Part One - Outline for the Teachers

The Art Venture It project lends itself to studies in art, art history, history, and even to studies in English Language Arts and Literacy. If used in the teaching of the latter two disciplines, the paintings themselves may be used for descriptive writing exercises or for biographies based on the lives of the artists – useful both for Level IV English Language Arts and for pre-secondary writing classes. Equally, a research paper based on a particular artist or artistic movement could be interesting at Level V. However, this project is primarily designed to study the world of art.

A PowerPoint presentation - ‘The Old Masters’- illustrates the works of fifteen featured artists. Each slide is numbered, the artists and the titles of their works are included in the presentation. Students also have a chance to ‘guess’ the artists when they try their hand at the Guessing Game. Students can also read the brief notes on the artists and their painting styles. As the project develops, teachers can supplement this project with any additional facts or anecdotes about the lives and times of the featured artist.

For the art teacher in particular, I have prepared an overview of the most popular artists and their most famous works in a chronological order. I believe this is a splendid resource for the teacher, as it saves a lot of preparation time searching through books and websites. A list of web resources can also be consulted.

I favour this approach: the teacher shows the slide show prepared along an historical time line, (I have included one of my own) to introduce some of the big names in the world of art. Students then try to identify works by the same artists by recognizing individual styles and different fashions or schools at the historical times under study. This can take a fun spin as a “guessing game.”

The student will have a fine introduction to the world of art and can then choose an artist or an artistic movement to explore in detail.

A PowerPoint presentation generated by the student is a powerful visual tool, well suited to the examination of art works. Paintings, when projected onto a screen, are elevated into larger-than-life canvases where students can enjoy details in the work under study and where they can revel in shapes and colours.