A circus of art through the eyes of a clown ! A Study Guide Prepared by:

DEAR TEACHERS: This performance guide and education material accompanies and reinforces the performances and workshops by Jim Jackson. Included is information about Jim and his performance, information about educational concepts used in his show and workshops, and information and activities to assist teachers and students in preparation for a performance or with post performance follow-up.

Download this entire study guide as a printable .pdf file

World-class clown Jim Jackson invites you to laugh out loud! This new family show brings to life a circus of fine art using original puppetry, magic, juggling, giant soap bubbles, and at least 99 art jokes that entertain adults as well as children. Become a part of the hilarious performance art as experienced through the eyes, ears, and nose of this post-modern clown bent on deconstructing a very serious world.

ABOUT THE PERFORMER
Jim Jackson grew up in the mountains of Colorado. His first experience as an actor and clown came in the second grade when he produced the play, "Noah's Ark" complete with a large refrigerator-box ark and spray-bottle rain. The production came to a hilarious and catastrophic end when a small riot broke out among the animals due to overcrowding in the ark. The result was a badly broken cardboard ark and considerable over-acting by the spray bottle crew.

In 1976 Jim joined the Royal Lichtenstein Circus and for five years he traveled throughout the U.S. and other countries performing as a juggler and acrobat in small traditional tent circuses called "mud shows" because the performance ring inside the tent turned to mud when it rained. With over 400 circus performances a year, Jim also learned high wire walking, unicycling, balancing, magic, and clowning.

A change came in 1981 when a bad fall from the high wire left Jim unable to perform for six months. After his recovery, he created original one-man productions for the theater using his experience as a mime and clown. These have won him international recognition. His solo clown performances in The Impossible Balance, Mimic Sole, and now Art Guffaw have earned him the title of "Master of Disaster." When not on the road, Jim lives in Manitou Springs, Colorado and teaches tricks to Tati the Wonder Dog. Jim thanks his two daughters, Julia and Caitlin, for giving him the best jokes.

What is a Clown?
"A clown is a poet, who is also an orangutan!"

Mr. Art Guffaw is a clown character created by Jim Jackson. He wears a red nose, painter overalls, funny shoes, and a small black hat. His adventures in the art studio are fantastic and make us laugh, which is what clowns have been doing for thousands of years all over the world.

A clown is a living cartoon, a treasured memory from childhood, a performing artist, a storyteller who brings smiles and laughter to audiences of all ages. A successful clown must make ordinary things funny and transport the audience in to a fantasy world for a short time. To do this a clown might use skits, juggling, magic, balancing, puppetry, mime, balloons, and unicycling. Telling a joke is another tool of the clown, but it is important to tell it in a very funny way. Clowns are geniuses masquerading as fools. They are spontaneous and old-fashioned. They are innocent, cunning, simple, and complex.

Clowning Throughout History
Clowns have been entertaining human society for centuries and are found in one form or another in every culture. The first recorded information about clowns came from the Egyptians about 3000 BC. Ancient Greece and Rome celebrated them also. The town and court activities of the Middle Ages and Renaissance included clown entertainment and shows. The best known were the juggling and singing "jesters" in unique and colorful costumes. They often had greater freedoms (legally and socially) than others at court, yet there are stories about punishment for going too far. Along with songs and jokes, their acts included magic, juggling, acrobatics, storytelling, puppetry, tightrope walking, and fire eating, and working with animals. During the Renaissance, these entertainers became theater performers and in certain shows distinctive performer personalities like the Harlequin and the Pierrot developed.

The word "clown" did not exist until 16th century and it originated as a way to describe a clumsy country oaf. Traveling shows began using zany, baffoon characters to wander around the town and draw people into an arena for a main attraction. The most famous theater clown was an Englishmen named Joseph Grimaldi. Born into a family of entertainers, he started on the London stage at age 2. From 1781 until 1828, when he retired, his stage name "Joey" was synonymous with "clown." With the passage of laws that restricted street theater performances, silent performances (pantomime) which were not restricted, were invented. Clowns have used mime ever since.

Clown Characters

MIME CLOWN: This clown never talks, but uses the face, hands, and body to express the story. Sometimes a mime clown will use imaginary props, choosing to juggle imaginary balls rather than the real thing. Trademark features include exaggerated, bigger-than-life movements and a silly way of walking. The most famous mime clown was Marcel Marceau. He could tell whole stories without speaking.

AUGUST: (Pronounced "aw-goost") This word is from German and means stupid, clumsy, or "buffoon." The august performs in a childlike, slapstick style that we laugh at because we see our own silly behavior reflected. This is the clown who may get a pie in the face or get slapped by the straight man. Trademark features include exaggerated makeup, bright over-sized clothes, huge shoes, and clumsy movements.

