Slavery through the Eyes of Artists
By Jean West

Overview

Slavery through the Eyes of Artists is a lesson plan for use in conjunction with or as a follow up lesson on slavery in the United States. Students will examine 12 images of African Americans made by artist Steele Burden. Students will consider the role of the artist in creating images of slavery and compare and contrast images created by artists with those created by photographers. The lesson is intended to be used by middle school or high school students in history, visual arts, and/or language arts classes.

National Curriculum Standards met by this lesson

For a list of standards that this unit addresses, click here.

Time required

Anywhere from one class period to several days, depending on the depth of research and amount of computer lab time used to examine and evaluate the images within the gallery.

Materials

Internet access

The Lesson

Anticipatory Set

Show "Sugar in the Field with a Mill in the Background" to students in the class. Either provide students with an individual copy or display the image on the computer screen (or projected from the computer) so that the whole class can see the images. Explain that this is a painting by artist Steele Burden, and then discuss the following questions with students:

• Does this painting attempt to imitate life in a realistic manner or is it abstract?



• Where is the artist in relationship to the scene? How does the distance affect the way the audience relates to the scene?



• Does the painting seem to evoke a sense of time or timelessness in the viewer?



• How are humans depicted in this scene? Are they distinct personalities or general impressions? Are they decorative or do they connect with the audience's emotions? Are their proportions realistic or exaggerated?



• Is there a sense of movement in this scene? If so, what part does light source, color, form and composition play in creating a rhythm?



• Is there a sense of movement in the people? If so, what part does light source, color, form and composition play in creating a rhythm?



• How is the landscape depicted in this scene? Is it realistic or idealized? Is it detailed or general? Does perspective give the audience a sense of depth? Does the application of color give the audience a sense of atmosphere and light?



• Does the artist evoke an emotion or mood with this scene? If so, how? Do the figures and natural elements of the scene share this mood?



• Are the forms of the composition balanced? Are the colors of the composition balanced?



• Is there a repetition of line or shapes in this painting? Are they predictable or irregular?



• Is there a background to this painting? How does a background, or lack of background, change the impact of the painting on the audience?



• A painting or sketch can document only what the eye can see. What do you think is outside the "frame" of the picture that the artist didn't paint? What sounds might you hear if this image had sound? What odors might you smell? What sensations might you feel?



• Does the painting tell a story? Does it capture a dramatic moment?



• Does it cause the viewer or audience to participate by taking a second look or creating a narrative of events for themselves?



• Does the artist express an attitude or point of view about slavery in this painting?



• Is the painting a document of the reality of slavery? Explain.

Share with students the caption provided for the image and then ask, what do the words add to our knowledge about the subject of the painting? To our knowledge of the artist? How does the caption coordinate or complement the visuals of the painting?

Procedures

1. Ask students to read examine the 12 and then to examine photographs in the Image Gallery.



2. Discuss the following questions comparing and contrasting the artwork and photographs represented in the Image Gallery:


• Is there any overlap in the subjects depicted by the artists and those depicted by the photographers? What appears in both?



• Are there some subjects that are depicted only by artists and not photographers? What are they?



• Civil War era cameras required exposures of up to 30 minutes, depending on the amount of sunlight, to capture an image. Motion would ruin the clarity of the image. How did the photographers try to create a sense of motion in their photographs? How is it different from the way artists create a sense of motion in paintings and sketches?



• What reasons might there be for the lack of photographs on some of these subjects?



• In this era only art was in color, not photography. What does color add to the artworks as documents?



• How is a painting subjective? How is a photograph subjective? Do you view paintings to be more objective than photographs or photographs to be more objective than paintings? Why?


