Author Archives: Imani Higginson

Constructions of biraciality in life and art

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Pinder: In “Biraciality and Nationhood in Contemporary American Art” Kymberly Pinder examines how contemporary artists question the notions of biraciality through reflecting their own multicultural realities, whereas mainstream and national media does not seek to complicate and understand biraciality in this manner.

Pinder introduces the work Jamaican-American artist, Lorraine O’Grady, who is in fact a Wellesley alumna, Class of 1955. Pinder specifically references the piece The Clearing: or Cortez and La Malinche, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me, which is a dynamic and troubling diptych, which in my mind serves to contextualize the entirety of Pinder’s article. On the left of this photo collage of sorts, there is a naked couple, a black woman and white man, who are intimate and floating in the sky above the trees. There are two children running in the meadow below them are two children, who are most likely their offspring and a pile of clothes with a handgun on top of them. The right side is drastically different than the themes of love and family on the right. On this side of the image there is a similar couple as on the right side, a black woman and a white man, however this interaction is not mutual. The man’s head has become a skeleton and is touching the woman’s breast. She however is not enjoying it, as her face is looking towards the side, turned away. Thus, O’Grady reinforces the contemporary vision of two extremes that define the notion of interracial relationships including pleasure and exploitation as Pinder explains

OGrady_The_Clearing_19913Lorraine O’Grady,  The Clearing: or Cortez and La Malinche, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me (1991)

The concept of biraciality in art, has in fact been a topic of lectures thus for in this course. For instance the title of O’Grady’s The Clearing, recalls the work of Santa Barraza, a Chicana artist whose work was show in Professor Irene Mata’s lecture. Specifically, the oil painting La Malinche (1991), which depicts the “mistress” of Hernan Cortes, who is responsible for the Spanish conquest of Mexico. She is often depicted and memorialized as traitor who was Cortes’ translator and also the mother of his son, who would become the first mixed race person in Mexico. Pinder also describes how other exploitative relationships mentioned in O’Grady’s title such as Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his slaves who was indeed mixed race, who Jefferson was in love with by “still owned her until his death. Finally, O’Grady references her own relationship with N. who is unknown to us which engages her personal experience possibly marrying someone of a different race and as a Jamaican of mixed heritage.

images-4Santa C. Barraza, La Malinche (1991)

Similar to her discussion of multi-racial relationships and women of color, Pinder engages in understanding what it means to be biracial, specifically in the United States. Closely connected to the mothers who may or may not be biracial, the children involved are significant to consider when thinking about the importance or not of biraciality. This concept is at the fore, in Afro-Cuban artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons’, La Sagrada Familia or The Holy Family (2000), a triptych, featuring three photographs of her husband who is white and son. This piece serves to highlight a more harmonious vision of biracial identities through the love of father and son that Campos-Pons’ captures. Though, the artists’ son does look bewildered the subject draw upon the connection between father and son, though we cannot see the father’s face.

Pinder’s article truly helps in gaining a further understanding of biraciality through art. That is because in art, we are able to see the complexities and inner turmoil from these obstacles as we see them in real life. The pieces discussed specifically, Lorraine O’Grady’s The Clearing, as well as Adrian Piper’s Vanilla Nightmares Series (1986) and the work of New Negro Movement artist, Archibald Motley, serve to achieve these ends.  In the conclusion of the article, Pinder wonders whether multiethnic people will create national ethnic harmony. I have trouble understanding this. Perhaps she is implying that people of color will likely be in the majority in 2050? I also question why Pinder chose not to discuss the social constructions of race, which lead to issues for biracial peoples such as the one-drop rule in the United States, which said that people with any “drop” of black blood in them was indeed black.

Reconstructing Black Masculinity and Representation

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Golden: Thelma Golden, curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, in the exhibition catalogue for Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art (1995) at the Whitney Museum of American Art (where Golden was then working), presents a history of black male representations in art from the 1970s to the 1990s, by examining the works of white artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe who photographs black men in a beautiful yet exploitative manner to David Hammons’ body prints which suggest the way the contemporary society has molded representations of black men.

