Dana Schutz's Emmett Till At The Witney Biennial

364 Words1 Page

In the articles about the Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till at the Witney Biennial，many of the discussions has pondering upon whether or not can white artists depict or take up black sufferings as a subject matter, and others questioned the rights of ethnical appropriation and censorships on sensitive topics.George Baker, Aruna D’Souza, and Josephine Livingstone and Lovia Gyarkye in The Case Against Dana Schuta, have all pointed out that Schutz’s painting is not a thoughtful commentary on its subject matter. That Schutz failed to demonstrate her empathy and respect to the victim and the victim’s family according to how the formal instructive, fragmented, and disfigurative qualities of the painting. Dana Schutz is heavily criticized for

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Abina And The Important Men

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    After learning that a man by the name of Quamina Eddoo was declared not guilty of slavery, his young slave Abina Mansah tearfully proclaims that she might as well have kept her story silent; in writing Abina and the Important Men, a gripping graphic history that tells the tale of the court case between Abina and Quamina, author Trevor Getz and illustrator Liz Clarke hope to accomplish just the opposite, by giving a voice to someone who was once silenced (Getz and Clarke 77). To do so effectively, Getz and Clarke employ several historiographical and literary strategies that are evident throughout the work.

    Read More

  • Kara Walker Art Analysis

    1545 Words  | 4 Pages

    Visceral. Raw. Controversial. Powerful. The works which Kara Walker creates have elicited strong and diametric responses from members of the art community. She manipulates the style of antebellum era silhouettes, intended to create simple, idealistic images, and instead creates commentaries on race, gender, and power within the specific history of the United States. She has also been accused of reconfirming the negative stereotypes of black people, especially black women, that the viewer and that the white, male dominated art world may hold. This perspective implies that both her subjects and her artworks are passive when confronted with their viewers. Personally, I believe that more than anything, Walker’s work deals in power -- specifically, the slim examples of power black individuals have over their

    Read More

  • C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the months following the Brown v. Board of Education decision C. Vann Woodward wrote a series of lectures that would provide the basis for one of the most historically significant pieces of nonfiction literature written in the 20th century. Originally, Woodward’s lectures were directed to a local and predominantly southern audience, but as his lectures matured into a comprehensive text they gained national recognition. In 1955 Woodward published the first version of The Strange Career of Jim Crow, a novel that would spark a fluid historical dialogue that would continue for the next twenty years. Woodward foresaw this possibility as he included in the first edition, “Since I am…dealing with a period of the past that has not been adequately investigated, and also with events of the present that have come too rapidly and recently to have been properly digested and understood, it is rather inevitable that I shall make some mistakes. I shall expect and hope to be corrected.” Over this time period Woodward released four separate editions, in chapter form, that modified, corrected, and responded to contemporary criticisms.

    Read More

  • Fire in a Canebrake

    1629 Words  | 4 Pages

    In her Fire in a Canebrake, Laura Wexler describes an important event in mid-twentieth century American race relations, long ago relegated to the closet of American consciousness. In so doing, Wexler not only skillfully describes the event—the Moore’s Ford lynching of 1946—but incorporates it into our understanding of the present world and past by retaining the complexities of doubt and deception that surrounded the event when it occurred, and which still confound it in historical records. By skillfully navigating these currents of deceit, too, Wexler is not only able to portray them to the reader in full form, but also historicize this muddled record in the context of certain larger historical truths. In this fashion, and by refusing to cede to a desire for closure by drawing easy but inherently flawed conclusions regarding the individuals directly responsible for the 1946 lynching, Wexler demonstrates that she is more interested in a larger historical picture than the single event to which she dedicates her text. And, in so doing, she rebukes the doubts of those who question the importance of “bringing up” the lynching, lending powerful motivation and purpose to her writing that sustains her narrative, and the audience’s attention to it.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Carrie Mae Weems And Lorna Simpson

    1656 Words  | 4 Pages

    How does one embrace the message and soul of artwork when you can’t get passed the color of skin in the portraits? Two barrier breaking retrospective artists born with more than 2,899 miles between them have beat down the walls in the art world opening up endless opportunities for female artist today. Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson specialize in catching the viewer’s eye and penetrating their feelings towards issues of culture, politics, equality, and feminism. It is well established that these woman specialize in identifying problems in their artwork, both artists seem to struggle with not being able to avoid the ignorant eye of stereotyping because they use African American Models in their artwork. Carrie Mae Weems doesn’t see her artwork

    Read More

  • The Closing Of Whittier Blvd Analysis

    1733 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the 20th-century, police brutality played a significant role in historical events from the Civil Rights Movement to both Los Angeles riots. Like with most cultural historic moments, art comes about to express the thoughts and tell the stories of those who otherwise might not have a voice. Artist Frank Romero was one of those people who used art to create a voice for himself by painting on a canvas to murals across Los Angeles—and sparking what would be the Chicano movement. Growing up in East Los Angeles, Frank Romero was front and center to countless civil rights violations by the Los Angeles Police Department(LAPD), one being the violation of over a hundred thousand people—mainly Chicano—in his painting “The Closing of Whittier Blvd”

