This Unit involves a visual representation of Hollywood’s portrayal of the lives of great artists. The class has submitted parental permission slips. We watch the movies, each session followed by a discussion forum. The class then is given an essay assignment worth 100 pts. to be presented in a formal paper. During their work on the paper, they are then focusing on the style of the artist through an in class project that captures their techniques and motivations. The focus is for students to ‘live’ through the experience on film and reinterpret the art in their own means. This unit provides a high level of art analyzation, criticism, appreciation, writing and production.

POLLOCK
In August of 1949, Life Magazine ran a banner headline that begged the question: “Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” Already well-known in the New York art world, he had become a household name–America’s first “Art Star”–and his bold and radical style of painting continued to change the course of modern art. But the torments that had plagued the artist all of his life–perhaps the ones that drove him to paint in the first place, or that helped script his fiercely original art–continued to haunt him. As he struggled with self-doubt, engaging in a lonely tug-of-war between needing to express himself and wanting to shut the world out, Pollock began a downward spiral that would threaten to destroy the foundations of his marriage, the promise of his career, and his life–all on one deceptively calm and balmy summer night in 1956.
(POLLOCK ACTION PAINTING COLLAGE)

BASQUIAT
In 1981, Jean-Michel Basquiat catapulted from being an unknown nineteen-year-old graffiti writer to becoming one of the most successful, controversial, glamorous artists in the world. His shows were anticipated as the big events of the New York season, and his paintings were bought by the most powerful collectors and museums. Every aspect of his life became a subject for the media. By 1988, he was dead at the age of 27. Basquiat was described by The New York Times as “the art world’s closest equivalent to James Dean.” In spite of his success, this turbulent and talented young painter was also plagued by loneliness, self-destruction and the belief that people really did not accept him for who he was. As the first black contemporary artist to really succeed in the powerful white art world, his early death shows that he was a casualty as well as a phenomenal success.
(GRAFFITI ART MIXED MEDIA)

MAX
A fictional story, loosely based upon the post-WWI period when the young Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was an aspiring painter with a love for the classical periods. Set in 1918, the tale is based on an imagined relationship between young Adolf, and an influential Jewish art dealer and teacher, Max Hoffman, who did not encourage the future Nazi leader’s artistic abilities. A discouraged artist, who later scorned modern art, Hitler’s interests turn elsewhere–to hatred of Jews, and to Germany’s questionable future. The story presents the argument–could one teacher’s failure to encourage a young man to pursue his artistic endeavors be part of the root of the terror that came? Would the Holocaust have been prevented if Adolf Hitler had never stopped painting–and thus, was able to channel his creative energy?
(EXPRESSIONISM)

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
A speculative account of the life of Griet, a 16-year-old girl who appears in Johannes Vermeer’s painting of the same title. Set in 17th century Holland, Griet is employed by Vermeer as a housemaid to care for his six children, his jealous pregnant wife and his uncommunicative mother-in-law. Tensions arise when Vermeer’s wife grows jealous of her husband and the young maid, when the wife discovers that Griet borrowed her precious pearl earrings to sit for the now famous portrait.
(OIL PAINTING)

MODIGLIANI
It is 1919. The Great War is over and Paris nightlife is filled with dark passions and uncontrollable obsessions. In the café Rotonde, the refuge of the artistic elite, we find a table, unlike any other in history: Picasso, Rivera, Stein, Cocteau, Soutine, Utrillo and Modigliani. Jeanne Hebuterne was a beautiful young Catholic girl whose only fault, in her father’s eyes was to fall in love with Modigliani, a Jew. Driven by this religious bigotry, Jeanne’s father secretly sends their baby away to a convent in some far place. At the same time Paris is preparing for the yearly art competition. The prize is money and a guaranteed career. But, until this moment Picasso has never entered because he is Picasso. And Modigliani has never entered for that same reason. But now, Modigliani is cornered. He and Jeanne need to save their child. Drunk with anger, soaked by rain, he bursts into the Rotonde, and watched by Picasso, and all the others, he puts his name to the competition. Picasso then gets up and signs his own name. Paris becomes frenzied with excitement! And now it begins. A fast train moves through the night that shapes the lives of all involved. And as darkness falls, the artists take refuge before their blank canvases and begin to create their greatest work.
(MODIGLIANI PORTRAITURE)