Mercer: Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s identity as a Nigeria, specifically Yoruba man as well as a gay man is explored through his photography in which the body becomes a location for exploration of erotic desire and Yoruba religious traditions

Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston: Issac Julien traces gay culture through the life of Langston Hughes in the 1920s and beyond by exploring Hughes poems as well as imagery depicting black gay males such as the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Response

The exhibition, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art (1995) at the Whitney Museum exemplifies the ways in which black male bodies have been comodified, exploited and even ignored. Thelma Golden’s analysis of the exhibition for which she is the curator, provided a comprehensive example of the history of the black male presence in art and the origin of such representations. Golden’s method of conception for this exhibition is, in my opinion the most compelling portion of the piece. There was a five-pillar understanding of how the exhibition would be composed, in other words five events that controlled representations of black men in contemporary art. They were 1) the Black Power Era 2) the rise of blaxploitation films beginning with Melvin van Peebles Sr.’s Sweet Sweetback’s Badassss Song (1972) 3) the debate about the endangered music 4) the rise of hip hop over rhythm and blues 5) the Rodney King incident in south central Los Angeles.

Interestingly, in the beginning of the Thelma Golden highlights the work of Adrian Piper and David Hammons, two artists whose work we have examined extensively this semester and who in fact were listed as artists who operate in the Hammonsian mode as defined by New York Times art critic Ken Johnson. Johnson, claims that Hammons, Piper, Fred Wilson, and Kara Walker among others approach blackness in a way that is not aggressive for those who might not be used to dealing with race in art. This becomes almost comical in conjunction with Golden’s description of Piper’s performance piece and film Mythic Being (1974), in which she dresses up as black man with an Afro and large sunglasses engaging narratives of the Black Power Movement and simultaneous examining whites fear of blackness.

Fred Wilson, an African-American artist working within the framework of institutional critique concludes the show with his work that is part of the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum. The work entitled Guarded View (1991) which features four black headless mannequins dressed in museum security guard suits, engages notions of black male invisibility is a variety of spaces including museums. This notion of invisibility pertains directly to the work of Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Isaac Julien’s film Looking for Langston, which both discuss the invisibility of gay black men with in African Diaspora and Westernized culture. This is clear through Fani-Kayode’s want to not be identified as black or gay in considerations of his art as well as Julien’s examination of great black poet, Langston Hughes, who sexuality is rarely discussed in connection with his prolific poetry, as it was probably not acceptable at the time he was working during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Looking for Langston has clearly inspired other films such as Brother to Brother (2004), a feature film that engages a contemporary black gay artist in connection with the Harlem Renaissance.

 

Why is Saartjie Baartman Still Relevant?

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Thompson: In the introductory essay to the exhibition Black Womanhood: Images Icons, and the Ideologies of the African Body, Barbara Thompson examines the ways in which black female images have been distorted in dominant culture and in turn how black artists have in her words “confronted” and “decolonized” these images.

Response

Barbara Thompson’s introduction to the Black Womanhood exhibition at Dartmouth College’s Hood Musuem exposed many important details about the representation and (mis) representation of black bodies, specifically black women’s bodies. I found the first section about colonial fixations of the black body that were a dichotomy of repulsion and attraction. In this section, Thompson describes the work of Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan artist, currently living in New York whose work is centered on the black female form. Interestingly, Mutu uses collage with a variety of different materials to create what Thompson calls “female superheroes.” When looking closely at Mutu’s piece Double Fuse on the first page of the article there is a woman that looks seductive, yet robotic and almost alien, which recalls the “othering” and simultaneous sexualizing of black women in the history of western visual culture. Mutu, however, presents a different take on these generalizations, making an all-powerful female figure, with dualities that create her identity, rather than detract from it. While Thompson does not explicitly reference Saartjie Baartman, the South African woman brought to Western Europe to literally be put on display in the early 19th century. Baartman became know as Hottentot Venus or Black Venus referenced in the title of this section of the article. Many contemporary black women artists in particular have called upon the history of exploitation and legacy of Saartjie Baartman, whose genitals and brain were preserved and yet again put on display in Paris. These artists such as Renée Cox and Renée Green, present a critique of the systems that enslaved black female bodies in the 19th century through the present day. The difference between these artists is there method of production. Green does not use bodies to represent the legacy of Baartman but rather a stage for viewer to climb on and read observations of her body as well of the body of Josephine Baker on display in her 1990 piece Seen. Cox, however becomes Baartman in Hot en Tot, where she photographs herself with prosthetic breasts and butt to expose the ways in which black women’s bodies are typified as exotic, yet not all black women fit this mold. Each of these pieces makes me wonder why black women’s bodies are still marginalized and generalized, and how art may help to alleviate these fallacies.