    Read More

  • Sara Smolinsky and Cultural Pluralism in Jewish-American Culture

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    George Schuyler’s article “The Negro Art Hokum” argues that the notion of African-American culture as separate from national American culture is nonsense. To Schuyler, all seemingly distinct elements of African-American culture and artistic endeavors from such are influenced by the dominant white American culture, and therefore, only American. The merit of Schuyler’s argument stems from the fact that it is practically impossible for one culture to exist within the confines of another without absorbing certain characteristics. The problem with Schuyler’s argument that Langston Hughes notes in his response article, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” is that it assumes complete assimilation of African-Americans by a singular national culture. Fundamental to Hughes’ rebuttal is the allowance of a unique African-American culture extant of the standards of a singular American cultural identity. For Hughes, this unique culture lies within the working-class, out of sight of the American national culture. This culture, while neither completely African nor American, maintains the vibrant and unique roots of the African-American experience. Schuyler advocates cultural assimilation, while Hughes promotes cultural pluralism, in which minority cultures maintain their distinctive qualities in the face of a dominant national identity.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Movie Bamboozled

    1556 Words  | 4 Pages

    Lee has knowingly depicted the issue in over-the-top method, which is profiled in itself from two angles at least. In the first instance, De La’s willingness in the minstrel is a portrayal of the reality of aggressor’s internalization where blacks are compelled to bear with the devastation. Two dancers, Sleep’n’Eat and Man Tan, graphically depict this phenomenon in their reactions. This is the reminder of concentration camps where kapo to police roles were assigned to Jewish inmates to keep an eye on their companions bearing the brunt with them. In the second instance, Mau Maus, who enact Man Tan on TV, showed the unwillingness to compliance of African-Americans in the subjugation by whites. In many ways, this is the depiction of the conformity of blacks as criminal-minded, violence-prone, and full of aggression.8

    Read More

  • Passed On Death And Loss Sparknotes

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    She uses narrative, photographs, and images to summon a painful history of lynchings, white rage and riot, medical malpractice and neglect, executions, and neighborhood violence. Her research uncovered how people in the past had specialized caskets sold to African Americans, formal burial photos of infants, and deathbed stories, and she unveiled a glimpse...

    Read More

  • The Color Purple Literary Analysis

    1380 Words  | 3 Pages

    Charles Whitaker questions the fact, “Is this the Alice Walker, the alleged fire-breathing feminist, or "womanist" (to use her term) whose Pulitzer Prize Winning novel, The Color Purple, has, for many, come to symbolize Black male bashing at its worst? This novel that Walker has created is certainly a masterpiece, but as Whitaker shows with his questioning, this novel strikes immense amounts controversy among it’s readers and leaves most confused and concerned about Walker's intentions. On a more important note, it is important to consider the fact that this book has been banned all over the country by various schools and libraries due to its controversy. See, the problems with humans is that when they confront something they don’t understand or don’t agree with, the first thing they do is simply remove it. Very often does humanity take the effort to understand the things they don’t agree with, but quite often those ideas are crucial in our race's

    Read More

  • Emmett Till's Legacy

    965 Words  | 2 Pages

    What event caused the Civil Rights Movement to begin: Brown vs. Board of Education, the Emmett Till Murder, or the arrest of Rosa Parks? Throughout years after the abolishment of slavery, many different racial groups have faced a lot adversity.From the earliest years of the european settlement, whites have enslaved and suppressed our blacks.After the Civil war sparked the abolishment of slavery, a harsh system of white supremacy persisted thereafter.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Gone: An Historical Romance Of A Civil War By Kara Walker

    1561 Words  | 4 Pages

    Kara Walker’s piece titled Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b 'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart represents discrimination on basis of race that happened during the period of slavery. The medium Walker specializes in using paper in her artwork. This piece is currently exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art. Even though this artwork depicts slavery, discrimination is still an issue today in America, the country where people are supposedly free and equal. Even though slavery ended in the 19th century, we still see hints of racial discrimination for African Americans in our society. Walker uses color, image composition, and iconography to point out evidence of racial inequality that existed in the

    Read More

  • Ma Rainey's Prove It On Me Blues

    1761 Words  | 4 Pages

    Black art forms have historically always been an avenue for the voice; from spirituals to work songs to ballads, pieces of literature are one way that the black community has consistently been able to express their opinions and communicate to society at large. One was this has been achieved is through civil disobedience meeting civil manners. In this case, it would be just acknowledging an issue through art and literature. On the other hand, there is art with a direct purpose - literature meant to spur action; to convey anger and shock; or to prompt empathy, based on a discontent with the status quo. That is, protest literature. Through the marriage of the personal and political voices in black poetry and music, the genre functions as a form

    Read More

  • Black Poetry

    2173 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.

    Read More

  • Post Feminism In Alice Walker's Color Purple

    1516 Words  | 4 Pages

    In 1982, Walker published her most controversial and famous book, ‘The Color Purple’. It is written in the form of epistolary (letter), the novel included vivid descriptions of rape, incest, bisexuality, lesbianism, and “black- on – black” violence and abuse. It recounted the tragic but ultimately triumphant life story of Celie, a young victimized black woman. A year later it appeared it got Pulitzer Prize in fiction and National Book Award, and in 1985 it was adapted as motion picture. Walker’s longtime best- seller transcended black and gender

    Read More

More about Dana Schutz's Emmett Till At The Witney Biennial

Open Document