers, consciously or unconsciously, Gauguin had done what painters quite often do - given his subject some of his own features. As a result, the portrait was a perfect metaphor for the intermingling - the exchanging of ideas and methods, the blurring of identities - taking place in the Yellow House." (p. 254)
Other Items to Note
- Vincent van Gogh was an avid reader and particularly favored novels by Emile Zola. It is possible he could have read The Masterpiece (Zola, 1886).