JACKSON POLLOCK
(Experential Lesson Guide)
Before going into the lesson proper, I would like to reason out some of the background rationale behind the choice of having experiential lessons. I have a tendency to adopt these lessons especially with artists which students find harder to empathize with or understand. For many students, it is easy to intellectually understand what the artist is doing even if they do not necessarily see any connection to the artist. However this also means that many of them take in information without bringing their own perspective into the classroom. Hence this lessons were devised to create an artificial entry point for the students to better understand the artist and the art works.
Shown below is one of Pollock's famous drip paintings, it is very easy to sit students down and go through a series of slides, questions and answers to get them to learn about him. In fact there is so much information online, that you might not even need to really teach anything to your students if they are willing to run through the web. For many students, they look at this work and question the difficulty of the the creation of the work, how tough can it be to toss bits of paint across a canvas after all?
Experential Activity
Students are given zoomed in cropped images of Pollock's painting as shown on the right. They are given paint and a canvas and are asked to replicate what they see as closely as they can.
After that they are asked to share their experiences and questions that had come to them as they embarked on the activity. This is all done before embarking on a proper lesson on Jackson Pollock.
