Classwork- Handscape Landscape
Use the landscape you created outside this week to create a landscape that includes your hand or hands actual size.
I need to see two idea sketches and no two in the class can be the same. So far we have a hand/hands: taking a digital photo, drawing, adjusting a rear view mirror, holding on to a rollercoaster safety bar, wiping fog off a window, ..................... SWEET!
The Belgian painter René Magritte is famous for his games with contrasts and paradoxes that often trick the spectator. But we are pleased to play along. Because Magritte’s meticulous and detailed reproductions of the objects around us are depicted convincingly, and with such clarity that they almost appear to be more real than the reality.
At first glance we see a window and a vista of fields, woods and sky with scudding clouds. But on closer inspection something seems not quite right. What are those three legs floating under the window, and is that a handle seemingly floating by itself in the middle of the pane? Sharpening our gaze we determine the true state of affairs: we are looking at a painting which replicates the view that is masked by the canvas. But our eye has now become watchful, and most of us will inevitably ask ourselves: What if we move the canvas - will a gap appear in the landscape? Magritte is drawing attention to our tendency to see only what we want to see, or expect to see, to the exclusion of all else.
René Magritte: “The Human Condition”, 1933. Oil on canvas.
