Junior Docent School Program - Milwaukee Art Museum

and when it changed to another position would draw that, too. Every detail was included
to make his animals as realistic as possible.
Both Rosa and Isidore spent hours, even days, and perhaps months, to produce a piece
of art, first making sketches outside and then completing their work in their studios.
Impressionism
“In the same country, at about the same time, different artists were discovering a new
way to paint. Several technological events occurred that helped to make this possible. A
portable easel and metal paint tubes were invented that allowed the artists to paint out
of doors rather than sketching first and painting in their studios later. The camera had
been invented, and these artists said if people wanted a realistic representation they
could take a photograph, so they then could make a quick impression of what they were
looking at, catching the way the light was at a given moment. Another invention was the
train. Most of the artists lived in Paris but could now quickly go on a train and be out in
the countryside in a very short time.”
Choose any of the impressionist paintings. Have the students look at the way the paint
is applied.
“Can you see the brush strokes?”
“Do you see many, clear details?”
“Did the artists use a little paint or a generous amount?”
In the Impressionist Gallery, compare the academic, realist style of the Bonheurs work
to that of the Impressionists.
Abstraction
Tondo #5, Glarner
Construction, Diller
o “What do you first notice when you look at these pieces?” (color, line, shape)
o “What is missing from these pieces?” (no figures - everything else we have
looked at has included recognizable figures. What we see here is called
geometric abstraction.)
o “Is anything from nature included in these pieces?”
Yellow Still Life, Munter
Yellow Guitar and Blue Vase, Leger
o “Can we tell what the objects are that are included in these paintings?”
o “Are they portrayed realistically, like the work of the Bonheur‟s?” (We can tell
what they are, but there aren‟t very many details. The forms have been greatly
simplified and appear flat rather than two-dimensional.)
o “What about how the paint is applied? Can you see the brush strokes?”
Abstract painters did not present realist representations of objects. They were reacting
against the realism and impressionism that preceded them.
Abstract Expressionism
“In this type of art, again artists were reacting to what had come before - this time,
abstraction. Their aim was to express inner life (feelings, emotions) through art because
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JDSP – Docent Packet
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