Teacher Pages

Jazz - Henri Matisse, 1947

Objectives:

Students will be able to identify the colors, dynamics and patterns within the artwork, poems and musical listening units.

Students will recognize style and forms of the listening and dance units. Students will be able to analyze how the elements of expression are combined to achieve specific effects.

Students will be able to score read a musical line within the complex textures and harmonies of one of the given listening works.

ART

Studio Activity
Students observe people dancing - either on film, video or in live performance.

Students make quick gesture drawings of the dancing figures, each drawing overlapping the other.

Drawings are enlarged and transferred to transparent Mylar or other similar material.

All shapes are painted with coloured inks or acrylics.
Pattern can be added, as in the Matisse works.

Artworks are cut out and reassembled to make a large group piece, which can be hung in a window to enhance the "stained glass window" effect.

Assessment
Students to discuss how art can express movement, and demonstrate an understanding of how different media can express ideas in different ways by comparing their own work to that of the Matisse prints.

Students to identify what role improvisation played in their artwork and compare that to the role of improvisation in jazz.

Enrichment
Students to transfer the shapes from their original drawings to fabric and create a fabric hanging.
Students to investigate the role of color in the work of the Fauves, with particular emphasis on Henri Matisse, and investigate the gallery's website to find other artists using color in an expressive manner. Present investigation to their peers.

MUSIC
Listening, Poetry and Dance

Listening:
American: Duke Ellington: Suite Black, Brown and
Beige George Gershwin: rhapsody in blue
European:
Satie: Parade
Poulenc: Rapsodie Negre
Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Piano, second movement, jazz style blues movement
(Listen to sound clip here)
Stravinsky: Ebony Concerto.

Poetry
"The Cutting Prow," by Ed Sanders for Henri Matisse from "Beat Voices: an anthology of beat poetry, edited by David Kherdian.

Reading the English translation of the artist's original handwritten text of his artwork "Jazz."

Dance:
Swing and Ragtime Era: units to the music of Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, and Louis Armstrong

Procedure:
Listen to the musical performances and compare and contrast the use of elements of expression in the various examples.

Create a non musical representation (e.g. chart, written description, dance movement or poem) of one or more elements of expression in one of the listening units.

Assessment:
Have students create a rating scale for the performances that they have heard, and also discuss their ratings.

Ask students to work in groups to write descriptions of the similarities between the artwork and the musical listening units.