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

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Experiment Station

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

WHAT YOU NEED:

Model Magic
Markers
1 sheet of construction paper

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 7, The Final Piece

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

If You Take A Closer Look…

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Experiment Station

Franz Marc, Deer in the Forest I, 1913. Oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 41 1/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Gift from the estate of Katherine S. Dreier, 1953

If you happen to walk through the Music Room, take a look to your right on the way to the staircase. There by the elevator hangs one of my favorite works in The Phillips Collection, Deer in the Forest I (1913). The artist, Franz Marc, combines cubism and symbolism in this painting, creating a dynamic landscape filled with vibrant colors and bold lines. One of the main reasons I love this painting so much (besides the adorable cubist deer!) is because of the symbolic way Marc used color. Franz Marc always used color to tell a story, or to represent a feeling in his works instead of just recreating the physical reality of his subjects. It is known also that Marc assigned certain characteristics to each color that he used. Blue was the color Marc used to represent masculinity and spirituality, yellow he identified as feminine and joyful, and red symbolized either serious undertones or violence. By knowing the symbolism in Franz Marc’s use of color, Deer in the Forest I takes on new meaning. The foreground of the painting is dominated by the yellow deer themselves and the green of their surroundings, evoking a sense of security and contentment. But the red splashed over the background looms above the deer, hinting, perhaps, at the danger and violence that lurks outside of their peaceful forest home.

Veronica Parker, Director’s Office Intern

Wild Horses (Couldn’t Drag Me Away)

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Experiment Station

Per Kirkeby, Untitled, 2009.Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York, London, and Berlin

The largest of Per Kirkeby’s paintings in our current exhibition—Untitled (2009)–is a favorite of many visitors. In an interview with Director Dorothy Kosinski, Kirkeby said:

I took the horses not from any kind of photos but from the famous works by Baldung Grien, who has four or five very fantastic woodcuts. So that’s a kind of borrowed structure. Woodcuts are very clearly defined with lines. So from them I got a starting point. One of my sons gave me a birthday gift of a big beautiful book full of pictures of horses. I dare not say it, but what am I going to do with that? I don’t need a real horse. I need the lines that pretend to be a horse.

Hans Baldung Grien was a German Renaissance painter and a prolific printmaker. He was a student of Albrecht Dürer. Grien produced three woodcuts of wild horses, each print not much bigger than a sheet of letter-size paper. Kirkeby probably chose his three horses from a herd in Grien’s Stallion and Kicking Mare with Wild Horses (1534).

Hans Baldung Grien (Germany, Schwäbischgmünd (?), 1484 – 1545), Stallion and Kicking Mare with Wild Horses, 1534. Print, Woodcut, Sheet: 9 x 13 1/8 in. Los Angeles County Museum of Art

What about the colors he chose for the three horses–red, yellow, and green? The light yellow and spring green shows up in many of Kirkeby’s paintings throughout the years, almost like a signature; perhaps they are the hopeful colors of spring after a long Danish winter. Maybe they suggest the colors of autumn, as Kirkeby has written in his book Isolation of Parts: “Yellow – red and green are the most crucial of colors. Green is the surface until the plants yield to desert yellow and red.” Chlorophyll yields to xanthophyll and anthocyanin. Or perhaps he has a distant memory of a 100-year-old painting by Franz Marc of three cows, in which a yellow one kicks up its heels with a red and a green companion.

Franz Marc, Cows, Yellow-Red-Green, 1912. Oil on canvas, 24.4 x 34.4 in. Staedtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Germany.

Kirkeby’s medium for this horse painting is unusual: tempera on canvas. Although he is rather coy about his technique, he has written:

Move from oils and that hazardous turpentine to water-soluble paints, break down what is wooly and impasto. A more fluid, drier character emerges. From the same material in terms of content. . . . I am now intending to switch to water-soluble paints and protect my brain from turpentine-induced decay. That is my choice, and it is perhaps one that in the same way as other choices of such ‘technical’ nature will lead to something new. A new and unexpected turn.

In this case, his use of tempera led to horses.

Ianthe Gergel, Museum Assistant