The Public Square: From Concepts--to Models---to Monuments

Semester and Year	FA 2010
Course Number	ARTS-UG1470
Section	001
Instructor	Greg Wyatt
Days	Mon
Time	12:30 PM - 3:15 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement

Notes/Restrictions

Students should not schedule any classes immediately before or after this class to allow ample time to travel to offsite locations, as well as to the Modern Art Foundry and the Art Students League. Students are expected to pay for their own travel costs and some admission fees.

Description

This workshop focuses on the nature of creativity for public space and the “model to monument” design and bronze casting. We will explore the process by which a concept becomes a three-dimensional model and consequently a public monument. We will also investigate how ideas or concepts in history have influenced individual artists in making public monuments. Some examples of this type of didactic art we will explore are: Pericles’ Athenian building program after the Persian wars, Michelangelo’s “David,” the Columbia University “Alma Mater,” the Chrysler building, the Peace Fountain next to St. John the Divine, the Woolworth building, Ghandi’s bronze on Union Square, and other sculptures and architectural sights in New York City. This semester we will concentrate a major portion of the workshop on Shakespearean “model to monument” works, and develop visual exercises based on Shakespeare’s poetic imagery. Students will be required to develop their own original concepts into a two- or three- dimensional project, focusing on visual arts such as painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, mural making, readings, performance and keeping an art journal. In the studio students will experience and learn the necessary training for the creation of a three-dimensional sculptural expression work of art, necessary after the conversion of some of their ideas into a drawings and maquettes. Readings may include Plato’s Timaeus , Benvenuto Cellini’s Autobiograph y, Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale , Cezanne’s Letters , Interview with Rodin with French Journalist, Delacroix’s Journal , as well as Goethe and Leonardo on painting.

Course Type

Arts Workshops (ARTS-UG)