Franz Kline favored house painters’ brushes,
ranging from one-to-five inches wide. He used
these to make thick, dark lines. As a class,
brainstorm a list of as many types of lines as
possible (dark, light, straight, curvy, zigzag,
thin, thick, long, short, etc.) Give students one
brush each. How many different kinds of lines
can you make with your one brush? What can
you do to change the type of line that a brush
makes? (press harder or lighter, use the sides of
the bristles, etc.) Add additional brushes into
the mix, asking students to experiment to see
what kinds of lines they can make. End with
a discussion of which brushes worked best for
which types of lines.
Elementary
Classroom Activities
Before he started painting on oversize canvases,
Kline experimented with abstraction in small
drawings on paper. Have students create small-scale observation drawings. Then, using viewfinders, students can identify small sections
Middle School
In small groups, have students experiment with
gestural strokes by painting with water and
utility brushes on a chalkboard. Talk about the
different types of lines that students can create
with different body motions. How do the lines
show movement? What types of movements
create what types of lines?
Elementary
“action painting,” however,
implies spontaneity in the
application of paint on canvas. In reality, Kline often
worked very deliberately, deriving his forms
from among the many sketches that he made on
the pages of telephone books or newspapers. In
addition, Kline often worked on paintings over
a long period of time, rethinking and reworking the forms on multiple canvases at the same
time.
Because Kline’s brushstrokes and the paint
itself are such prominent
elements of his work, Kline
is often referred to as an
action painter. The term
Easy: Although Kline maintained that his
images were strictly abstract, with no reference
to real-life objects, he recognized that his view-
ers would probably make their own associations
between his forms and the
outside world. What do the
forms in Painting No. 7 make
you think about? What might
Kline’s shapes represent?
viewer? What is your emotional reaction to
Painting No. 7 What type of mood does Kline
evoke? Compare Kline’s work to the paintings
of his abstract expressionist contemporaries,
Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, or Mark
Rothko. How do their different styles trigger
different emotions?
As an abstract expressionist,
Kline made his mark within the
first internationally influential
art movement to emerge from
the United States.
ground. As part of his process, Kline stopped
to let his canvases dry between applications of
black or white paint, keeping the two extremes
separate from each other.
Difficult: How does abstract
art evoke a reaction in a
Discussion Questions
SchoolArts March 2008
High School
Ask students to choose two contrasting colors,
and create a painting or collage in which neither
color overpowers the other. How can students
combine shapes of any size or form to balance
with each other on the page? How can smaller
shapes balance out larger shapes (or vice versa)?
What happens if students try the activity with
thee colors? Where will they place their shapes
to balance three colors on the page?
of their drawings that they find particularly
interesting. Students will enlarge the chosen
sections of their drawing to create new, abstract
paintings derived from their sketches.
www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/abex/hd_abex.
htm
www.mcny.org/collections/painting/PTTmain.
htm
www.nga.gov/education/american/abstract.
htm
www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/move-
ment_works_Abstract_Expressionism_0.html
Rachel Florman is the education manager for new media
at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Challenging: For abstract expressionists, the
paint itself and the surface on which it was
placed became an important part of painting.
How do your materials play a role in shaping
your art? How is your work affected by the
materials that you choose to use? How can you
choose materials that will best express your
ideas?
