Lesson Overview:
Students study Georges Seurat's painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and present responses to questions based on the artwork. They then read Act I of the musical Sunday in the Park with George and develop representative physical gestures based on one of the characters.
Length of Lesson:
Two 45-minute periods
Instructional Objectives:
Students will:
- respond to one of four questions dealing with the life of Georges Seurat and specifically, with his work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
- recognize an unusual technical aspect of the painting.
- discuss the historical period associated with the painting.
Supplies:
- Prints of the painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (see Sources section for possible sources).
Instructional Plan:
Introduction
Prepare students for the lesson with the following introduction and assignment:
"Ideas for composing a dance come from a variety of sources—books, nature, our experiences, our feelings, and our emotions. In this unit, we are going to investigate a painting by the artist Georges Seurat titled, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This painting was used as the basis for a musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine called Sunday in the Park with George, which you will read."
Distribute the Research Questions Worksheet and the Assessment Rubric guidelines for the verbal responses/presentations. Then, show the students a print of Seurat's painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
Assignment
Tell students to investigate the life and work of Georges Seurat and come to class with a quote of a statement or paragraph that responds to one of the following four questions. (Remind students to include the source of the information):
- What was being expressed in the painting?/Was there something of social significance being expressed in the painting?
- What technical aspects of the painting make it special?
- What was the critical reaction to the painting?
- Who do you imagine the people to be in this painting and/or what might they be doing?
Students may use books or the Internet to research the answers to the questions. See the Sources section for a list of suggested books. Possible Internet resources include:
Classroom Activities
Shown the students the print (or prints) of the painting again. Ask students to share their responses to the questions individually. Possible responses to the respective questions are as follows:
Question 1:
"…his [Seurat's] pictures represent in vivid form life of the middle class of Paris and its suburbs in the 1880's. It would be foolish to read into his painting a social or political programme…" (Fry, p.7)
"Their [the critics] synopses marked much of the paintings' range of meanings: the suburbs, Sunday, leisure, habits and behavior determined by class, the identification of types, the codification of pose and fashion." (Thomson, p.115)
"We hope to prove that Seurat's types are not the residue of a purely formal instinct but are brilliant visual distillations of psychological and social meanings." (Herbert, et al, p. 4)
Question 2:
"One might say that the shimmering light he invented makes us see what is most enchanting in nature at those moments when she seems to us the most sublime…" (Couthion, p. 43 and 44)
"…there is hardly a diagonal in the whole picture; instead the design is made up of verticals in trees and figures or little curves in parasols and in the tails of the dogs and the monkey which are almost art noveau in their forms." (Fry p.80, notes)
"La Grande Jatte was the first substantial painting by Seurat in which groups of figures had a major role, and several drawings and paintings were executed to investigate the way they would interlock within the composition." (Thomson, p. 106)
Question 3:
"J.K. Huysmans, Paul Alexis and Robert Caze saw it as a Sunday spree of drapers' assistants, apprentice pork-butchers, women looking for adventures, whereas Paul Adam saw the rigid figures as an Egyptian frieze and the Greek-born Moreas hailed the work as Panathenaean procession." (Courthion, p.21)
"Louis Pilate de Brin Gaubast said in his review...that he [Seurat] may be less unsuccessful as a dauber of landscapes than in setting up wooden figures in the island of La Grande Jatte on a Sunday afternoon." (Courthion, p.37)
After the painting was exhibited, some critics realized its importance and referred to it as "the manifesto painting." (Thomson, p.114)
Question 4:
"...people like ourselves—men, women and children dressed in their Sunday best, who pursue weekend leisure by sitting, strolling, knitting, reading, fishing, making music, or gazing meditatively into the pruned and park-like landscape." (Broude, first paragraph—there are no page numbers for this Internet resource.)
"Today the trees are all gone, but in 1884 La Grande Jatte was a green Arcadia, the meeting place for Sunday boaters and courting couples." (Courthion, p.203)
After the students have shared their responses, the teacher and the students develop a summary of the answers for each of the four questions.
Assignment
Tell students to read Act I of Sunday in the Park with George, by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Explain that the play addresses all four of the questions that they have researched. As they read Act I, each student must select a character and think of a gesture that the character either did or might do, based on their lines in the play.
Webster's New World College Dictionary defines "gesture" as: movement of the body, or part of the body to express or emphasize ideas, emotions, etc. (p. 108).
Assessment:
See the Assessment Rubric.
Sources:
Print:
- Broude, Norma (ed.). Georges Seurat: Rizzoli Art Series. New York: International Publications, 1992.
- Courthion, Pierre. Georges Seurat. New York: Harry N. Abrams , Inc.,1968.
- Fry, Roger (essay) and Sir Anthony Blunt (foreward and notes). Seurat London: Phaidon Publishers, Inc., 1965.
- Herbert, Robert L., Francoise Cachin, Anne Distel, Susan Alyson Stein, and Gary Tinterow. Georges Seurat: 1859-1891. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.
- Sondheim, Stephen and James Lapine. Sunday in the Park with George. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1986.
- Thomson, Richard. Seurat. Oxford, England: Phaidon Press, 1985.
- Webster's New World Dictionary Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1964.
Authors:
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Lillian Hasko, Dance Teacher
Montgomery County Public Schools
Silver Spring, MD United States