THE HARLEQUIN: This is the liveliest and oldest clown character. In 1570s he began as a servant and brunt of the jokes, but grew more sophisticated. Irregular patches on costume became patterned and symmetrical with blue, red, and green triangles linked by yellow braid. Face is often half-masked. Trademark features are the costume and a mixture of naive and cunning, witty and stupid. (Picture after Picasso's Harlequin)

WHITEFACE CLOWNS: THESE are quieter more refined clowns who are the boss clowns. They take their roles very seriously as the "straight men" clowns who throw custard pies or give a slap. Trademark features include mainly white makeup, beautiful costumes with spangles or one-color pajamas-like suit with a white ruff, a small cap or conical hats, and serious, dignified behavior. This tradition began in 16th century Europe with the character Pierrot who developed from servant/baffoon to a more clever, cunning clown. (Picture after Picasso's Pierrot)

CHARACTER CLOWNS: These original clowns are comic characters patterned after real persons giving the audience their unique perspective and view of the world. They often take many years to develop. Trademark features include individuality. Many portray a specific lifestyle, profession, or exaggerated stereotype. Early comedians in Hollywood like Buster Keaton, Keystone Cops, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges were considered character clowns. W.C. Fields began as a tramp juggler and Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" is one of the best examples. Perhaps the best-known circus tramp is Emmett Kelly's "Weary Willie." Although, Kelly received more media coverage, Otto Griebling's tramp clown character of the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus days was outstanding.

 Creating a Clown Character

Physical Comedy

Laughter

He recovered and wrote a book about the value of humor. Subsequent research has shown many things about the benefits of frequent, hearty laughter. Mr. Cousins called it "internal jogging." Mark Twin also tells us, "The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that's laughter." There is medical evidence that laughter produces important chemical reactions that support the immune system by stimulating endorphins in the brain. It improves our moods, reduces our stress, helps us fight infection by strengthening our immune system, and reduces pain. Vigorous laughing increases the heart rate, deepens the breathing rate, and uses muscles in the face, stomach, and diaphragm. Laughing 100 times roughly equals 15 minutes on an exercise bike.

Laughter is a complex cognitive and physiological response to the human experience. It is as essential as water and air. Humor is linked to our humanity and even our survival. Laughter can also have a dark side. It can serve as a bond to bring people together, but it can also be used as a weapon to humiliate and ostracize its victims. Plato studied laughter because of its power to disrupt the politics of the state and its association with superiority. The saying, "Laugh and the world laughs with you" (Ella Wilcox, 1850-1919) suggests another property of laughter. It is contagious. When we hear laughter, we tend to laugh along. Why do you suppose television sitcoms have laugh tracks?

Humor

Imagination/Creativity...

Creativity is the ability to create. Imagination is what we use to do it. It is a process, a way of thinking. "Creativity, it has been said, consists of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know...Hence, to think creatively we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted." (George Kneller, Art and Science of Creativity, 1965). Creativity and imagination may be hard to define; but we know it when we see it, experience it, use it. It happens when all the key elements come together. We call this the "Ah-Ha!" or Eureke! effect. Stories about it have been around since the story of Archimedes' sudden insight (while in the bathtub) about how to determine the relative quantities of gold and silver. Eureka means, "I have found it!"

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. - Albert Einstein

Imagination / Creativity is:

Seeing in new ways
Challenging assumptions
Recognizing patterns and connections
Taking risks
Using chance
Constructing networks

Educators ask if imagination can be learned? It has been studied, analyzed, dissected. It certainly can be cultivated, just as it can be "squelched." Many roads lead to imagination. Most often people report feeling the most creative when involved with the arts. Howard Gardner, Harvard professor of psychology and education, states: "By a curious twist, the word art and creativity have become closely linked in our society. (Gardner, Creating Minds, 1993)

What is its value in society/ human civilization?
We associate creativity with doing and experimenting.

It encourages:

Self-confidence
Non-conformity
Exploration and thinking with logic and beyond logic
Exposure to new and old ideas/concepts/knowledge
Respect
Novelty

These works of art are part of the Art Guffaw performance.

American Gothic by Grant Wood

Grant Wood was a Midwestern "Regionalist" artist who was considered truly American, although 15th century European artists' attention to detail and his mother's Chinese blue-willow dinnerware with scenes of hills and trees were the major influences on his work. In American Gothic, using his sister and his dentist as his model, Wood makes a statement about ideal Midwesterners. He poses them with a farmhouse in Gothic style to imply a powerful religious element. The rigid pose and straight vertical line suggest unchanging ways. Compare the clear forward-looking eyes of the male to the less calm sideways glance of the woman. Notice the repetition of vertical lines throughout the painting. What does this communicate? Is the work heroic or humorous? Is it and homage to plain folk?

