What amazing artwork Salvador Dalí can inspire in primary school kids.
Yes, I am a believer that we should not rely on old, male and stale artists to lead our art curriculums; that we must search out the diversity in art and expose our children to it. However, if children are inspired by something, don't knock it. Resist the #Woke
Forgetting the paintings themselves, the 9 and 10 year old children I teach told me their understanding of Dalí's titles "The Persistence Of Memory" and his follow up "The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory" as they were life-long art critics and philosophers. Underestimate the mind of a child at your peril.
Then we moved on to the works in their visual glory. We learned how #Surrealism used #dislocation and #transformation to create other-worldy masterpieces. Kids understood both concepts as though they were born with an innate understanding of of how surrealism exists.
Then, instead of the cheese-inspired melting clocks , I asked my class to create repeated surreal symbols that tell the story of their young lives. We also learned how to use vanishing points to draw Dali's cuboid on the left of his great painting. The children were also inspired by the parodies and pastiches of Dali's work, especially #TheSimpsons one. (See below)
The outcomes were out of this universe. Dalí would have expected nothing less. If children can't undertsand the art of surrealism, who can?
Be surrealistic!
The children loved the parodies and pastiches of Dali's work too.
