Art & History

How To Look At Art

how to look at art

Have you got a favourite painting? Mine is ‘A Portrait of the Countess Golovine’ painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, sometime around 1797. It is, unsurprisingly, a portrait of Countess Varvara Nikolaevna Golovine, a talented musician and artist from Russia. Elisabeth and the Countess became great friends and I love the way the Countess is smiling in the portrait, with a red shawl draped around her shoulders and her dark curly hair swept up in behind a scarf. The painting belongs to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, which is one of my favourite galleries.
Elisabeth-Vigee-Lebrun-Portrait-of-Countess-Golovine-Oil-Painting
I love going to art galleries and looking at paintings, but at first I found it quite a daunting thing to do. Have you ever been to an art gallery and not known where to start? Or heard art critics talking about symbolism, composition and form but not understood? Sometimes looking at art can sound difficult, and talking about it can be a whole other language!
But looking at art doesn’t have to be complicated. Things like symbolism, where objects in paintings are used to represent something that’s happening, like a skull symbolising death, can be important and the composition, or the way things in the painting are arranged, can tell us a lot about the artist and why the painted what they did.

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Art & History

Who Was Maya Angelou?

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson, in St Louis, Missouri, in 1928. Her brother could not pronounce her name properly and called her Maya, the name that she came to be known by.
She had a difficult childhood – after suffering abuse when she was eight years old, she stopped talking for five years.  She later wrote her autobiography, describing overcoming her childhood trauma, and growing up in the segregated south of USA – when people of colour and white people were not allowed to mix. She was committed to the civil rights movement, which aimed to break the segregation and allow people to live freely.

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Home, Health & Style

Have you ever wondered…about your teeth?

Have you ever had a tooth pulled out by a dentist? If you did, you may have noticed something odd. The roots were probably still attached to the tooth, unlike when a tooth falls out normally. What happens to the root of a tooth, how do teeth grow and why is it important that you take care of them? Samantha Gouldson investigates! 

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Toys and Games

Make Your Own Interactive Story!

Find out how to make your own interactive story with Jump! Mag and storyteller Justine de Mierre. 

Some people think stories are just for little kids, but stories are all around us. We watch them on television, we read them in books – we even listen to them when someone’s telling us about their great weekend!

Stories aren’t just fairy tales, they can be about businesswomen and athletes just as much as about princesses and trolls.  They can even be about princess-like businesswomen and athletic trolls!

So, if you’re planning a get together with your friends why not give storytelling a go? An interactive story is one you can make up on the spot and gets everyone joining in – and it can be about whatever you and your friends are interested in!

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