EXPLORE THE ART!
PAINTED LANDSCAPE – interactive exhibition in BIBIANA, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Children „come into the picture“ with the central perspective.
Landscape is a style that looms large in the history of art. Like the other styles, such as portraiture and still life, landscape has its own specifics and conventions, that reflect the artist’s point of view and knowledge of the world and time that he or she lived in. Artists use paintings to draw us into the very feeling that they wish to convey with their art work. They invite us to take a walk through the landscape so we can experience the unique moments that are so variable and hard to capture.
The interactive exhibition Painted Landscape was in some way following the exhibition Krajinohra (Landgame). However, Krajinohra (Landgame) didn´t aim to expose the artworks in chronological order. In contrary, chronological order is the basis of our exhibition. We showed children how the landscape changed in different periods of its development. However, this was meant to be a dialogue with children about art and through art.
We selected the art works from the history of art and communicated with the children about what was, is and probably will be the landscape in context of fine art and art language, through the reproductions of the art works and through the texts and activities. We discussed how the artist managed to capture the landscape even as it changed rapidly in the cycle of life and time. We showed them that the creation and the perception of the landscape can be an entertaining experience, while we „take a walk through the art works“ together.
Children feel natural elements “on their skin” through holes in the painting. Batteries represented the fire, stones and sand were the ground, water in a pot was water and fans represented the air.
The landscape has its own characteristics. Just in this art style there are several characteristics, but not every painting has them. It is determined by the time in which the painting originated and, of course, the artist who created it. Each image has its own content, form and specific informative value. The landscape has an expressive atmosphere, which provokes our senses and emotions.
The landscape has unique characteristics in every period of time and therefore we approximated the individual sections of the most significant characteristics to the viewer. E.g. perspective was established in the 14th century, and so we talked about perspective for those art works which were created in the 14th century. Other landscapes have a significant atmosphere that are informed by the perspective in the artwork.
For each key author we generally picked one work of art and we exposed its reproduction along with the information about its name and origin. Selected art works corresponded to the selected chapter and activities bound to them underlined their uniqueness and offered children interactive “hands-on activities“.
Texts in the exhibition contained a lot of information and its proper presentation approximated a theoretical knowledge about the landscape to the children. Framework texts invite us to become acquainted with the landscape not only on the art works, but all around us and inside of us.
The exhibition was installed in Bibiana in Bratislava and in Tatranská galéria in Poprad, Slovakia. It is ready to be installed in other institutions.
Katarína Kosánová – BIBIANA, International House of Art for Children
