As a visual art teacher the idea of using visual media seems natural. Slides, PowerPoint presentations, video clips, are all a regular part of everyday instruction. What I am starting to realize though is how much more powerful visual imagery can be in the classroom when it is used to its true maximum potential. It’s not unusual in an art classroom setting for us to interpret and make judgment based upon the viewing of a single image followed by what most middle school students would call a lengthy or drawn out discussion on content by yours truly. Although it is not completely unreasonable to expect a middle school student to be analytical when looking at art this is perhaps no longer the proper method to establish meaning. It seems young minds no longer work in this manner and neither should old minds.

The idea that you could essentially omit all spoken word, consolidate what’s really pertinent into a compacted few minutes of visual bliss and still be incredibly effective in connecting with your audience really hit me after following a link to the Sony Bravia (Bouncy Balls) advertisement (http://youtu.be/2Bb8P7dfjVw). It is a beautifully shot video where image and sound are in perfect harmony…just colors, sound, movement and a slogan of “colour like no other”. Ultimately it’s a memorable. It’s an advertisement that I actually find myself watching over and over again.  In a world driven by consumerism with much of the products being successfully targeted towards the children we teach, it seems high time we started acting a little less like teachers and more like advertisers. It’s time to sell Picasso’s “Guernica”.

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My visual arts standard on aesthetic valuing: making formal judgments continues to be quite a tricky one for me. Students are expected to construct an interpretation of a work of art based upon the content of that particular piece. When introducing Picasso painting “Guernica” to my middle school class the typical reactions tend to be that his style appears child-like, cartoonish, weird, and overall not very good. We trudge on with with the most time being spent on the class determining whether or not there are in fact boobs hanging out of one of the abstract figures shirts while quickly dispelling all pertinent information on the true meaning behind the piece itself, the Spanish Civil War. After most of our 45-minute class time is eaten up some students will make connections, but overall it feels very spoon-fed and contrived.

The Sony Bravia ad gave me an idea that perhaps through the creation of a short video clip I could streamline the learning of the content to assist in the constructing of meaning and ultimately judgment of Picasso’s “Guernica”. My hope is, that given I can find enough “free” powerful imagery on the Spanish Civil War, I can intertwine Picasso’s masterpiece with real parallel historical footage. The grief stricken mother, the fallen soldier, and the agonizing expression of the horse all equaled with real corresponding images.  I have yet to explore the music-sharing component of compfight.com, but I am hoping that the right soundtrack might be found there as well. If not Garage band could easily be used. It wouldn’t be far fetched to see this turn into a class project instead. One in which each student is responsible for “selling” a piece of art using nothing more than 30 seconds of images and sounds. Who’s buying?