Schools

Sit down and read
Everyday objects and materials entered the world of art in a big way at the start of the last century, thanks to some great stylistic innovations by such as Braque, Picasso and Duchamp, leading to the present-day Conceptual Art, represented in Italy by the major experience of Arte Povera as represented by some exemplary works by artists like Michelangelo Pistoletto and Mario Merz.
Unthinkable materials began to be used to create fresh perspectives for art production which, emancipating itself increasingly from technical aspects, began to take on a valence of pure idea: Art as Idea as Idea (J. Kosuth). Thoughts, ideas and metaphors find symbolic form in the use of de-located materials; in other words, taken from normal life and transferred into the space of art.

ACTIVITIES De-localised objects removed from time (dailies from the day before) and from the office or schoolroom, saved from destruction with a minimal gesture translating an ethical stance into contemporaneousness, the social responsibility that now forms part of every human action. A shifting of meaning that sweeping aside everyday custom, seeks and finds an unimaginable function beneath a new form.
The students, divided into groups, will have newspapers and Sellotape to hand, very few rules, and each with his own ideas will be able to compare with others and so become further enriched. The newspapers will in this case be illegible because twisted in rolls forming modular elements to be assembled together, becoming a simple gesture, a creative material in the pure state. Overturning its original function, its flat and two-dimensional surface, organised into signs and endowed with its own meaning, becomes a three-dimensional object that is the result of a collective work.

RELEVANT ARTISTS Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, Mario Merz, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Claes Oldenburg, Ettore Spalletti, Michelangelo Pistoletto.

The word takes form

How does it happen that we speak of the world, that our words attach themselves to the world? (L. Wittgenstein) The history of mankind begins with an articulate language. In becoming writing, the word impressed on any support – stone, parchment, paper – acquires a specific expressive force. With writing, language assumes a material form and can be transmitted independently of the person who produced it. The material nature of the word takes form in definitive fashion with printing, to guarantee all the possibility of reading a message.

ACTIVITIES The artists who have used and use the potential of language and the changeability of the word over time. In the workshop, through plays of words, fragments, recompositions, metaphors and contaminations, it will be possible to test the complexity and semantic and other wealth of the relationship between the word and artistic expressions of the present day.
The word, thought, pronounced, becomes form: it expands, filling the physical space of the workshop to become sculpture. The plasticity and ductility of aluminium makes it possible to use long strips as a material for writing like with a fluid ink, like flowing water, writing, becoming light. A collective activity, almost a poetry reading, in a striving for a shared sentiment of appropriation and exchange. Aluminium supplied by CiA1.

RELEVANT ARTISTS Bruce Nauman, Mario Merz, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth.

Art and mathematics
“The snail rotates its spiral around the light pivots of the numbers 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 forming a GOLDEN SPIRAL! The foot jumps and compresses its bones into its own space, compressing its perfect bone kernels into the form of the numbers 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 and the naked kernels shine in the sun, the bared bones of the pine cone! 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 “ (Mario Merz).

ACTIVITIES Is it possible to link up the artist’s studio with that of the mathematician?
From Euclides, Polykleitos, Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello, Leonardo da Vinci and on to Arte Povera, Minimal Art and Conceptual Art, and including Bauhaus and De Stijl, art has always been full of references to the world of mathematics.
Mario Merz’s Fibonacci sequence, Giuseppe Penone’s propagations, the perspective cube of Luciano Fabro, the rectangles of Sol LeWitt and the circles of Richard Long are just some of the many starting points that can give rise to a fascinating and timely analysis of the presence of scientific, mathematical and alchemical theories in contemporary artistic production. It is thus not possible to separate the existence of artistic creation from the study of the so-called exact sciences.

RELEVANT ARTISTS Mario Merz, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Giuseppe Penone, Luciano Fabro

Art Supermarket  
In how many ways do we unwittingly consume art?
What reciprocal play of quotations links art to the world of mass communication?
In contemporary Western society, whose basic needs have already been satisfied, a surplus has to be created, new needs and new desires. Selling a promise, packaging an idea. Playing on the fundamental role of the window on to the world of entertainment, the word ‘seduction’ becomes the common denominator linking art and advertising: seducing by hiding the contents, revealing the fundamental importance of the container, of the packaging. Leading the observer to fall in love with the expectations preceding the unveiling of a mystery.
Art Supermarket is an itinerary arising from the society of mass production as told by W. Benjamin and A. Warhol, by the loss of meaning, by the construction of new myths. New cult objects, new cult destinations, new officiants and new buyers.

