Week #1: Dreams and Alternate Realities

Lesson Plan

Enduring Idea: Dreams and alternate realities help us tap into the subconscious.

Rationale: Dreams are an important and interesting part of everyone’s life. They can tell us about our thoughts, desires, fears and what our subconscious is experiencing. Dreams are also an interesting and fun way to connect with other people and cultures because they hold different significance to different people. The concepts of dreams and alternate realities are prevalent in the arts throughout history, as well as other subject matters.

Artists/Artworks: Rene Magritte

Golconda, 1953

The Banquet, 1958

Key Concepts:

• Surrealism- A cultural movement that began in the early 1920s. In a revolution against a society ruled by rational thought, the Surrealists tapped into the “superior reality” of the subconscious.
• Automatism- involuntary actions and processes not under the control of the conscious mind—for example, dreaming, breathing, or a nervous tic.
• Assemblage- is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium.
• Juxtaposition- the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.
• Non-linear narrative- narrative technique where events are portrayed out of chronological order or where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured
• Subconscious- of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings.

Essential Questions:

1. What is a dream?
2. Do you remember your dreams?
3. How do your dreams affect you?
4. Do you think dreams affect your subconscious? Why or why not?
5. Why do you think dreams are important?
6. How do dreams connect us as a people, culture, world?
7. Why do you think the Surrealist movement was a revolution?
8. Where do you see surrealist influences in our lives? (Media, narratives, fashion, school, entertainment)
9. How do dreams connect to art?
10. Does art need to be realistic? Why or why not?

Unit Objectives:

Standards:

• VA:Cr1.2.6a: Formulate an artistic investigation of personally relevant content for creating art.
• VA:Cr2.1.8a: Demonstrate willingness to experiment, innovate, and take risks to pursue ideas, forms, and meanings that emerge in the process of artmaking or designing
• VA:Pr5.1.8a: Collaboratively prepare and present selected theme-based artwork for display, and formulate exhibition narratives for the viewer.
• VA:Cn11.1.6a: Analyze how art reflects changing times, traditions, resources, and cultural uses.

Crosscurricular: Write a non-linear narrative in English class. Talk about the subconscious in

Science class. Record your dreams in a journal for a month and analyze what they might mean.

Instructional Plan

Objectives: Through studying Rene Magritte’s artwork, students will learn about the surrealist movement and create an artwork generated from thoughts of dreams, alternate realities and the subconscious.

Lesson: Begin by asking students if they remember what they dreamed last night, or if they have any dreams that have stuck out to them in their life. Talk about dreams and what they mean to us personally and as a culture. Talk about the setting of our dreams. Where do they take place? Is there a background? Is the setting important? How does place affect our dreams? Or, how do our dreams affect the places we are in? We will look at Rene Magritte’s artworks entitled, Golconda and The Banquet. Notice the setting in his paintings. Where do they take place? How are the dream-like? What is odd or alternate reality about them? Look for surrealist influences. What is surrealism? Discuss the surrealist movement and how it affected art.

Activities: Students will create a painting based off of alternate realities and dreams. Their painting should have a prominent setting, like Magritte, and be influenced by surrealist thought.

Before beginning, students should brainstorm at least 15 different ideas for their setting in their sketchbook. They can create thumbnail sketches if they want to, but improvisation and allowing their subconscious to influence their work is supported.

Students are allowed to use mixed media, like pencil, pen, some collage materials, paint, and colored pencil if they so desire.

Formative Assessment: After completing this project, students will write a short story to accompany their artwork. The story can be nonlinear and doesn’t need to explain the painting, but rather accompany it.

Summative Assessment: At the completion of this unit, students will curate a show based on alternate realities and dreams.