Walker Chapter 3

In chapter three, the main idea was delving deeper into Big Ideas. There was extensive talk on Robert Motherwell's "Elegies to the Spanish Republic" which not only explained his process but encouraged a graduate unite based on his process. Motherwell is a great artist inspiration because he chose a subject with meaning to both him and otheres and he chose to express the subject in an unexpected way. Essentially, Motherwell created a series of one hundred black and white abstract paintings and dedicated them to the Spanish Republic of the Spanish Civil War.  Honestly, I think the reasons given for Motherwell's interest in Spain lack depth; it was said that he had a love for Mexico and made frequent trips there and that his childhood home in Napa Valley resembled Spain's plateau.  Does whoever decided this was his base passion realize that Mexico and Spain are totally different countries and cultures? The likeness of an area in Spain and his childhood home seems a bit superficial as well. How ironic that Walker talks of the depth of Motherwell's work but isn't able to provide sufficient depth to the reasons and basic inspirations to his work.

Jumping off of my soapbox, I think that Walker makes an excellent point in that we need to make sure our students are making connections to all of the Big Ideas explored. These connections need to satisfy personal, inspirational, and academic interests to provide both the art-maker and the viewer with a sense of depth, relation, relevance and continuing interest.  If we, as professionals, can strive to do just this with every lesson and unit we create then we will be giving our students the best possible artistic education and ourselves the best possible teaching experience. What I wonder is how can we change the level of this "graduate assignment" to better fit the needs of our high school students? If in essence, we want students to have the same experience, it would feel like we are cheating them by not going as deep as we can go with these big ideas.