ACTIVITIES From an analysis of the relationship created in the 20th century between the image and the observer, in the workshop we move on to the observation of packaging’s role in visual communication. The final action is the creation of a “garment” for that most loved of containers: the tin.

RELEVANT ARTISTS Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Maurizio Cattelan, Piero Manzoni, Haim Stainbach, Vik Muniz, Barbara Kruger 

Living the senses

The body functions as a marvellous sounding board, taking on all the stimuli from outside and translating them into experience. The senses, the natural go-between between body and environments, constitute the first and fundamental medium for knowledge and awareness.
The works of some contemporary artists are planned to involve the observer not only from a visual viewpoint but from a multi-sensorial one too.

ACTIVITIES At school and at home, with the help of teachers, materials are collected with varying tactile qualities and smells (the selection of spices and dried herbs is recommended).
In the workshop, the available materials are laid out over modular surfaces. These modules are assembled to create garments/armour, the composition of which is achieved by organised the materials collected earlier, acts as a stimulus for the senses. AIMS To activate synaesthesia, to create relations between different senses.
To stimulate the system of perception and involve the sensorial faculties to explore awareness of the surrounding environment. KEY WORDS Body, matter, sensation, awareness.

RELEVANT ARTISTS Mario Airò, Giovanni Anselmo, Massimo Bartolini, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Maurizio Cattelan, Olafur Eliasson, Rebecca Horn, Emily Jaicir, Giuseppe Penone, Gilberto Zorio.

Space, light, colour

Brilliant, splendid, dazzling, burning, noisy, proud, strident, dynamic, warm, cold, harmonious, and also prismatic, kaleidoscopic, variegated, illuminated, pale, veiled. Freed from the function of imitating reality, colour fascinated and charms contemporary artists for its ability to evoke and produce meanings, mental images, deep resonances, fresh points of view, independent narrative structures. From the material colour rooted in the vitality of the world to the symbolic dimension and on to absolute fields of colour, to monochrome as sign of the conquest of all, able to contain the immense universe around us. The white immobility of Kasimir Malevič (Sail forward! The White, free infinite chasm precedes us) and the depth of the black in Lucio Fontana (Beyond the galaxies lies the prehistoric black from which we receive the dazzle of the stars).

ACTIVITIES Starting with the notion of the primary importance of light, and passing through the use of colour as breaking down of the light spectrum and as matter, the chromatic ranges and perceptive effects will be explored before arriving at a definition of the relationship between space and colour, form, outline and sign. A chromatic sensitivity will be developed in a striving for a language of colours, based on contrasts and comparisons.
KEY WORDS Light, colour, perception, monochromatism/polychromy, dynamism, form.
RELEVANT ARTISTS Franz Ackermann, Nicola De Maria, Olafur Eliasson, Sol LeWitt, Michelangelo Pistoletto.

WALL DRAWING The realisation of a wall drawing may be the concluding event of the itinerary. Through the revival of indoor or outdoor spaces in the school buildings, children can reappropriate the places in which they spend their day in a creative manner.

Organisation of the activity

ENTIRE DAY AT THE MUSEUM Guided visit and workshops for the whole day from 10 am to about 3.30 pm. The Museum has space indoors for lunch should the weather be poor.

PRICE € 6.00 per pupil. Free of charge for accompanying teachers.

ENTIRE DAY AT THE MUSEUM – INTERDISCIPLINARY ITINERARIES  Sit and read, The word takes form, Art and mathematics, Art Supermarket  Illustrated lesson, guided visit and workshops over the full day from 10 am to about 3.30 pm.

PRICE € 10.00 per pupil. Free of charge for accompanying teachers.

HALF DAY AT THE MUSEUM Guided visit and workshop in the morning or afternoon. Morning from 10 am to about 12 noon. Afternoon from 1.30/2 pm to 3.30/4 pm.

PRICE € 4.00 per pupil. Free of charge for accompanying teachers.

INFORMATION AND BOOKINGS Education Department Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Piazza Mafalda di Savoia 10098 Rivoli (TO), Italy www.castellodirivoli.org
Tel. 011/9565213
educa@castellodirivoli.org