Transportation (aka: Currier & Ives) introduction

Docent Art Program Halifax, MA 10-09

TRANSPORTATION
(All by Currier & Ives)

This unit holds promise of many possibilities for discussion. Artistically speaking these prints are each very colorful and well composed. This means that for each of the pictures we can ask the students what the colors and placement of the shapes does for the eye flow patterns as we look at these pictures. We can ask the children to describe for us how their eyes move across and over the pictures. After this exercise we should give credit to the artists for these design decisions. We can ask the students what they know about the lithography process and its importance. (Our neighboring town of Plympton used to have its own lithography or printing business, Halliday Lithograph. Perhaps their parents worked there.) They may know the name without understanding the meaning.
Currier and Ives ended up being more like successful businessmen than artists. There were many more people involved in producing these prints who do not receive the credit. We can help to give some of these anonymous people credit now. Currier and Ives would commission an artist to draw or paint a picture of some current event, much in the same way that courtroom artists and photographers do now. Then, if Currier and Ives approved of the picture, it would be copied (the drawing part) onto a special stone. The stone would be used to print the lines of the drawing and then the stone would be prepared again for each color to be used. Each color was applied and printed separately over the last color, requiring careful attention to lines and details. The artists were men and women. Almost all of the colorists were women.
You can give the above information at the beginning as an introduction or you can begin showing the prints and then weave it in when you feel the moment is right. Usually, I would go with the second method. In this case, however, I feel it is a good introduction with history lessons that apply so keenly to the topic of time. How has printing changed over time? Has labor changed over time? Are women still the “cheap labor” on a production line in a factory or are prints made differently now? Has reporting and informing the public of important events changed over time? How so?Transportation: We can always encourage the students to keep in mind that art works can be enjoyed in many, many different ways using all our senses and all our abilities. We can look at it, we can read about it, we can listen to music that harmonizes with it, we can use our math skills with counting and measuring, we can use our scientific knowledge by investigating how things were accomplished; what made them work. History is learned and understood as we reveal changes that have occurred over time. The possibilities are endless. All can be encouraged.