The fallacies of cyberspace in representations of queer Iranians

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Shakhsari: In From Homoerotics of Exile to Homopolitics of Diaspora: Cyberspace, The War on Terror and the Hypervisible Iranian Queer, Shakhsari suggests that the Internet presence of Iranian queer people and the discourse around these individuals represents a younger more tolerant segment of the Iranian diaspora, who have been able to mobilize due to the shift from exile to diaspora as well as the media representations of the war on terror.

Response

Sima Shakhsari presents an analysis of the discourse about queer people in Iran and their presence on the Internet specifically through the use of blogs. The analysis of the discourse Shakhsari provides is quite interesting because of the way it the author’s argument is structure. For example, much of the article discuses how generations of young Iranians all over the world are becoming more technologically savvy and with that they have become more tolerant of various spectrums of sexuality as opposed to older generations of Iranians who may not be as technologically sound or educated which has impact that demographics view of homosexuality. Interestingly, toward the end of the article and the conclusion Shakhsari suggests that despite this tolerance, many people still view the world in a heternormative way. I thought this was important because I saw the article from the beginning explaining how representations of queer Iranians are improving because of the internet, however in the end it seems like this presence has become somewhat stagnant due to the tolerance that still defines queer Iranians as “other.” One thing that I would be interested to know more about is censoring in Iran and elsewhere (specifically Turkey) where Shakhsari explained many queer Iranians fled. I wonder if this sort of censoring controls the information on the blogs that Shakhsari criticizes in this article.

Questioning the philosophy of the museum

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Fraser: In Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, the artist explores the dichotomies of art and politics, economics and popular culture, specifically in the context of museums such as The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum, and The Philadelphia Institute of the Arts.

Taylor: The history of performance art and its evolution from artists movements such as DADA and Alan Kaprow’s “happenings” in the 1960s is examined in order create further understanding about fleeting works of art.

Reflection

I found Andrea Fraser’s writing fascinating and look forward to hearing her speak about her performance art pieces and conception of  “museum politics” on Tuesday. The beginning of the introduction to Museum Highlights, Alexander Alberro, who wrote the introduction hit the nail on the head about the importance of artists’ writings in Fraser’s art including essays, tracts, statements and interviews when he says “[writings] are and inherent part of her artistic practice.” Which in turn implicates artists as intellectuals, despite the rigid divide traditionally drawn by the art world. I was particularly moved by Fraser’s letter to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, as Hartford is the closest major city to my hometown. Interestingly, the history of the Wadsworth Atheneum is one that has been a part of system of oppression for the poor and people of color for many decades up until the 1970s, as it was the first museum in the United States opening in 1842, founded by white New England elites. What intrigued me about Fraser’s writing about Hartford is that it is so clearly academic, indicting that a great amount of research was required to have and understanding the museums history, specifically donors, history of backlash, and educational programs. I am interested in the discussions of funding of museums, such as backlash against the Brooklyn Museum by then mayor of New York, Rudy Guilani, about the exhibition Sensation in 1999. The case of the Wadsworth Atheneum is interesting in the context of the history of Hartford, and the white flight to the suburbs in the 1960 because of militant Black Power groups as Fraser describes them. I am curious to know about the current educational and community initiatives in Hartford due to the poverty-stricken exteriors of the city today.

