Linking the Sistene Chapel to 21st Century Life

History teacher, Martha Turner, recently, gave our Grade 9 students an innovative assignment to link 16th century history and art to their 21st century life. Each student was challenged to paint one of the story panels from the Sistine Chapel illustrating the Book of Genesis. For example, the creation of Adam or David slaying Goliath.

As a way of honoring the theme that society can be reflected in art, each of the newly created scenes had to reflect the life, challenges, or issues of 21st century America, while still illustrating the underlying biblical story. Although not an exact reenactment of Michaelangelo building and climbing scaffolding in order to paint, students had the opportunity to experience what it was like to be Michaelangelo on a small scale. Their teacher suspended plywood about three feet off of the floor so that the students had to lie down on their backs and paint their particular biblical story above them while listening to Renaissance music!

As Martha writes, “We got paint EVERYWHERE, but we had a blast doing it.”

Here are comments from two of the Grade 9 students about their paintings:

“The theme from the Bible I chose to paint was God creating the planets. I figured that creation was something that could be easily linked to a modern element, part of our task. In the end, I chose to have God spray-painting the planets onto a brick wall using stencils. Inspiration had come from a Youtube video that another classmate had shown me of an extremely talented guy who had spray painted the planets onto his floor using stencils and layers of various colors. Stenciling and spray painting has become a modern day art and really made my painting urban. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.”

“For the creation of the Modernized Adam and Eve, I thought of how to keep the original idea of Adam and Eve while adding a twist. Adam and Eve are still being banished from the Garden of Eden. The man who is banishing him is God. Yes, he has dreadlocks and bunny slippers. I tried to think about the way people imagine God and do the exact opposite. Both men are shirtless because in the Garden of Eden, there is perfect weather and no skin cancer. Adam and Eve are hippies as they have not yet been introduced to all the 21st century features and materials. I tried to depict that in the painting by making Adam shirtless and Eve in a long flowing skirt. The two are being banished to the real world, which in this case is Hollywood.”