2012-2013 JDSP Teacher Resource Packet - Milwaukee Art Museum

Three tours:
1. Portraiture
o Students explore types of portraiture and learn how to analyze a portrait using the
elements of art, depicted imagery, and historical and cultural context.
2. Wisconsin History
o Students investigate Wisconsin history through works of art.
3. World Communities
o Students investigate Western (European and American) and non-Western (Haitian,
Asian, and African) art depicting and/or representing everyday life.
Tour 1: Portraiture
Background
The definition of a portrait for this tour is a work of art that represents or symbolizes a
specific person, a group of people, or an animal. Portraits can be executed in any medium
and in either a two-dimensional or three-dimensional format. Portraits usually show what a
person or animal looks like, as well as reveal something about the subject’s personality. A
portrait often helps us to determine what was important to society at the time it was made;
much of what we know about people who lived before the 1850s is available to us only
through portraits.
Portraits can be of only the head of the subject, or they can also include the shoulders or
the upper torso, or they can depict the entire figure either seated or standing. Portraits can
show individuals self-consciously posing in ways that convey a sense of timelessness, or
captured in the midst of work or daily activity. During some historical periods, portraits were
severe and emphasized authority, and during other periods, they communicated
spontaneity and the sensation of life.
Objectives
Identify portraits and discuss the different ways in which a person, a group of people, or
an animal can be portrayed in two-dimensional and three-dimensional formats.
Discuss what cultural influences and historical elements a portrait reveals.
Identify the elements of art used by an artist in creating a portrait.
List at least two functions of a portrait throughout art history:
1. To document the physical resemblance of the subject
2. To convey status and/or acknowledge power and wealth
3. To serve as a remembrance of the deceased
4. To depict the subject’s inner self
Primary Point
While studying a portrait, a student should understand not only what the work looks like but
also why it was created, by decoding important visual clues. A portrait can closely resemble
the subject’s appearance; however, portraits are not limited to simply re-creating external
appearances and situations of an individual or a group. Artists utilize parts of their
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© 2012 Milwaukee Art Museum 700 N. Art Museum Dr. Milwaukee, WI 53202
JDSP – Teacher Packet