A Room with a View

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Subject Areas Arts English/Language Arts
Themes Color, Line & Shape Identity Nature & Environment
Lesson Plan Series Art in Conversation Everything is Beautiful

Prism.K12 Strategies Identify Connect Synthesize
Grade Levels 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Materials

Paper
Pencil
Option 1: Colored pencils, watercolors or markers
Option 2: Collage materials, including magazines, newspapers, scissors, and glue

Lesson Overview:

Pierre Bonnard and Richard Diebenkorn both painted works with an open window from the inside of a domestic space, making us curious about what is happening outside of the window and in the rest of the artists’ world. In this lesson, students will:

Examine different ways paintings depict a similar theme
Make observations about the paintings, paying attention to small details
Hone their descriptive writing skills through writing haikus and text conversations
Write letters focusing on compassion and sense of place

Part 1: Close Looking

Guide the students using the following prompts to IDENTIFY what they notice as they look out of a window and observe the two artworks, Girl with a Plant and The Open Window:

Explore:

Have the students stand in front of a window. They should close their eyes and take a deep breath.
Now they should open their eyes. What do they notice first?
Find 5 things.
Students should close their eyes again and take a deep breath.
Have them open their eyes and find 5 things they didn’t notice the first time.

Examine:

Spend time with Richard Diebenkorn’s Girl with Plant. Have the students close their eyes and take a deep breath.
Now the students should open their eyes. Where do their eyes go first? Then where do they go? The students should pay attention to how their eyes travel around the painting.
Think about Diebenkorn’s use of color and line. Ask the students:
- What do you think the artist has done to get your eyes to move around the artwork?
- Why do you think he chose to show the woman from behind?

Sense:

Look at Pierre Bonnard’s The Open Window. Have the students imagine that they are sitting in this room looking out the window. What do they see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Feel?
Ask the students:
- What else do you notice in the painting?
- Bonnard included two things that they might miss if you don’t look closely!
Notice Bonnard’s use of complementary colors—the blue and greens outside juxtaposed with the red and oranges inside.
- Complementary colors are two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel (e.g. red and green, orange and blue). Think about it like opposites attract!
- These color combinations are pleasing to our eyes and when put next to each other, make the colors appear even more intense.
- Therefore, other elements in this painting, like the cat and woman in the lower right, may not be the first things we notice.

Part 2: Making Connections

CONNECT:

Have students make connections between the two paintings with the following prompts
How are these artworks similar? How are they different?
Compare each artist’s use of line and color. How is their use of line and color similar? How is it different
What adjectives would you use to describe each painting? How are the adjectives similar? How are they different?
Students should compare each male artist’s inclusion of a woman. How are they similar? How are they different?

Part 3: Art & Language Arts

SYNTHESIZE:

Have each student pick the painting to which they are most drawn.
Then, each student should write a haiku describing what the woman in the painting might be thinking.
- A haiku has 3 lines containing 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables.
Then, each student should imagine the two women are communicating with each other. Have them create a text conversation they might be having.

Part 4: Window Into Your World

We spend so much time inside looking out at the world. Have each student create a card to mail to someone to let them know they are thinking about them.

Prepare the Card: Have each student pick a window in their personal home (or at school). Fold a piece of paper in half. Cut it to the size they want their card to be.
Draw the Window: On the front of the card, the student should draw the window panes so they become a grid.
Color the Window:
- Think about how Diebenkorn and Bonnard used color, shape, and line. How can they simplify and abstract their view into basic shapes and a limited color palette?
- Pick 3 colors. Have each student focus on each pane and what they see in it to create the scene from your window.
  - Option 1: Use color pencils, watercolors, or markers.
  - Option 2: Create a collage, cutting out the shapes and gluing them to the paper.
- Have each student decide if they want to redraw the grid on top of their scene or if they only want it to help them in constructing their artwork.
Write the Letter
- On the back of the card, write the letter to the person who you care about.
  - Explain why you care about them.
  - Explain why the view from the window is important to you.

Visual Context

Here are some artwork and images to further contextualize the content of the lesson. You can incorporate the images into your lessons or use them to build your own background knowledge.

Please note: Images are available to download only for personal, noncommercial use. For any questions about image rights and reproductions, please contact imagerights@phillipscollection.org.

painting of an open window with soft colors that fade into each other with woman resting — Pierre Bonnard, *The Open Window,* 1921

painting of young girl looking out of a window with bold colors and a plant — Richard Diebenkorn, *Girl with Plant,* 1960

photograph of a view out of a window with trees and a brick house — Photograph looking out of a window

Additional Context

Lesson Context

Pierre Bonnard, The Open Window, 1921, Oil on canvas, 46 1/2 x 37 3/4 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1930

Pierre Bonnard painted from memory rather than life, which accounts for the dreamlike quality of his pictures.
In The Open Window, we see a room in the artist’s house in Normandy, France.
The blonde woman in this painting may be Renee Monchaty, with whom he fell in love around 1917.

Richard Diebenkorn, Girl with Plant, 1960, Oil on canvas, 80 x 69 1/2 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1961

Richard Diebenkorn was interested in exploring form and color and the tension between reality and abstraction.
The landscape and light of the western United States permeate his work. Even in his most abstract paintings, he still evokes a sense of place. Girl with Plant comes from the artist’s figurative period when he was living in the Bay Area from 1955 to 1966.
The woman is de-emphasized, and instead seems embedded in the painting’s surface like the inanimate objects in the composition, including the potted plant, chair, and window.

Key Terms

Abstract art: A picture that does not represent any objects, but instead uses shapes, colors, lines, and forms to create the composition