AIM: Art, Identity, and Mathematics

Emily Burrell, Math, Piedmont Open IB MS

Curriculum Unit (pdf)

Synopsis

This curriculum unit is designed as a cross-curricular and cultural experience for students. Integrating the arts, history, current events, psychology and mathematics. The unit will mainly focus on artists who had a unique sense of identity or went through an identity “crisis”. By analyzing the artist’s works of art by these artists, we will dive deeper into the idea of what identity is and how it can influence anyone at anytimes. By examining artists who took a more geometric approach to their art we can see and study many geometrical shapes: triangles, squares, rectangles, hexagons, cubes, and triangular prisms. Students will also discover how ratio and scale is integrated into the arts.Students will create their own works of art, utilizing a global context (war, current protesting, world hunger, social injustices, etc.), using their background knowledge of what it took Frida Kahlo to express her identity. We will explore other artists such as Pablo Picasso and how his identity as an artist was shaped by his trauma from the Spanish civil war. Picasso will be a focus for this unit due to his use of using scale to emphasise his experience particular element in his main works.