Washington Winter Show 2016

54 This page is sponsored by Margaret Gardner and Lisa Montcastle in honor of Patricia Montague and Frances Talley en plein air, the new emphasis on modern life and modernity, and other innovations. “Dream as You Draw” begins with Gauguin’s advice to artists, “Don’t copy nature too literally…draw art as you dream in nature’s presence, and think more about the act of creation than about the final result.” The exercise asks families to search for qualities that distinguish the work of Edgar Degas and post-impressionist masters Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh— curvy outlines, flattened spaces, electric colors, exaggerated textures, and repeated patterns—then incorporate them into their own drawing. The guide provided an enticing frame with suggestive cues taken from the same works (Figures 7, 8). Testing of early versions of the activity titled “Modern Paris: Life in Motion” forced us to abandon our original conception. Its goal had been for children to recognize that many impressionists were inspired by the new technology and art medium of photography. Families were asked to look for and identify then- new compositional features like those seen in Édouard Manet’s The Railway (Figure 9): blurred spaces, oddly cut off figures, objects running off the edge of the canvas, and a focus on daily and mundane aspects of life—the momentary qualities of a snapshot. Participant feedback revealed that these traits are so normal in art and graphics today that few children notice them even when directed to do so. The revised activity has children identify features of city life and imagine the urban sounds that they might hear. And, again, to end with a sketch of a scene that appealed to them (Figure 10). Similar difficulties were encountered in “Impressionism: The Color of Shadows,” where the hope was to impart the impressionist goal of capturing light and shadow as they change from minute to minute in nature (Figure 11). The first draft asked children to look for and describe sunlit and shadowed areas in paintings. Interpreting these subtleties Figure 9: Édouard Manet, The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Horace Havermeyer in memory of his mother, Louisine W. Havermeyer. Figure 10: Family Guide: French Painting at the National Gallery of Art , 6-7.