Art Investigators

Today the Lunchers traveled to The National Gallery of Art to become art investigators in the East Building.  As they entered the main floor, they found Alexander Calder's very large mobile right above them! It is called "Untitled" because he did not name the commissioned work before he died.  And, it was moving ever so slowly as they walked up the stairs to see it from the balcony.

The Lunchers found lots of shapes and colors in "Bicycle Race" by Lyonel Feininger.  They learned to look closely for details!

They learned that artists use the color red to say,"Look here!" when they studied "The Farm" by Joan Miro.  They used a little "I Spy" game to find all kinds of things Miro put in his farm scene--and it was really his farm in Spain!

The Lunchers studied how artists use lines in Picasso's "Harlequin Musician." The found curving lines, diagonal lines and parallelograms, too.

Do you know what a maquette is?  It is mini art.  We saw the maquette Calder made for The Gallery in the Calder Room along with many other mobiles and his animal stabiles.  We learned a new word, too.  Calder's used biomorphic shapes in his work.  That means they were shapes from nature and not geometric like Mondrian's.

Henri Matisse's Cut-Outs are enormous and so colorful!  It was wonderful to see some of them after reading Drawing With Scissors.  We are going to  use some of his shapes to make our own art projects at school.

There is so much more to see!! Our docent invited us to come back with our families to see more art.  We will have to come soon however, since The Gallery is closing for a three year renovation in November.  We missed seeing  Jackson Pollock's "Lavender Mist," but we can visit The Phillips where it will be during the construction.