 Girl Before a Mirror by Pablo Picasso

Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain. His father was a painter and art teachers. His mother was known for her wit, sensitivity, and intelligence. He has been the most revolutionary and productive artist of the 20th century, living a very long and rich life. He died in 1973 leaving the art world forever changed because of his work. Picasso mastered realist painting early in his life, then moved to classical painting, and on to abstract painting and collage. He is credited with inventing "Cubism" and was interested in designing sets for the ballet. Early in his life he was fascinated by the circus and many performers were his friends and subjects for his art. He painted images of saltimbanques (men, women and children who held many jobs in the circus), Harlequins, Pierrots, jesters, acrobats, and other members of the circus family. This image of the girl looking at herself in the mirror is a modern recreation of a traditional "vanity image" of a girl seeing her death image in a mirror. The mirror is of the type called in French psyche, the Greek word for soul. This relates to the popular myth that a mirror has a magic property and can reflect the inner self, rather than the outward image of the person who gazes into it. Compare the left image of the girl and its reflection on the right of the seemingly older, more worldly woman.

Self-Portrait by Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert in Holland in 1853, the oldest of six children. His father and grandfather were both ministers. Three of his uncles were art dealers. Van Gogh tried both professions, art dealer and minister, and thought himself a failure at both before he took up painting. In 1887 he went to Paris and came under the influence of Japanese art and his contemporaries Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Serat, and Gauguin. He became fascinated by color and adopted the "Impressionists" colors and style of painting. He moved to southern France in 1888. Here his worked leaned toward an "Expressionistic" style filled with complementary colors. After a long tension-filled visit by Gauguin and a violent confrontation, Van Gogh sliced off a piece of his ear lobe. His health suffered and he was hospitalized. He did continue to paint and the great works of this time were vivid, unsettling, and turbulent. His style was too unusual for the people of his time to accept it. His fragile mental health collapsed and in 1890 he shot himself. He had sold only one painting. Today his prints are familiar and beloved by all of us. His original art is priceless. His face in this self-portrait reflects the tension of his life. The lines are twisted and restless in the background, on his coat, in his hair, and in his face. The paint is roughly applied, giving the feeling of texture. It is unsettling to gaze for very long at any one place on or in the painting. Van Gogh's eyes are especially strong. Each seems to stare in different directions, suggesting pain, strength, and a man in torment.

Still Life by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Arcimboldo was born in Milan, Italy in 1527 as a member of the Milanese nobility; however, he spent 26 years as a court painter in the service of the Hapsburgs in Prague. In the court of Rudolph II he was artistic advisor and organizer of princely entertainment. As something of a musician, he used color in an original method of musical transcription. In 1587 he retired to Milan and in 1591 was made a Count Palatine by Rudolph. His bizarre portraits in which faces are composed of flowers, fruits, objects, or animals are captivating. Art critics have even credited him with preceding "Surrealism" by hundreds of years. This image is Arcimboldo's portrait of Rudolf II as the ancient god Vertumnus, the Roman god of vegetation and metamorphosis.
An entire year of plant life has gathered here in harmony to praise the Emperor. Rudolf II valued this picture highly.

What is Art?
Pablo Picasso said, "To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ART?
To create beauty
To provide decoration
To reveal truth
To immortalize
To express religious values
To express fantasy
To stimulate the intellect
To fire the emotions
To create order and harmony
To express chaos
To record experience
To reflect the society and culture
To protest injustice and raise social consciousness
To elevate the commonplace
To meet the needs of the artist

For centuries, artists have tried to make their work depict the real world the way it looks, much like a photograph. People still judge paintings on how realistic they look. With the invention of the camera and film, photographs actually could capture the images. So in the 20th century, artists experimented with their subject matter, media, and the audiences reactions. The artwork was no longer a "window" to the real world, but a reality on its own. The artists expressed ideas, feelings, moods, fantasy, and emotions. The colors, shapes, lines, textures of the canvas became important. Abstract, non-representational art developed. Today many artists reject that artwork need to "look like" anything apart from itself. It has its own reality.

"You must treat a work of art like a great man: stand before it and wait patiently until it deigns to speak" Schopenhauer. Approach a piece of art, to establish a silent dialogue with the it. We bring our experiences, imagination, expectations, likes and dislikes, and even our culture to the experience. Some pieces we like, some take longer to appreciate. What is the best way to look at art? Engage our senses and our mind s. React and question. This involves paying attention to the image, the subject , its scale, its surface and media, the artist and his or her choices. Before passing judgment on it, first look hard at it. See it from different points of view. Ask questions about it and search for a variety of possible answers.

