I / EYE PROJECT

IDEAS…..• Think about the questions next to each

picture.

• Write a couple of paragraphs (or a longer story if you like) as if you were the figure in the picture……from the ‘I’ point of view…

• For example….

I am waiting here…as I have waited many time before, but this time it will be different.

Soon he will open the door, this will be my chance.

So much has happened, but things have never been this clear to me.

In a few minutes everything will be different…..

( you could even continue this story……)

Now look at these pictures…

(word process your story, cut and paste the picture into your story)

Francis Bacon ‘Study for Portrait July 1971

• In this portrait it is thought that Bacon is exploring what it might be like to be interviewed on television…perhaps the subject reveals more than he intends to…the smallest box might represent a television screen

• What might the other boxes represent?

• Does the fact that this figure is distorted tell us more or less about what is going on?

• Does Bacon bring us closer to the subject by creating the boxes or do we seem to be further away?

Diego Velazquez de Silva ‘Las Meninas’ 1656-7

• This is a self portrait of the artist, but look at the back of the picture…..There is a small image showing two figures placed in the centre of the painting…

• Who is shown here? Why?

• Who is the picture about?

Johnson Beharry by Emma Wesley 2006

• This is a portrait of a soldier who has been awarded the Victoria Cross.

• Is the portrait as simple as it looks?

• What effect does the shape of the portrait (long and thin) have on us as we look at the picture?

• Andy Warhol ‘Marilyn’ 1967

• Andy Warhol’s family came from Poland. As a child he was often ill, his mother bought him magazines to look at whilst he was recovering.

• As an adult he became fascinated with the world of the media…..and thought about what sort of view the media gives us of celebrities.

• In this picture of Marilyn Munro which was done five years after her death in 1962.

• Do the many pictures and changes of colour make her more or less ‘real’?

Jenny Saville ‘Juncture’ 1994

• This isn’t a very flattering portrait on Jenny Saville…why do you think she has portrayed herself like this?

• Is this the sort of image of women that we are used to seeing?

Francis Newton Souza Self Portrait’ 1961

• Souza was born in Goa in India, moved to Mumbai and then came to the UK in 1949 when he was aged twenty four.

• He has described this self portrait as a ‘humane and compassionate picture, at once graceful and grotesque vision of self’

• ‘grotesque’ and ‘graceful’ seem to be opposites – do you think he has captured both here?

• Do you thin there might there be any other contradictions or opposites involved here that are just as personal?.....

Probably by Johannes Gumpp ‘Self Portrait’ 1646

• The piece of paper which is sitting on the top left-hand side of the image on the right presents us with a riddle. Is this the real Johannes Gump or his son painting a picture to remember his father by looking at himself?

• Which is of the three is the ‘real’ image?....

Three Girls – Amrita Sher Gill

• Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Budapest in 1913 to a Hungarian mother and a Sikh father. Her early childhood was spent mostly in Hungary, and in 1921 the family moved to India, where she began her schooling. At the age of sixteen, Amrita was admitted to the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris.

• She uses painting to explore her own feelings of identity….

• ‘I began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India’,she wrote, ‘feeling in some strange inexplicable way that there lay my destiny as a painter.’

• This picture of girls about to marry was painted in India, what is she exploring here?

John N Robinson ‘Self Portrait’ 1940

• Life was difficult for Robinson at this time in America. Apart from economic problems there was a lot of racial tension too it was to be twenty years before Martin Luther King made his famous speech ‘I have a dream…’

• The picture plays tricks with our perception with many images and reflections surrounding this dignified and intelligent man

• Do you think the pictures in the background are there to tell us anything? Or pose some questions?

Edward Hopper ‘Self Portrait’ 1961

• Edward Hopper was an American artist who loved going to the movies.

• He often shows doors or windows in his paintings, sometimes we are inside looking out and sometimes we are outside looking in….

• His work influenced film maker Alfred Hitchcock.

• This could be a scene from a film….Is that door on the right about to open….what is on the other side of the door?…what will happen next?

Self Portrait ‘The Frame’ 1937

• Frida Kahlo lived in Mexico. She was married to a Mexican artist, but she also had a Russian boyfriend (a famous man called Leon Trotsky who was involved in politics in Russia).

• She often wore traditional Mexican clothes, and Mexico traditions influenced her painting but her ideas were also influenced by her curiosity about life in Russia and Europe.

• In Mexico there is famous festival called ‘The Day of the Dead’ which is very colourful…in Europe traditions are different….

• What do you think this picture is about?

Shirin Neshat ‘Speechless’ 1996

• Shirin Neshat was born in Iran and then went to live in the USA.

• When she eventually went back to Iran more than ten years later she found the country was not the same as the one she remembered.

• In this image the face is covered in writing in Arabic –

• What do you think she is saying?

• Why is it given this title?

Mai Jinyao ‘The Mask’ 1994(satirical portrait of Chris Pattern who was ‘Commander in Chief of Hong Kong’

which used to be British but was then being ‘handed back’ to China….)

‘Life is so complexWe Make upWe put on masksWe lose ourself in disguiseIrrational actionsUntil we are caught in surprise’.

Text written by the artist

The Panda is thought to represent China.

What is going on here?

Portrait of Doris Lessing by Leonard McComb 1999 • Doris Lessing was a writer. She was born

in Iran and then the family moved to Zimbabwe before she moved to Britain.

• She is portrayed in this picture in front of her own fabrics that she had chosen to make a background for the picture.

• She and the artist also chose to include the sculpture of the anteater……! Why did they do that?

Sonia BoyceShe Ain’t Holding Them Up, She’s

Holding On (Some English Rose) 1986

• This picture is about Sonia Boyce’s attempt to establish her own identity yet ‘hold on’ to her Afro Caribbean heritage

• The figures are arranged in an unusual way in the picture, what do you think she is trying to say?

Frank Auerbach (self portrait) 2001

• Frank Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931. In 1939 his parents sent him to Britain to escape the Nazis because they were a Jewish family. His parents never managed to escape from Germany and died in a concentration camp.

• He was sent to a school for refugees in Britain where he developed talent as an actor and a painter. He became an artist.

• Do you think that this style of working is creative or destructive? Give reasons for your choice……