Tag Archives: art

Senzeni Marasela

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In Barbara Thompson’s chapter “Decolonizing Black Bodies: Personal Journeys in the Contemporary Voice” my attention was drawn to the work of South African artist Senzeni Marasela.  Marasela uses a variety of media to explore her painful relationship with her mentally ill mother who was absent most of Marasela’s childhood.  She also explores collective memory and colonial perceptions of the black female body in her series of embroidered scenes from the life of Sarah Baartman, a former South African slave who toured Europe as “The Hottentot Venus.”  Sarah Baartman’s body was exoticised and fetishised as embodying the form of a black Venus.  Her body became a site of Western attraction and repulsion and became a representation of racist western imaginations of the back female body.  After she died, her body was dismembered by Napoleon’s physician and her gentiles and brain were put on display at the Musée de l’Homme until Nelson Mandela requested that her remains be returned to South Africa and respectfully buried in 2002.  Thompson discusses the dismantling of the black Venus image and stereotype but doesn’t mention Marasela’s Baartman series (she talks about Marasela’s work in relation to motherhood) which is why I thought I’d highlight it here.  This series both in subject and in medium connects the stereotype of the black Venus and the story of Sarah Baartman with the artist’s relationship with her mother.  The images evoke the ideas of collective consciousness and collective memory by making these connections.  She uses a technique traditionally labeled as “women’s work” and associated with female relationships and tradition.  I think that because of needlework’s history and cultural associations it has the ability to transmit elements of the female experience in a much more intimate and personal way than other mediums are able to.  Additionally, the associations of needlework being a skill passed down through generations of women makes visible the artist’s connection to her mother and to the subject of the series Sarah Baartman as well as to all women who came before her.  In this series Marasela relates the dismembering and scrutiny of Baartman’s body to her own experience as a black woman in a Western urban environment.

 

 

 

Fraser: Bridging the Gaps

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The Museum Highlights selections really opened my eyes to the art world and its boundaries.  Many people, myself included, fail to realize how divisive the arts have become at the hand of professionalism and academia.  This is extremely important to note and I believe that groups like Kontext Kunst and artists like Andrea Fraser that dedicate themselves to bridging the gaps between writing, thinking, and making presented in the art world are admirable.  Fraser is able to do this through the interconnectedness of her writing, and performances.

One thing that stood out to me about Frasers project art is the way in which it critiques aspects of the culture of art oftentimes simply through representation.  Understanding these cultural tendencies is something that I came to learn through Fraser’s work.  For example, while reading chapter 9 of a performance where Jane Castleton leads a tour group through the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it became undoubtedly apparent to me who and what the Museum deemed important, as well as what type of people the Museum preferred and catered to.  Fraser sums up this notion beautifully in her description of Jane in the end notes where she states:

“as a volunteer, she expresses the possession of a quantity of the leisure and the economic and cultural capital that defines a museum’s patron class.  It is only a small quantity – indicating rather than bridging the class gap that compels her to volunteer her services in the absence of capital…yet it is enough to position her in identification with the museum’s board of trustees and as the museum’s exemplary viewer” (Fraser, 110)

Fraser:  Through the interconnectedness of her writing and performances, Fraser attempts to bridge the division between ‘writing’, ‘thinking’, and ‘making’ that the professionalization of the artist and intellectual created.

Taylor:  Taylor outlines the history of performance art and highlights artists significant to the genre including Abramovic, and Scheemann.

Avoiding “the feminist’s first reaction”

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One thing that struck me was Linda Nochlin’s insistence that we who view art history through a feminist lens must suppress our initial urge to make a case for talented but overlooked women artists when confronted with the question “Why are there no Great women artists?” Before reading Nochlin’s essay I can well see myself thinking “But wait! What about Artemisia Gentileschi?! What about Mary Cassat, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kalho, or Judy Chicago??” Surely these women were great artists who produced great work but they were not Great and by making a case for their work and existence in this context we distract ourselves from the reality that, though these women made wonderful and important art and contributions they have never been considered on the same level as Michelangelo, Renoir, Picasso, or Andy Warhol. We must accept that there have been no great women artists instead of denying it so that we can begin to examine the underlying structures that made this so. We must critically question the myth of the Great Artist and his magical Genius that propelled him to greatness so we can see the educational and institutional privileges that permitted him to be Great.

Black Art & the Promotion of Solidarity

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With a substantial rise in African American migration to Los Angeles during the twentieth century and an increase in civil rights and Black Power activism, the African American community in Los Angeles began growing stronger.  Simultaneously, black artists were creating art that symbolized and depicted their own as well as the experiences of those around them – many of which were represented in Now Dig This!  Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960 -1980.  Johnson believes that through promoting solidarity, the art in Now Dig This! “poses a problem for its audience” because it divides them into 2 categories: 1 group that identifies with the black experience, and another group that does not.  However, I do not view this as a problem at all.  How are black artists creating art fueled by emotions from events that took place in their lives any different from Picasso creating art during his Blue Period?  It isn’t.  The fact that these pieces of art can be identified with by a certain group of people is secondary, and should be treated as such.  One can not expect an entire audience to have the same feelings, or reaction towards a singular piece of art whether it promotes solidarity or not.  Art is meant to promote discussion, and these pieces do just that.

In his article reviewing the exhibit at MoMA, Ken Johnson hones in on a piece by Melvin Edwards and writes: “Such dualities would be enough on which to base judgement and interpretation were this a piece by, say, the white junk sculptor Richard Stankiewicz.  But it makes a difference to know that Mr. Edwards is African-American…”  The real problem lies here. The race of the artist shouldn’t take precedence over the art.

Here’s an assemblage piece featured in the Davis Museum that both readings reminded me of (Kienholz, Edward; Kienholz, Nancy Reddin Sawdy 1971):

Mixed media assemblage (car door, mirrored window, automotive lacquer, polyester resin, screenprint, fluorescent light, galvanized sheet metal)

Johnson:  Black artists unconsciously divide their audience by taking assemblage, an art form initially created as an expression of freedom from parochial social mores, and using it as a way to promote solidarity through their art.

Jones:  A cultural shift within the black community opened up the possibilities for African American artists and fostered artistic innovation which ultimately led to the West Coast becoming notable for the acceptance of assemblage in mainstream America (through its symbolism of the black struggle between the 1960s and 80s).

Raiford: In the 1960s and 70s, the Black Panther Party used photography to create an image for themselves and give the black revolution more visibility in the American public eye.