In reading Taylor’s chapter on performance art as well as selections from Fraser’s book, I reflected on a trip I took to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday afternoon. At first it seemed unlike any other trip I would have taken to this museum a trip to fifth floor to see The Migration Series (1940-1) by Jacob Lawrence and a slow meandering down to the second floor. I was however, greeted with masses of people staring into a glass box in the entrance to galleries where tickets are scanned. As I got closer, I realized it was woman was sleeping in the box, a pair of glasses and water jug accompanied her. I looked at the label on wall behind the box and came to find out that the woman in the box was, Tilda Swinton, an actress and artist, there was however no information about the purpose of the performance. While standing before the box I struggled to understand the significance of Swinton’s performance entitled The Maybe. I was completely disturbed by the voyeuristic nature of this piece, as in; it felt like viewers were becoming part of a highly private and personal moment. Additionally, I considered the performance pieces of Fraser, which were completely different as Fraser interacts with her audiences during most of her performance pieces. Of course, I took to Twitter to understand more about my strange experience at the MoMA and learned that Swinton will be performing The Maybe half a dozen more times (unannounced until the day of) throughout the year. This is pertinent to Fraser’s writing specifically in Chapter 17: A Sensation Chronicle, when talking about the motives of commercial museums, like the MoMA, in having specific sponsors and art which may or may not garner controversy and publicity. In this instance, Swinton, an important actress turned artist has done just that.

Being Latina and a woman: Otherness in the Latino-American Culture and the mainstream art world

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Alma Lopez: Lopez speaks as an artist and a scholar about her most controversial piece, a digital print, Our Lady which was adamantly protested by officials of the Catholic Church because of it’s redefinition of the Virgen de Guadalupe in order to address the experience of Latina women.

Guisela M. Latorre: This brief article highlights the importance of and lack of emphasis on feminism during the Chicana/o artistic movement, and also on the invisibility of Latina/o artists in art historical scholarship.

Response

These articles about Latina and Chicana artists opened the discussion of this course particularly in talking about artists beyond the African Diaspora. I found each of these articles especially fascinating, because as someone who has a great interest in African-American artists, it is not often that I get the chance to learn about Latina and Latino artists beyond Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo. I sincerely appreciated Alma Lopez’s discussion of the origins of her reinterpretation of the Virgen de Guadalupe, entitled Our Lady. I thought the beginning of her argument that revolved her participation in the Caesar Chavez Walkathon in which she saw murals in East Los Angeles that feature male heroes in the greater Latino community but no female heroines. Or the protest of Our Lady conducted predominantly by males who did not have any understanding of how the Virgen de Guadalupe connects to Lopez or other women Latina or not. I think this provides an explanation for the nature of Lopez work, which explores depictions of the female Latina body in the guise of colonialism and sexism.

The discussion of how Latina women were represented in mainstream Latino, Latino-America and American culture as opposed to Lopez’s depiction relates directly to Lopez and Latorre’s critiques of institutions such as art museums and spaces of higher education. Lopez describes how Our Lady was part of a show in Los Angeles at UC Irvine and was not questioned however New Mexico the digitally modified image caused a great ruckus. In the Author’s Note, Lopez explains how Tom Wilson, director of the New Mexico Museums, supported her piece and museums as institutions that should promote learning that requires challenging audiences to contemplate artwork outside of their comfort zone. Latorre also discusses notions of the problem with spaces that privilege art historical study which is often constituted by scholars who may not fully understand the narrative of the artist’s background. I thought Latorre’s mention of bringing non-white artists into the scholarship of art history was brilliant.

Are there now great women artists?

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Sentences: 

Nochlin: There have been no great women artists not because no great women artists exist but because the white Western male viewpoint does not privilege the artistic contributions of women.

Wark: The time period in which Wark writes about (the 1970s) signaled a time when women artists such as Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson became skeptical of  “Conceptual” art and how they did or did not fit into it’s discourse.

Taylor: Beginning in the 1970s  in the age of feminism many female artists started to question the male dominance of the art world and thus create art which reflected this crisis.