THE FOLLOWING ARE THE STAGES FOR LOOKING AT ART.
"The truth is we can only make our pictures speak." Vincent Van Gogh

Describe Look at color, shape, line. What medium did the artist use? Describe the brush strokes or the sculpting material. Describe the subject matter. HOW did the artist make the work?

Analyze How has the artist arranged the shapes, colors , and lines? Look for textures, patterns, repititions. What choices did the artist make? WHY did the artist choose the settings and subjct matter?

Interpret Ask what does this painting mean? Each of us brings our own personal experiences and cultural ideologies when we look at art. At this stage make a statement about the meaning of the artist's expression to you the viewer.

Evaluate Finally, arrive at a judgement about the artist's expression/artwork. Use all the previous information. Actually SEE the art, don't just look at it. Do you like it and WHY?

LIGHT, COLOR, AND SHADOWS

PHYSICS OF COLOR
We need light to see. In darkness nothing is visible; the objects appear black or shades of gray. Therefore it follows that all color depends on light. White light is the presence of all colors. Black is the absence of all colors.

What is the physics of color? Color is one part of our visual experience. It is energy waves made visible. It is the light spectrum that we see: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. (Memory device - ROY G. BIV) These seven basic colors, in proper combination with each other, make up what we see as white.

What makes color? How do we see color? White reflects light; black absorbs light. Objects that appear to us to have color reflect some light, but absorb some of the spectral bands of color. When a beam of white light hits an object that has color (ex. a yellow shirt), some of the light is reflected and some is absorbed. The rest bounces off in all directions and is the energy that we see as the color of the object. That is, an object which appears to be yellow when submitted to a white light source, reflects the part of the spectral band that contains yellow, and absorbs the wave lengths containing red, orange, green, blue, indigo, and violet. An object that appears to be white when submitted to a white light source is reflecting all of the colors of the spectral band.

It is not the properties of the light energy, but the physical properties of the pigmented surface of the object that determine how the beams bounce off. Think about what makes the ocean blue or what creates the colors of the sunrises or sunsets. Is it the colors in the light waves or the properties of the earth's surfaces?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOR
How does color communicate? It stimulates feelings and decorates our world. It can set a mood or a feeling. Colors make us feel cool or warm. Our reactions to colors are due to the effects of the color rays on our nervous system and because of the associations of color with personal and cultural experiences. Colors can be symbolic. What are our associations with red, blue, yellow, green, and purple?

COLOR AS AN ARTIST'S TOOL
How do artists use color? Colors are one of the tools of artists. Colors define shapes. Colors control our eyes in viewing art and attract our attention. Colors unify a work through repetition. Color tells us about season, time of day, and even culture in a work. Colors communicate about how the artist feels about the setting, the subject, and the action of the work.

THE COLOR WHEEL - PRIMARY COLORS, COMPLIMENTARY COLORS,
The colors of the color wheel are obtained by bending the color bands of the color spectrum into a circle. The color wheel helps us understand the relationships among the colors. The colors opposite each other or side-by-side have relationships. Any two colors that lie directly opposite each other on the color wheel are complementary colors.

SHADOWS AND CREATING LIGHT AND SHADOWS IN ART.
A pair of complementary colors, when mixed together in equal parts produce a neutral gray, but each pair of complementary colors produces a different neutral gray. Artists use light and shadow to give 3-dimensional illusion on a 2-dimentsional surface. Leonardo Da Vinci discovered that a shadow is not visually black, it is the complementary color of the object that cast it.

A shadow is an area of shade or a dark image cast on a surface when an object or form intercepts light rays. Watch how shadows are changeable and can be identified by the shape of the objects that make them. Related language meanings: close constant companion, protector, the dark, gloom or doubt, unreality, ghost, spy

LINE

A line is one of the most important tools that an artist has to use and one of the most important elements to study when looking at a piece of art. Lines organize an artwork the way the backbone organizes the body. The direction of the lines pulls our eyes up a tree or jiggles along a picket fence. Arts use line to move the eye through and along the work. In almost every picture there is a dominant line that hold interest and stabilizes the composition. Repetition of line can give a work unity. Variation in line can make it interesting.

Lines have character and personality and can communicate emotion.

