INTRODUCTION

“Art is an evolutionary act. The shape of art and it's role in society is constantly changing.  At no point is art static.  There are no rules.", Raymond Salvatore Harmon, BOMB: A Manifesto of Art Terrorism.

Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Neoclassicism, Performance Art, Hyperrealism are some of the Art movements and styles.  An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period, usually a few months, years, or decades.

Street Art is becoming an important trend in Art now. Some would say it is an art expression, other may say it is a new movement… So, what is Street Art? What is the purpose of it? Is Street Art an official visual art?

It is time to find out what Street Art is, get to know famous Street artists and analyse their work.

TASK

Imagine you are a famous artist from the past, such as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, or Paul Gauguin and you have travelled to the future when you saw the so-called Street Art. You walk down the streets, and you see art on the walls, you can see that the world has become a big canvas.

So, there are questions coming in your mind…What is this? Is this art? Do I like this?

On the other hand, imagine that you are a street artist, either known or not!

Half the students are going to be famous artists from the past and half will be street artists.

There will be a group debate between these two types of artists regarding the Street Art.

• Mission of the famous artists from the past: Decide whether Street Art is art or just vandalism.
• Mission of the street artists: Convince the famous artists from the past that Street Art is not vandalism.

PROCESS

1. What is the Street Art after all?

Use the following resources and learn more about Street Art and its purpose.

• • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_art
  • https://www.theartstory.org/movement/street-art/history-and-concepts/
  • https://study.com/academy/lesson/street-art-definition-history.html
  • https://streetart.withgoogle.com/
  • https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-qualifies-street-art
  • https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/22/solved-when-does-street-art-become-art-art

You should answer the following questions:

• • What is Street Art?
  • What different kinds of Street Art can be seen?
  • What materials do street artists use?
  • What is the difference between legal and illegal Street Art?
  • Is Street Art made to last or is it temporary?

2. Who are you?

Choose the artist you want to be and learn the followings for this artist:

• • Group A – Artists from the past: Living period, life, nationality, movement and style that represents, known works etc.

• • Group B – Street Artists: Nationality, material that uses, notable work etc.

3. What do you think?

Start a conversation with the other artists and discuss the followings:

• • Is there a difference between graffiti and Street Art?
  • ‘How are the artworks related to the environment in which they are placed?’
  • Does Street Art improve an environment, or does it destroy it?

All the conversations and the debate will become having in mind the artist that you represent, which means that you will express your opinion based on the artist’s lifestyle, work, movement etc.

4. And the result is…

Let us see now what does the majority say? What is the result?

Did Group B convince Group A… or not?

5. Meet Banksy...

Banksy is an anonymous street artist and political activist that is based in England, United Kingdom. Banksy is active since the 1990s and is highly known for his satirical street art and dark humour executed in graffiti. Banksy’s career as a graffiti artist started in Bristol’s graffiti gang DryBreadZ Crew. Banksy’s work is featured on publicly visible surfaces, i.e., on streets, walls and bridges all over the world, and it involves socio-political content.

In the late 1990s, Banksy lived in Bristol and then moved to London. Banksy’s identity is yet to be confirmed and is a wide subject of speculation. It is widely believed that he is Robin Gunningham, born on the 28th of July 1973, in Yate.

Banksy’s work often engages political themes, satirically critiquing war, capitalism, hypocrisy and greed. Common figures used in Banksy’s art are apes, police figures and children. Banksy is estimated to have a net worth of ore that 20 million $ per year. The artist has called out unauthorised galleries which profit from the pieces. When a Banksy artwork is sold, the artist prefers the money to go to charity. Banksy’s art can be bought at a wide range of prices.

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/banksy/artworks/

Perhaps his most talked about art piece is the following.

2018 - Love is in the Bin

(Photograph by Sotheby's.)

In October 2018, Banksy’s iconic image of Balloon Girl, featuring a young girl letting go of a heart-shaped balloon as a beacon of innocent hope, was sold during a Sotheby’s auction for 1.04 million pounds. The moment it was pronounced “sold,” a strange alarm sounded from within the painting’s frame, its trigger source unknown. Immediately, the painting started to descend through its bottom, which turned out to be a shredding mechanism. Although the painting was supposed to shred fully as Banksy later admitted, the device stopped working, leaving half the painting intact in the frame. Banksy posted a video of the shredding with the words “Going, going, gone” on his Instagram page, leading people to believe he had planted a subversive ally in the auction room. But he removed the video promptly after it had successfully winked at his social media audience.

The female buyer decided to keep the work, newly retitled Love is in the Bin, as it was now the subject of a grand scandal, the only artwork created at a live auction in history and cemented her in the status of the purchaser of one of the art world’s most notorious capers. Joey Syer, co-founder of an art dealing website, was quoted in the Evening Standard as saying, “The auction result will only propel this further and given the media attention this stunt has received, the lucky buyer would see a great return on the 1.02M they paid last night, this is now part of art history in its shredded state and we’d estimate Banksy has added at a minimum 50% to its value…”

Why do you think Banksy did that? What is the general message Banksy wants to put across with his/her work? Discuss with your classmates through a Banksy journey!

