Teaching Art - the sensitive concept of nudity

This photo has nothing to do with this post (though the caterpillar is certainly naked) but I shot it today and wanted to share.  It is sometimes called a 'parsley worm' but will turn into a black swallowtail butterfly.  It would be great, I think, for teaching pattern and repetition, or for an Eric Carle lesson on the Very Hungry Caterpillar! 

Because of Pinterest, people often view posts I wrote a long time ago.  Today I received a comment on a post from December 2010 titled Surrealism again - 4th grade collages.  In this post I mention the video Get Surreal with Salvador Dali, as I have on several other posts on this blog.  I have shown it many times over the past few years.  The commenter said "I am appalled that you would show that video to fourth graders. It has SEVERAL instances of nudity. I am a teacher, by the way, and I would never expose such young souls to any form of nudity. That is precisely why this country is going down the toilet."  I responded by thanking the writer for his/her comment, and saying that I would address the topic here in a new post.  So here I am.  Though I must take a moment here and say I am flattered.  I  have never been accused of anything quite so profound as the demise of our country.  Wow.  I wonder how my showing a museum-made movie about a famous artist and art movement to 4th graders compares to the performance of Miley Cyrus at last night's VMA awards?  Which one of us is more morally bankrupt?  Do you think Miley learned those moves from watching a movie about a famous artist?  Am I being too snarky here?

So, about that video, referred to in the comment:  Get Surreal with Salvador Dali is an award-winning half-hour video available for free to educators from the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg Florida.  It is an educational video made for kids.  It is narrated by two kids.  By the end of the video the kids will be singing along with the Dali song.  They love this video!  A shorter version of it is also available on YouTube, though I personally use the full-length version.  Yes, I admit it has some brief glimpses of nudity, which I referred to in my original post as 'giggle-worthy', and will describe here.  First of all, at one point there is discussion of a double image in a painting, and there happens to be a part of a woman with her naked breast showing off to the side of the painting, though this part of the image is never discussed.  But the most prevalent nudity in the video is the use of quick clips which show this statue (below) chatting with another piece of artwork as part of the narration of the video.  The drawers open and close as she talks and it is very silly. 

 Before I showed the video to my 4th and 5th graders, I discussed with my students what they would be seeing, in regard to the nudity.  (I also discussed it with my principal, who absolutely gave me the go-ahead to show the video.  Believe me, I did give it the appropriate consideration before showing the movie.)  Anyhow, prior to the movie, I reminded the kids that lots of artwork throughout history has been done based on the human nude, because it is a beautiful source of artistic inspiration, and that if they went to an art museum they would likely see paintings and sculptures based on the human form.  I told them that sometimes when they saw a nude in the Dali video it would be funny and it was OK to giggle, but to control themselves so they didn't miss any of the movie since it moves very quickly and is quite informative, and I expected them to remember and be able to discuss what they had seen.  In truth, the kids laughed more at the flying mustache than at the talking 'chest of drawers'!  But the biggest giggle from the kids, the only place where I actually have had to stop the video briefly, was when the word 'crutch' is spoken with a trill of the letter R.  (crutches are mentioned in the video as a commonly used item for symbolism in Dali's paintings.)  The kids thought the word spoken had been 'crotch', not crutch!  Here's a Dali painting with a crutch.  This painting is one that is discussed in the video. 

When showing work of  famous artists to my students, I have always eliminated anything that I thought potentially inappropriate.  I clipped together pages of books that included nudes so that the kids could not see them.  But sometimes the human body found its way into art projects in ways that were unavoidable. For example, when my 6th graders built these sculptures of  'people in motion' (this was not a surrealism project), it was important to be as accurate as possible to create a realistic look.  So 'boobies' were added as needed with little wads of newspaper and tape, hips were shaped, and so on.  And aren't the results super? 

basic armature structure

adding plaster bandage

  

 And of course, adding paint and embellishment

Anyhow...  I did consider introducing the artist Niki de Saint Phalle to my students, and using her work as inspiration for some projects, and while I adore her work, I decided against it because I was concerned someone might be offended by the overabundance of large colorful breasts.  Here's a sample of her amazing, colorful, joyous work.