3. Assign students to examine one of the following pairings of artwork and photographs. The teacher may decide whether to assign the work to be done in pairs or small groups or give students the opportunity to select the pairing and grouping themselves. Choices are:


• Painting "Loading a Wagon with Sugar Cane" and Photo #24
• Painting "Cabins and People" and Photo #39
• Painting "Loading and Weighing Cotton" or Sketch #21 or Painting #14 and Photo #25
• Sketch #15 or Painting #20 and Photo #37
• Painting #16 and Photo #28
• Painting #19 or Painting #23 and Photo #36
• Painting #26 and Photo #30


4. Provide students with copies of the Venn diagram and outline map. Ask students to take notes about the two images on the Venn diagram, about the things that are unique to each image and the things that they share in common. Students may wish to refer to the following questions as a guideline for their comparison and contrast:


• What is the subject of the images?
• What is the distance between the subject and the audience of these images?
• Are there figures in the images? What is their scale in relationship to the picture (close-up, distant)? Are they distinct or not?
• Are there natural elements to the images such as landscape?
• Are there architectural elements to the images?
• Do the images reveal a level of composition or are they candid and unstructured? Look at perspective, sky/land balance, repeated forms or shapes, contrast, and color/grey tones.
• Do the images suggest motion?
• Do the images capture a dramatic moment? Do they tell a story?
• What do the images capture about the reality of slavery?
• What impact do these images of slavery have on the viewer or audience?
• Does the image reveal the feelings of the artist or photographer towards slavery?

There are a number of possibilities for assessment, including oral presentations or grading of the Venn diagrams. However, a traditional 5-paragraph essay that compares and contrasts the lives of slaves as depicted by an artist and a photographer also makes a good cumulative evaluation. It can be graded on a twenty-point scale (which may be multiplied by 5 to convert to 100-point scale or for conversion to letter grades) using the following rubric:

Joshua C. Taylor produced an excellent guide to art appreciation called To See is to Think: Looking at American Art. It was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1975. While it features artwork from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., it is very helpful in analyzing work by a wide range of artists, from newspaper illustrators to diarists.

Steele Burden (1900-1995) was the landscape architect responsible for the landscaping of Louisiana State University, City Park in Baton Rouge, and various plantations and private homes. He was also the founder of the Rural Life Museum, a 450-acre outdoor folk museum that recreates rural life in 19th century Louisiana. Burden collected and relocated 20 building to his property including slave quarters, overseer's house, sugar house, and cemetery marked by iron crosses. The indoor museum is housed in a barn and features the thousands of artifacts that Burden collected in an effort to save Louisiana's rural heritage. Windrush Gardens, with its azaleas, camellias, and statuary help recreate a typical 19th century Southern garden. For information about the museum and its programs, visit http://www.lsuagcenter.com/inst/research/stations/burden/rurallife.asp.

Interdisciplinary Links

Visual Arts Class

1. Create a painting or series of paintings on the reality of slavery as you would express it in art. How is your artwork similar or different to that created by the artists featured in this lesson? Explain why you chose the presentation you used and what it brings to the understanding of slavery that the original format did not.



2. Select an image and experiment with different styles of art (classical, impressionist, post-impressionist, Cubist, abstract) or different mediums (oil, chalk, watercolor, computer graphics) to see which express your interpretation of the reality of slavery most effectively. Which version has the greatest impact on your audience? Are they the same or different? Work with photography instructor or professional photographer to make a series of images of the same subject using different cameras. Make a display.



3. Convert the paintings in this series into a computer slide show selecting quotes from narratives or capturing audio files of former slaves which add a textual or audio dimension to the images.



4. Why do some images transcend time, technology, subject matter, and the artist's skill, while others do not? Find, either in this collection or another, the most powerful image of slavery you have seen and explain why it is so powerful.

Language Arts Class

1. Write an interior monologue or journal entry from the point of view of artist Steele Burden or one of the other artists explaining what the reality of slavery was; OR Describe as a journal entry what went into creating one of these images from Steele Burden's point of view (or that of one of the other artists); OR Write a stream of consciousness entry from the viewpoint of Steele Burden (or one of the other artists) deciding whether to say anything additional about these paintings to modern viewers or let the work stand on its on merits, and what his reasoning is.



2. Write from the point of view of the subject of one of the paintings explaining what the reality of slavery was; OR describe through a narrative your reaction as a subject in this painting to being depicted by an artist; OR Write a stream of consciousness entry from the point of view of one of these artists' subjects deciding whether to say anything additional about the artwork to a modern audience or let the image stand on its own merits.

This lesson was submitted by Jean West, an education consultant in Port Orange, Florida.