Response:

The discussion in feminist art in each of the materials viewed for today’s class in many ways encompasses the spirit of the feminist movement. I say this because, during this movement beginning in the 1970’s women of color and their experience are often overlooked. I would argue that perhaps in these articles they are as well. For example, in the Taylor chapter on feminist art, Faith Ringgold the prominent African American artist was briefly mentioned. There was no mention, however, of how Ringgold took what was considered a folk and thus women’s art (quilting) and turned it into a high art form. Wark is successful in describing the work of Adrian Piper in connection with the other women artist she was describing as being a deviation from social norms. These artists who consider themselves to be conceptual artists worked and work tirelessly in order to dismantle certain discourses and make silenced voices hear. Linda Nochlin further expands upon this point when she discusses the fact that there have been no great women artists. At first glance it appears that Nochlin’s title appears to be inherently sexist, however Nochlin suggests that there has been no opportunity or possibility for great women artists to exist in a patriarchal society. Though Nochlin’s article was written in the 1980’s, I think many women artists still face the same struggles as they did thirty and forty years ago. For example, see Ken Johnson’s article about the exhibition “The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/arts/nov-11-17.html?_r=0

 

Racial politics stagnant 1967-2013

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Jones: Art historian Kellie Jones summarizes the contents of her exhibition ‘Now Dig This!’ which chronicles the essential position of African-American artists (those more notable and those lesser known but still significant) in Southern California during the 1960s-1980s, which was time of new “social energy” due to the rise in political activism and changing demographics in the area.

Johnson: In this scathing New York Times review Johnson critiques Kellie Jones’ exhibition ‘Now Dig This!’ clamming that the exhibition and the majority of its artists (excluding those such as David Hammons, who in Johnson’s mind follow the rules of the “post modern art world”) only take on what great white contemporary artists have “invented” and promote solidarity in alienating ways.

Raiford: The Black Panther Party, originating in Northern California struggled to control their image through the late 1960s and 1970s that is to convey the purpose of their organization through photography and media to their supporters but also to those living in society uninterested by racial equality and thus fearful of strong affirmations of blackness.

Reading Response

The order in which I read this weeks’ assigned readings influenced my thinking about the connections between each of them. The final article I read was the section from Leigh Raiford’s book Imprisoned by a Luminous Glare which chronicled the history of the Black Panther Party and the organization’s fight to be in command of their representation specially through photography. After I finished reading this and began to process Ken Johnson’s critique of Kellie Jones’s exhibition ‘Now Dig This!’ I realized a connection between black artists and photographers or those depicting black people, as in a photographer of the party, a former student at the University of Southern California, in the latter part of the 20th center and now, in 2013. As Raiford points out, the first issue of The Black Panther, the organization’s official newspaper caused a great deal of hullaballoo among white people of the Bay Area as reflected in the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. This struck me as a direct parallel to Johnson’s comment in his review “It divides the viewers between those who, because of their life experiences, will identify with the struggle for black empowerment, and other for whom the black experience remains more a matter of conjecture.” Later in the paragraph Johnson even references the symbol of fist, the logo associated with Black Nationalism and the Black Power movement. In his review Johnson, a white male, ironically as in 1967 is threatened by and discounts affirmations of blackness. This is significant because it suggests that although African-Americans have technically been granted political and social rights, we still have to fight to control our representation in the media and resist assimilating to images acceptable to “American” or white culture

Visualizing Japanese-American Internment Camps

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Kozol: The US government’s gaze creates a visual understanding of Executive Order 9066 and its impact on Japanese American’s that is little more than propaganda.

Howard: This chapter emphasized how internment affected notions of the family, gender roles and sexuality; most notably internment opened employment opportunities for women.

Creef: Professor Creef uses the photographs of Ansel Adams, Dorthea Lange, and Toyo Miyatake in order explain that the twentienth-century history of Japanese American representation, the mass relocation and internment of 120,000 people are defining when discussing the colonization of bodies and is yet to be resolved.

. The reading of Howard’s piece helped conceptualize the series of horrific events cast upon Japanese Americans during World War II. It was especially helpful because as Creef states this history is not taught. She even says that only two American historical events have become virtually invisible. These events are the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and Reconstruction in American South. This is interesting because while it might have been more difficult to create documentary photography images after the Civil War, but the government had no viable excuse during the 1940s. Each of these authors claimed that the history has been lost due to the censorship of the government. Unfortunately, I am not sure if the images in question, depicting the horrors of internments camps even exist, I would not be surprised if the government made efforts to destroy them. The thought that this sort of dehumanizing activity was happen in the United States, so recently is baffling as the country is seen as land of opportunity for those who voluntary immigrated here.