| LESSON OVERVIEW
This lesson plan about Banksy and the other artist Maurizio Cattelan deals with controversial art. The worksheet is based on two videos presenting works of art by these two artists.
WARM-UP & VOCABULARY
One of the works presented in this lesson is Maurizio Catellan’s Comedian, which in a nutshell, consists of a banana taped to the wall with a duct tape. This work of art has been sold for $120k. One of our subscribers came up with a cool warm-up task to this lesson, which we want to share with you. Basically, what you do is you bring a banana to your classroom and tape it to the wall. Ask your students then how much they would pay for it. You can even lead an auction. That’s definitely going to spark their interest 🙂
The worksheet starts with a short discussion based on three quotes concerning art. Then, students move to an exercise on vocabulary that two videos include. Students read some sentences and they have to match underlined words and phrases to their meanings.
VIDEO & DISCUSSION
After that, students move to watching the videos. They have to watch both of them and using vocabulary from the previous exercise, summarize what they’ve seen. The videos present two pieces of art. One is Banksy’s Girl with Balloon which was shredded during an auction. The other video presents Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian: the work of art consisting of a banana taped to a wall with duct tape. After summarizing, students start a discussion on what they’ve watched. Next, they have two more exercises on vocabulary for expressing surprise and shock. First, they need to read a sentence from one of the videos and match the word unfathomable to its meaning. Next, they have another three sentences and need to match synonyms to the following words: unfathomable, shockingly, staggering.
QUESTIONABLE CASES FROM THE WORLD OF ART
Finally, students discuss some interesting cases from the world of art. When appropriate, they should use the words from the previous exercise. They will discuss a restoration failure, a controversial artwork, a prank by two teenagers at a museum and the most expensive sculpture sold by a living artist. We linked to images related to that in the task so either download it before the lesson or open them up during the class to show that weird cases, This lesson plan about Banksy and Maurizio Cattelan ends with a short optional discussion about art in general.
I’m really happy with the materials lately. You have made the B2 and C1 lessons a bit more complex and that’s exactly what was missing. The vocabulary is a bit more challenging. Just perfect for my Advanced students! Thank you! Wonderful job guys, as always.
Great to hear that! Look out for more stuff coming this month.
I’m a real fan of your lesson plans. Well done!
Thanks Angeline! It’s great to hear that 🙂
Fantastic topic and the real stuff for us to see! Thanks a lot
What a great lesson plan! So engaging, thought-provoking, and inspiring! Thank you 🙂
Happy to hear that! Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us 🙂
Just wanted to let you know my students loved this lesson especially when I stuck the banana to the board. Such a great idea!!! As a follow up they will research other kinds of publicity stunts that have happened in the past or more recently that they find interesting and explain why.
Thanks so much for your feedback! We’re thrilled the lesson was so successful and that’s a really cool idea to stick a banana to the board – love it!
Great lesson plan. It grabs attention-which is perfect for teenager students. Thank you!
Thanks for the comment! Awesome that your students found it engaging 🙂
I would love if I could sort the lessons by their aims but you don’t list aims, why is this?
This is one of our older lesson plans and it doesn’t have a list of objectives. You can find them though in posts of newer lessons.