Narcisa Marchioro is the author of the new book 13 Art Materials Children Should Know. She is a secondary school art teacher and she has written textbooks and CD-ROMs about art. She lives in Marano Vicentino, Vicenza, Italy.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for this book, and how
did you select the 13 materials to include?
A: The idea of this book came up as I was resuming some
school lessons which I had prepared in the past concerning the uses of
different materials in art. I adapted them to the format of Prestel’s famous
series, and they were very pleased to publish it.
Too often when people think about art they think about
paintings, colors, brushes: but art is much more than this. Mark Rothko once
said “The satisfaction of the creative impulse is a basic, biological need.”
And I think that thinking about art also in terms of different materials can
really explain this human need.
The prehistoric artist who almost 20,000 years ago
beautifully carved the spear-throwing tool that opens the book, used something
handy like a reindeer horn; exactly like the contemporary artist Vik Muniz (who
closes the book) did, with something that our society has in abundance:
garbage!
What the two artists share is exactly that basic artistic
impulse. So I selected the different materials keeping in mind the most popular
and frequent materials, but also the more unusual.
Q: The book includes many beautiful images--how were they
selected?
A: When I write about art, the selection of the images for
me is always a very exciting but also awkward task: it can be very painful to
have to discard some images, maybe for lack of space!
Anyway, the criteria I always try to keep in mind is that a
picture always has to be able to stimulate children’s natural curiosity, their
observation, attention and intuition skills.
As an art teacher (art history is mandatory in Italy for
secondary school and for most of high schools), I have the great fortune of
seeing how kids can get really involved in reading works of art; in fact, it
often gives them the opportunity to speak about everything: cultural, social,
historical, current events.
Q: How did you choose the order in which to present the 13
materials you discuss?
A: Developing the initial idea, I realized that the division
into 13 sections is well adapted to an equivalent partition of many different
historical/artistic periods and how materials have affected them, so the
criteria for my selections have also taken this into account.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that in the various chapters I
didn’t include works of art from different time periods.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: The aim of the book is to engage young readers with the
world of art, freeing them from prejudice and inspiring them with curiosity.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m very thankful for this question, because as I said
before, art is a subject that can be related to so many topics.
Right now I’m working on many different subjects, including
materials used in architecture. Speaking about architecture, I’m currently
developing an idea about the Palladian style and Palladianism architecture.
Furthermore, I just completed a book that I really believe
in: it’s about visual communication - the oldest form of communication, and
nowadays one of the most important ways that people, especially children,
communicate and share information!
The message is absolutely essential: readers become better
equipped to take an increasingly active and critical position in interpreting
images.
I also just finished a mystery novel for young readers that
takes place in two wonderful cities that I know pretty well: Venice and New
York. What I need now is a publisher: let’s hope that some publisher will read
your article!
Probably due to the long economic crisis and to the terrible
scaling back and cutting of funding for art in education, nowadays art is not
considered as a required subject for publishers specialized in young readers.
As I tried to explain before, I truly believe that it’s
fundamental to engage children with the world of art: as they become adults
they’ll be more aware and more proud of the extraordinary artistic heritage
they have inherited and above all they will themselves be promoters of new and
beautiful things.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Well, there is something I would like my young readers and their parents to know and it’s that if they have any questions or are curious about anything I have a blog where they can contact me: just Google my name.
A: Well, there is something I would like my young readers and their parents to know and it’s that if they have any questions or are curious about anything I have a blog where they can contact me: just Google my name.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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