Phillips-at-Home Summer Series #3: Nature as Beauty

Our third project of the Phillips-at-Home Summer Series features the artist Franz Marc and his work Deer in the Forest I. For this art activity, you are going to create an animal sculpture. What is a sculpture? A sculpture is a piece of artwork that can be viewed from any angle.

Franz Marc, Deer in Forest 1, 1913, Oil on canvas, Framed: 43 in x 44 1/2 in x 2 3/4 in, Gift from the estate of Katherine S. Dreier 1953, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Franz Marc, Deer in Forest I, 1913, Oil on canvas, Framed: 43 in x 44 1/2 in x 2 3/4 in, Gift from the estate of Katherine S. Dreier 1953, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Look closely: What do you notice in this painting? Franz Marc believed that colors could stir deep emotions. How do the colors make you feel? Is this a place you would like to visit? Why or why not?

About the Artist:

Franz Marc was born in Munich, Germany on February 8,1880. At the age of 20, he abandoned his studies in theology and philosophy to pursue a career in art at the Munich Academy (1900 to 1903). He travelled around Europe for several years until he settled in Sindelsdorf, Upper Bavaria (modern day Munich, Germany), in 1909. Two years later, Marc joined his friend and fellow artist Wassily Kandinsky as a member of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München, (New Artists’ Association, Munich). However, both artists resigned that same year and began planning the 1911 Blaue Reiter exhibition. During this planning period, Marc created his own personal color symbolism in which “Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the color to be opposed and overcome by the other two.” How does knowing this information change your understanding of the painting? Marc’s promising career ended abruptly when he volunteered for military service at the beginning of World War 1. The Phillips Collection has one painting by Franz Marc.

Materials needed

Materials needed

WHAT YOU NEED:

SUGGESTED AGE:

  • Ages 4 and up

TIME FRAME:

  • 1-2 hours to make; 2 days for your Model Magic to harden

STEPS:

1. Choose an animal that you would like to make into a sculpture. It can be anything from the forest animals that Franz Marc paints, to your favorite creature, to an imaginary creature.

2. Take the Model Magic out of the wrapper and break off a third of it. This piece will become the head of your creature. Put this smaller piece aside for later.

Step 2

Step 2

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3. Begin molding the body of your creature with your hands; think about what your animal looks like. If you need help, refer to an image of your animal in a book or on the internet. Keep in mind: Does your animal have legs? Fins? A tail? Mold all of the features of your animal’s body.

Step 3

Step 3

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4. Set the body aside and begin to mold the head. Does your animal have eyes? Ears? A big nose or a little nose? Once you have molded the head to your liking, gently apply pressure and attach it to the body of your animal. Does your animal have a neck? Smooth out the edges while thinking about how long your animal’s neck is.

Step 4

Step 4

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5. You can either wait a day and a half or so for your Model Magic to harden in order to color it, or you can gently use your markers immediately. What color would you like your animal to be? Use those colored markers and begin applying it to your animal. As you are coloring your sculpture, think about details your animal might have, such as fur or stripes. Remember to color your entire animal since you can see a sculpture from all angles; you may have to allow the marker to dry for a couple of minutes before you pick up your animal.

Step 5

Step 5

Step 5

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6. Once you have colored your animal, set it aside. A great next step is creating your animal’s environment. Looking at Franz Marc’s approach, choose a piece of construction paper. You can begin creating organic shapes with your markers. What are organic shapes? They are shapes that look natural and maybe contain a variety of curvy and straight lines. Fill your paper with any environment you wish to have for your animal. If you have extra Model Magic, feel free to apply it to your environment on the paper and color it as well.

Step 6

Step 6

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Step 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. When you have finished your animal and its environment, place your animal in its new home!

Step 7

Step 7, The Final Piece

New Creature, New Home, Artwork: Julia Kron

New Creature, New Home, Artwork: Julia Kron

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nice complement to this art project is Eric Carle’s The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse.

 

Tune in regularly for another great art activity inspired by The Phillips Collection!

Julia Kron, K12 Education Intern

Spotlight on Intersections@5: Tayo Heuser

The Phillips celebrates the fifth anniversary of its Intersections contemporary art series with Intersections@5, an exhibition comprising work by 20 of the participating artists. In this blog series, each artist writes about his or her work on view.
Heuser_Untitled

Tayo Heuser, Untitled, 2010. Woodcut, 53 x 38 in. Gift of the artist, 2011. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

My response to The Rothko Room, particularly to his painting Ochre and Red on Red, painted in 1954:

Color, lightness, fullness, sadness, spirituality, silence, movement, an opening towards a distant place. I wanted to keep still, sit down, look and listen for a very long time. Tears. It was like nothing else. The room has perfect lighting and proportions. The paintings breathed. The plain bench was good. This woodcut and sculptural drawing (among several others created in various sizes) is the result of my response to The Rothko Room.

Tayo Heuser

Conversations with Matisse

One-on-one_matisse_goldberg

(1) Carol Brown Goldberg, Maggie on My Mind, 2015 (2) Matisse, Henri, Interior with Egyptian Curtain, 1948, Oil on canvas Framed: 48 5/8 in x 38 1/4 in x 2 in; 123.52 cm x 97.15 cm x 2 in; 45 3/4 x 35 1/8 in.; 116.205 x 89.2175 cm.. Acquired 1950; © 2015 Succession H. Matisse/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

How does one converse with a piece of art? Can it talk back? What does it have to say? These are the questions at the heart of The Phillips Collection’s One-on-One series, which engages artists to select a work from the museum’s permanent collection and juxtapose it with works of their own. DC-based artist Carol Brown Goldberg uses Henri Matisse’s Interior with Egyptian Curtain as a source of inspiration for her current body of work. But how does one go about creating a conversation between your own work and that of a master like Matisse? She states of this exhibition, “Matisse’s Interior with Egyptian Curtain encompasses the world of the sublime, the ecstatic—an almost supernatural world of color, competition, and pattern. It is not just a world of pleasure, but one that allows tension and harmony to exist simultaneously. This ambiguity of forces, perhaps a reflection of our internal world, is an inspiration for endless gardens.” So how exactly does she respond to this idea in visual terms?

It is rare that a work by Matisse is described as restrained or limited, but this is how it appears in comparison to Goldberg’s works as she expands upon the idea of Matisse as creator of a world of pattern and color. Interior with Egyptian Curtain sets the stage with the establishment of a color palette and loose, expressionistic forms. Matisse’s window gives the viewer just a glimpse of the world outside, a world of lush greenery and exoticism. It beckons, almost drags the viewer in to see more of this wild and free space, and this is where Goldberg takes over. She takes Matisse’s cue, and explodes his tease into a world where intense color and expression reign supreme. The colors are bold and match the wild, swirling forms that spread beyond the edges of the canvas, enveloping the viewer and pulling us further and further into this “supernatural world of color, competition, and pattern.” Goldberg seems to create the world that Matisse alludes to and envisions, a world in which anything and everything goes.

Allyson Hitte, Marketing & Communications Intern