Friday, October 23, 2015

Teaching Arts : Lygia Clark, the presage of modern digital information era





Lygia Clark, MoMA exhibition, 2014


"This sensation of precariousness, of being absorbed in the immanence of the act of discovering the sense of existing."
Lygia Clark,Capturar um Fragmento de Tempo Suspenso
(To capture a fragment of suspended time), 1973
Aspiring to break down the barriers between art and everyday life, Lygia Clark radically re-imagined what art could be. By facilitating an engaged and embodied relationship between the art object and its audience, 
Clark's work anticipated the development of participatory art, and has influenced generations of artists pushing the boundaries of sculpture, performance, and art-as-pedagogy.
Lygia Clark is one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century. 
"Rebellion in heart, she was committed to innovation, and she had the privilege to be known as a pioneer in her field of interest."
Nadia Herzog
Google Doodle:

Google Doodle : Lygia Clark' 95th birthday

Today's Doodle celebrates the 95th birthday of artist Lygia Clark, famed Brazilian painter, sculptor and teacher born on 23 October 1920. The Doodle reflects his own distinct Neo-Concrete style.

Clark (1920-88) is a Brazilian artist who trained in France with Fernand Leger. Lygia Clark co-founded the Neo-Concrete movement, which sought to change art from a passive viewing experience to an engaging interaction. 


Lygia Clark [1920-1988]

"We do everything so automatically that we have forgotten the poignancy of smell, of physical anguish, of tactile sensations of all kinds."

Lygia Clark

Lygia Clark was born in Belo Horizonte on October 23, 1920. A Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation work. 

Clark became an artist in 1947. In this year, she moved to Rio de Janeiro to study with Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. Between 1950 and 1952, she studied with Isaac DobrinskyFernand Léger and Arpad Szenes in Paris. 




Lygia Clark

In 1953, she became one of the founding members of Rio's Frente group of artists. In 1957, Clark participated in Rio de Janeiro's first National Concrete Art Exhibition. This would be one of Clark's frequent trips to Brazil in order to exhibit her artwork.

She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivisme movements of the mid-20th century and the Tropicália movement. 

Even with the changes in how she approached her artwork, Lygia did not stray far from her Constructivisme roots. 



Lygia Clark, exhibition in New York

Along with Brazilian artists Amilcar de CastroFranz WeissmannLygia Pape and poet Ferreira Gullar, Clark co-founded the Neo-Concrete movement

The Neo-Concretists believed that art ought to be subjective and organic. Throughout her career trajectory, Clark discovered ways for museum goers (who would later be referred to as "participants") to interact with her art works. 

She sought to redefine the relationship between art and society. Clark's works dealt with inner life and feelings.



Bicho (critter), 1960, aluminum and hinges
Image Source: Ramirez, Mari Carmen and Hector Olea
 Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, pl. 127, p. 188.
https://onceandfutureartblog.files.wordpress.com/
Her art pieces,  specifically the bichos, were designed to be modified, re-positioned and folded into new configurations by participants. These "critters" were an early step in Clark's attempts to bridge the gap between artist and viewer.



Lygia Clark

Information +
Much of Clark’s work involves the audience manipulating or navigating through the work. 

At times, the objects manipulate the participants through sensory deprivation suits and masks. 

Lygia Clark co-founded the Neo-Concrete movement, which sought to change art from a passive viewing experience to an engaging interaction. Her art pieces,  specifically the bichos, were designed to be modified, re-positioned and folded into new configurations by participants.



Lygia Clark : Bichos

Clark's Bichos (or critters) are meant to be manipulated by participants into new forms directed only by the Bicho’s construction. These objects are created from flat plates of metal that are hinged together to create something that can move and take on multiple instances of itself. 

These "critters" were an early step in Clark's attempts to bridge the gap between artist and viewer.

Some critics say "her artwork presaged the modern digital information era."
Later in her career, Clark turned the evocative power of her art toward healing, and became a proponent and practitioner of art therapy. Her work focused on bodily awareness as well as unconscious sensory perception, the inner life, and emotions.

She died in  Rio de Janeiro on April 25, 1988.

"Lygia Clarck was among the young Brazilian artists who, in the late 1950s and 60s, fostered a wider use of colour, greater sensuality, and poetic sentiment in concrete art, drawing inspiration from artists like Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich."



Lygia Clark,  MoMA exhibition

Education:

Art is not bourgeois mystification. What has changed is the form of communicating the proposition. It’s you who now give expression to my thoughts, to draw from them whatever vital experience you want."

Lygia Clark

Doodles! Well doodles are a awesome digital resource to integrate into the curriculum and surprise the students as a motivation to awake their curiosity. Students love be suprised during lessons. Something rather new, unexpected is just the right tip.

Love Google doodles! Doodles combine creativity, curiosity, digital skills, culture and a surprising motivation to a different start of an interesting lesson, You must think about it.

My usual readers know how I support an entire education in school. STEM are crucial, Literature and Languages are essential, we can't develop digital skills without those curriculum. And Arts ! Oh Art is the first, huge step towards a new futur to gifted kids.




Lygia Clark


All over the years, you read my thoughts about the importance of Arts in School Education, no matter the art fields: Music ; Dancing ; Painting ; Literature ;
SculptureArchitecture.

Arts are absolutely necessary to a complete and better education of children and young adolescents. During Secondary education, some students discover their inner path in Arts and later they will choose Arts education in colleges and higher schools of Arts to develop their aptitude by a real learning.





Here, a good introduction to Non-Concrete artOf course each teacher must prepare and adapt the activities to the level they are teaching.


Digital Resources: Teachers & students 


Digital culture is well-come into the the classroom as important tools to tackle the world's toughest problems creating bridges and establish a truly intercultural world, where diversity can be celebrated, a world where different cultures not only coexist but value each other for their contributions and potential.

Level: All levels. Focus on Arts (Vocational Education) ; School of Arts (Higher Education.

Curricula: Arts ; Design ; Digital Arts.
Secondary education: cross-curricular (Literature, Arts, Music).

"The instant of the act is not renewable. It exists by itself: to repeat it is to give it another meaning. It doesn’t contain any trace of past perceptions. It’s another moment. At the very moment in which it happens it is already a thing-in-itself. Only the instant of the act is life."
Lygia Clark

G-Souto

23.10.2015
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