Horizontal lines are calm, quiet, restful
Vertical lines are bold, strong, stable
Thin lines can be delicate, timid, weak
Diagonal lines show action, falling, leaning, or growing
Pointed or jagged lines can express uncertainty or anger
Meandering lines are whimsical and happy
Flowing lines are graceful and mystical

 Read and act out the following poem

"What's in a Line?" by Leonard Kessler.

You can make thick or thin lines,
Dotted or blotted lines
Lines going up and lines going down
Hot jagged lines or
Lines that are cool
Lines that go splash right in a pool.
Your line can make a square
Or your line can make a round.
Your line can be fast
Or slow like a caterpillar
Down on the ground.
A line can move you like a swing
A line can be most anything.

Perception

Can you shift your perception to see two separate images? What do you see?

Art Guffaw Uses Bubbles!

The following recipe is the one used in the performance:
1 part dish washing liquid (Joy works well)
10 parts warm water
Small amount of glycerin (makes the bubbles stronger)
Mix together in a shallow pan.

SCIENCE
Ask scientific questions during the process.

Try 1 part dish liquid and 3 parts water. What is different?
Will other liquids create bubbles?
Add a little glycerin, which is available at most drug stores. How does it affect the bubbles? It makes them last longer.
Can you think of any other liquid that would make the bubbles last longer? Test your theories.
Are the bubbles round? Why? Forces acting inside and outside the bubble are the same all over.
Describe the color, movement, size and shapes. How may colors are there in a bubble? Do the colors move and change?
Classify the bubbles by color, shape, size and how they are made.
Experiment with various tools: straws, pipe cleaner shapes, rubber band, string, pencil, paper cup.
Record changes in matter that occur while working with bubbles. Describe physical changes in science.

ART
Create a bubble painting. Add poster paint to bubble solution. Put the mixture in a bowl. As the student blows into the paint with a straw, a paint bubble dome is formed. Lay paper over the bubbles, they burst, it spatters paint on the paper.

MATH
Measure the height of a bubble blown on a tray. Measure how long it lasts. Graph the results. Make predictions and time the bubbles.
Record the lung capacity of the students. They must discover a way to determine lung capacity by blowing bubbles. Find the student with the largest lung capacity.

LANGUAGE SKILLS
Create a class story or individual stories using a bubble as a main character.
Record the science experiments in a book. It can be bubble shaped and illustrated.
Reads storybooks about bubbles.

 Terms to know

Abstract - Any art that does not attempt to portray anything in the natural world or that does consist entirely of patterns and shapes.
Chiaroscuro - An Italian word for the use of light and shadow to make objects look real and 3-dimensional in a painting.
Collage - A technique of pasting objects or pieces of material onto paper or canvas to create a picture
Complementary colors - A term used to describe the way colors work together when seen side by side. These colors appear on opposite sides of the color wheel.
Cubism - A style of art that attempts to show on a flat surface just how much space a 3-dimensional object really fills. Space is flattened and objects are represented with independent blocks of color.
Impressionism - This is an art style in France that was interested in how natural light effects occur in nature. Artists used paints that reflected bright colors in natural sunlight. Artists worked in the outdoors, not in studios.
Landscape - Landscapes are works of art that shows a scene outside in nature. Landscapes have existed since ancient times when pastoral scenes adorned the walls of homes and buildings. In the 17th century landscape painting reached its greatest popularity and by the 19th century it was a dominant form of art.
Medium - (Or media) The technique and materials from which an artist chooses to make a piece of art.
Mural - A painting made directly on the wall.
Narrative - Art work that tells a story. Elements include a setting, characters, action, and a story.
Portrait - Portraits provide a likeness of a person or animal made by drawing, painting, sculpting, or photography. They reveal something about the sitter's inner character or spirit. We respond to them because they reveal something about humanity as well. Portraiture can have many roles in private or public settings and these roles affect the way they are painted and the way they are look at.
Primary colors - Pure red, yellow, and blue. Basic colors from which all other colors are mixed.
Regionalism - A style of art in America during the 1920s and 1930s that dealt with subjects of everyday life in the Midwest. Like the literature of this era it dealt with the plight of the farmer and small town citizens. Each artist developed an individual and recognizable style.
Secondary colors - Orange, green, violet. These are the hues made by mixing primary colors.
Still lifes -A type of art that has as its subject inanimate objects. The English word "still life" comes from the Dutch stilleven, meaning "motionless nature." It has been considered the least significant of all the "genre" of art and for centuries, the only expression of art socially acceptable for women painters.
Surrealism - A style of art that developed after World War I and was a reaction to workshops and conditions in the world at the time. Key elements included irrational, ridiculous, and bizarre images; images encouraged by Freudian psychology and dreams; and yet highly realistic looking images.

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