RESOURCES

Websites:
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/art/top-famous-paintings-in-art-history-ranked 
http://www.theartwolf.com/articles/most-important-painters.htm 
https://www.streetartbio.com/ 
http://globalstreetart.com/ 
https://urban-nation.com/ 
https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/openspace/street-art-london 
https://mycyprustravel.com/where-to-find-stunning-street-art-in-cypriot-villages/ 
https://sofiaadventures.com/best-sofia-street-art-bulgaria/ 
https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/activities/arts-culture/street-art-in-the-netherlands.htm 
https://www.visitportugal.com/en/content/street-art-in-portugal 
https://www.lisbonlux.com/magazine/lisbon-street-art.html 
https://discoveritaly.alitalia.com/en/us/destinations/milan/ten-italian-cities-where-see-street-art 
https://www.biography.com/artist/banksy 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy#Identity 

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/banksy/ 

Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoe3Nn5vuBg&ab_channel=TopTrending 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QS-HN1Wfyg 

CONCLUSION

With this WebQuest, the students will get to know one of the latest trends in art, Street Art. After completing the tasks, they will have a different point of view for any art piece they will encounter when they walk the streets. They will also search and know about Banksy, one of the most talked-about Street artist.

Evaluation of learning achievements

In this section we will not dive very deep into the underlying educational theories about evaluation and testing: there’s too much out there than we could possibly cover in this small project report.

Instead, we want to concentrate on procedures that enable both students/pupils and their teachers to establish if the learning goals of the Webquest were achieved and, if so, to what extent. We recommend teachers make use of a combined evaluation procedure, that consists of:

1. Statements by learners (after being asked to do so)
   • telling what they learned about the subject (knowledge-oriented self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know that …
   • telling what he/she learned about herself/himself (formative evaluation, in this case, diagnostic self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know about myself that I …
     This pair of basic statements add up to a so-called learner report, in which the pupil/student reflects on what the Webquest brought him/her in terms of acquired knowledge and new personal views and attitudes concerning the subject.

   For instance:

   • ‘I learned that in medieval times the hygiene of people was hardly a concern which helped to let epidemic diseases like the Plague cause so many casualties’ Or:
   • ‘I learned the facts and I know the earth is warming, but I cannot understand why people were so stupid to pollute the world and let it warm up so much.
   • ‘I learned from the information about diseases that this subject is more appealing to me than I would expect in advance: maybe I should consider a medical career’. Or:
     ‘The Webquests confirms what I thought already: I could not care less about the climate and global warming. In fact, I thought it was all a hoax and I still do!’

   This kind of assessment seems more subjective than it actually is: in his standard work on testing and evaluation (and much more), simply called Methodology (1974), Prof. A.D. de Groot described how consistent the student’s self-evaluations appeared to be: when asked again after 5 or 10 years, their evaluation would almost be the same. De Groot advised teachers to use the learner report as a start for joint evaluations, striving for consensus between teacher and student/pupil about the learning outcomes and their value for the learner, but also compared with the learning objectives as stated in the curriculum.

2. The learning achievements are visible in the output produced by the students: it is physical evidence: reports, answers to questions asked in the Webquest, presentations, and performance during presentations (preferably recorded). The teacher completes an evaluation grid stating clearly what the learning outcomes for the student/pupil are. The categories in the grid can be modified by the teacher to cover more precisely the content of a Webquest.

   >We advise teachers to use the grid to start a joint evaluation discussion, aiming at consensus or at least understanding between the teacher and the student/pupil about the learning outcomes: were they achieved (as planned in the curriculum and communicated before the Webquest started) and to what extent? To communicate the learning goals clearly before any learning activity starts, is a transparency requirement that is widely acknowledged in the educational community. The history of making learning objectives explicit goes back to the evaluation ‘Bible’ by Bloom, Hastings and Madaus: ‘Handbook on formative and summative evaluation of student learning’ (1971), a standard work that also served as inspiration for the earlier mentioned Prof. De Groot.

The procedure also applies when students/pupils have worked together on a Webquest. The teacher will ask questions about individual contributions: ‘What did you find? What part did you write? How did you find the illustrations? Who made  the final presentation?’

All the evidence (of learning efforts and outcomes plus joint evaluations) is preferably stored in the learning portfolio of the student, or in any other suitable storage system (folders with written or printed documents, online collection of files, etcetera ).

Changes in personal points of view and feelings are harder to value and here the consensus between teacher and student/pupil about experiences during the learning process provides essential insights.

The grid below gives an example of how the evaluation of the learning process and achievements can be shaped: what kind of reactions to the Webquest does the teacher expect and how valuable are they? Is the teacher capable to explain the value or score allocated to answers or presentations given by pupils? Does the pupil/student understand the evaluation outcomes, and does he/she agree? If an agreement (consensus is not possible, it is still the teacher who decides how to value the student’s work.

Please note that the text in the grid addresses the pupil/student directly: this is important and it is in fact a prerequisite for using such an evaluation grid: it is specifically meant to enable a discussion of learning results between teacher and student and not to communicate learning achievements of learners to others who had no direct role in the Webquest.

Evaluation Grid