Connecting to The Dayton Art Institute’s Permanent Collection

The prints exhibited in LIMITED EDITIONS: 20th-Century Prints from the Ponderosa Collection are only part of the Ponderosa corporate collection that was acquired by The Dayton Art Institute in 1987. The rest of the collection includes paintings and sculptures by many of the same artists. After viewing the prints in the special exhibition, visit the museum’s contemporary gallery 201 on the second floor and look for these important objects from the Ponderosa collection:

LOOK FOR: Geometric Mouse – Scale C by Claes Oldenburg

THINK ABOUT:

Recall the print you saw by Oldenburg, Untitled (Geometric Mouse). It was based on drawings and notes using the same mouse theme. One of the “sketches” in the print suggested a large-scale mouse sculpture perched on a hillside. The sculpture you see here uses the same motif. Oldenburg had several sculptures (multiples) made of this same mouse head but in different sizes. Some are very small like this example; some are quite large. For example, a “scale A” mouse is about 12 feet high. The Dayton Art Institute’s Geometric Mouse is “scale C” and is about 2 feet high. Look at the small sculpture carefully. Why is it called “geometric” mouse and not just “mouse”? Imagine a giant-sized version of this sculpture. How does the size affect how we relate to the sculpture? Geometric Mouse has some moving parts. Can you find them? How do moving parts change the sculpture? Can you remember anything from the “sketches” in the print that might indicate moving parts?

TRY THIS:

Think of an animal that you like. Make some simple sketches of the head, reducing it to geometric shapes. Imagine that The Dayton Art Institute has asked you to produce a large sculpture of your idea to be placed out on the lawn near the museum. Make a small scale cardboard version of your idea. How big would the final sculpture be? Does it also have moving parts? What color will it be?

LOOK FOR: Homage to Painting by Roy Lichtenstein

THINK ABOUT:

In the mid-1960s, at the height of the Pop Art movement, Lichtenstein did a series of paintings that comically imitated the gestural brushstrokes of the Abstract Expressionists (look next door in Gallery 202 for some examples of Abstract Expressionist art). This sculpture is a three-dimensional take-off on one of those series paintings by Lichtenstein. Can you see the brushstrokes? Compare this sculpture to the six Bull prints you saw. What similarities can you identify?

TRY THIS:

The Bull Profile Series begins with a very realistic image of a bull and reduces it to simple abstract shapes. Homage to Painting also simplifies the shape of brushstrokes. Select some interesting images from magazine ads. Reduce them to simple shapes. Use crayons, colored pencils or tempera to make a “Lichtenstein” inspired composition using his black outline and primary color scheme.

LOOK FOR: American Indian Series (Russell Means) by Andy Warhol

THINK ABOUT:

Russell Means is a real person, an Oglala Sioux Indian from South Dakota whose face and name were in the news in the 1970s when he led the symbolic takeover of Wounded Knee, the location of the massacre of 150 Sioux men, women and children in 1890. Warhol used this “celebrity” face and made a portrait by enlarging a snapshot photograph of Means, screenprinting it onto a large canvas, and embellishing it with acrylic paint. Russell Means was done as a multiple. Sometimes Warhol would display the multiples together in a line or a grid, much like the Myths series are displayed in the exhibition. What is the difference between the prints in the exhibition and this painting? If Warhol would produce a similar portrait today, whose “celebrity” face would he use?

TRY THIS:

Ask someone to take a close-up digital photograph of your “celebrity” face. Shine a bright light on one side to create distinctive shadows. Download the image to a computer and print it in black and white. Enlarge the image on a photocopier and make five copies. Using colored pencils, markers and paint, manipulate and embellish the copies to make each a distinctive self-portrait. Display them together in a row. What do these self-portraits say about you as a person?