And I even edited some nudes out of the children's art books of Mike Venezia.   But lets face it, the truth is, when we get out of the shower, we are all nude, are we not?  So I'm back to the comment written by my reader, about my 'exposing such young souls to any sort of nudity'.  I don't think what I showed them was really that damaging or provocative, or even previously unseen.  What do YOU think is or is not appropriate for art class, and at what age?  Would you show this particular video?  I'd love your opinions, whether or not you agree with mine.  By the way, here are a couple of collages done by my 4th graders based on a  project they saw presented in the Get Surreal video. 

And now I'll end this post, with another nude from nature, shot during a recent kayaking sojourn.

I call this 'Turtle Ballet'

Technological dark ages

I'm feeling terribly inadequate. I read all these wonderful blogs, and see so many great ideas. Many of you post about showing videos as part of your lessons, or to introduce a new topic: a video demonstrating how to weave, a video of owls flying toward the camera, a video interview with Laurel Burch, a video about the life of the artist you are studying, little videos as time fillers at the end of class,and so on and so on... Or maybe you are just showing images from the web: images of artwork by a current artist, especially those that are not in your drawer full of art prints and posters,images from museums, motivational images, etc.

So let me say this:

I do NOT have a Smart Board.

I do NOT have an "overhead" projector to project from my computer. (The only overhead projector I have is the old kind, like in the photo above, where you write with wash-off markers on a roll of clear acetate that projects onto a screen. ) When the new high school art teacher said she had asked for an overhead projector, I wondered why she'd want one of them. Of course she meant the kind mounted on the ceiling that projects from the computer. Duh. I'm a dinosaur.

I do NOT have an Elmo, except for a couple in other rooms on my hallway that I can borrow when:
*The music teacher isn't using hers as the sound system in her classroom
*The 4th grade teacher doesn't need hers for a math lesson
*(You get the idea. Elmo doesn't live in my room.)
Don't get me wrong. Both of these women are totally accomodating, and rarely say no when I request to borrow Elmo. But it is not convenient. To use it, I need to have the other teacher take her stuff off of it, roll it into my room, shift my tables to make room for it, log on and say a little prayer that it will recognize me and let me open the websites that I need since I am not the primary user, etc... All in a few minutes time. So I don't do ask for Elmo too often.

Here's what I DO have:

I DO have a good old old-fashioned CHALKBOARD (yup! chalk!) except it is in such an awkward location that I only use it for info such as who's work I am missing. I can't use it for actively teaching.

I DO have a rolling white board, with cork on the flip side. I use it every day. I got it barely a year ago and it has made life much much easier.

I DO now have a scanner. It's brand new, and I'm just figuring it out.

I DO have Photoshop Elements on my school computer, but haven't had the time to adequately play with it yet. It was recently installed, and I don't have it at home, and have a strong desire to use it but have no access to instruction.

Obviously, I DO have a computer and printer, though my printer thinks it is out of paper after every sheet I print, so multipage documents mean I need to stand there and push the amber button after each page pops out. UGH.

SO.

I have been teaching for (yikes) 34 years, and got along just fine without all this fancy technology until now. But suddenly I feel like I've been left in the dust. Why should I feel like I need this stuff to do a good job? All my kids really want to do when they walk in the art room is dip their hands into papier-mache goo or paint anyhow. They'd rather be working hands-on during their art time, than watching videos, but I know there are opportunities they miss.

I expect to be retiring in a year and 1/2, so I don't want to and haven't asked for major expenditures for new technology in my classroom. NY state, where I teach, is in tough financial times and I don't want to ask for $$ to be spent on me that is non-essential. Besides, the person who replaces me when I retire might prefer something completely different, and I'd hate to see expensive technology go unused.

I have a beautiful room, lots of good practical storage including a walk-in closet, good working sinks, nice tables, lots of bulletin boards, and a great view out my window. Do I really need this other stuff?

Am I an obsolete dinosaur?