Romania Clasa a IX-a Visual Education
Chapters: 5
1. Art and representation
The 2D image
- Visual Literacy: Reading Images Step by Step – Visual literacy means reading pictures as carefully as we read words. Use four steps: look, describe, analyse, interpret. Describe what you see (people, objects, the three planes: foreground, middle ground, background). Analyse the formal elements: colour, light, line, shape, framing and composition (rule of thirds, leading lines, point of view). Interpret: what feeling or message does it give, and who made it for whom? Remember that framing hides what is off-screen, and that a caption or text next to an image changes how we read it.
2. Art and technique
Techniques, materials, tools
- Printmaking – Printmaking makes images by moving ink from a prepared surface (the matrix or plate) onto paper with pressure. There are four main families: relief (ink on raised parts: woodcut, linocut), intaglio (ink in cut grooves: engraving, etching, drypoint), planographic (flat surface, grease and water: lithography) and stencil (ink through openings: screen printing). The print is a mirror image. A plate can give an edition of matching prints; a monotype gives only one.
3. Art and mentality: art history
2D space through history
- Art Movements: How Art Changed from the 1800s to Today – An art movement is a group of artists who share ideas and a style for a time. In the 19th century, Neoclassicism admired calm order, Romanticism showed strong feeling, Realism painted everyday life, and Impressionism caught light and moments. Around 1900, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Expressionism used bold colour; Cubism broke objects into many views. After 1914 came Dada and Surrealism, then Abstract Expressionism. From the 1950s, Pop Art used popular culture, Minimalism used simple shapes, Conceptual art put the idea first, Arte Povera used poor everyday materials, and happenings and performance made the body the artwork. Non-Western art, from Japanese prints to African sculpture, fed many of these changes. The way artists show 3D space on a flat surface also changed: flat, then perspective, then many views at once.
4. Art and innovation
Modern image media
- Digital Art and Media Art – Analogue art uses physical materials; digital art is made and stored as numbers. A raster image is a grid of pixels (resolution = number of pixels); a vector image stores points and curves and stays sharp at any size. Digital tools add layers, undo, special brushes and pen tablets. Artists often combine analogue and digital: draw, scan, edit, print, then paint again. Media art uses screens, light, sound, code and interaction as materials: video art, projection mapping, interactive installations, generative art, web and game art. Each medium has features that change how a work is made, shown and experienced.
5. Art and community
Cultural heritage
- Cultural Heritage – Cultural heritage is everything a community receives from the past, values today and wants to pass on: buildings and monuments, objects in museums, languages, music, dance, festivals, crafts, food and knowledge. Tangible heritage can be touched (immovable like temples and bridges, movable like coins and manuscripts); intangible heritage is lived and practised; natural heritage covers special landscapes and wildlife. Heritage gives identity, teaches history, brings income through tourism and links people across cultures. It is threatened by weathering, pollution, crowds, careless development, neglect and conflict, and is protected by conservation, laws, museums, heritage lists, education and local communities.