This paper looks at the works of contemporary artist addressing different social issues. Also, it reviews the artworks by Ebony Patterson, Jordana Saggese, Kevin Cole, and Rebecca Morse. Most of these articles draw upon general sources such as essays, published letters, and a collection of the photograph. Prior research on Saggese suggest that she channels a connection about diversity and the different personalities that she published and associated with. Through showing that these contemporary artworks are understood, this research highlights the importance of the artist taking social actions in their meanings. Keywords: Jordana Saggese, contemporary art, social issues, Ebony Patterson.
In examining art, questions such as "What does this
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Seeing the visual work of art was seemed, by all accounts, to be secured by long articles of clothing, proposing something substantial that conveys the state of a level body. The absence of sureness gives Patterson's craft an uneasy complex—"the ramifications of social and social setting they work inside, particularly of those in the lower-class" (Patterson). Patterson's deconstruction of sexual orientation uncovers the determination of stereotyping. Considering what it feels like to be disposed of and rejected came to mind.
One theme in these contemporary arts: Gender & Race Diversity. Ebony Patterson’s fabric triptych “Gully Godz in Conversations Revised I, II, and III,” examines gender identity and stereotyping using items like jewels and hand-embellished gems, which refer to feminism. Likewise, in their article “Diversity & Difference in Contemporary Art,” Greg Dalton and Jonah Olson writes that artist Jordana Saggese addresses relationship issues related to race and
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Professor Lisa Carl
28 September 2016
Signs of the times: Still Trying to Cross the Bridge
What I feel from this artwork is remembering and recollecting. This charcoal piece is based as people being down and having to overcome. It reminds me of the incident in Selma, Alabama how Martin Luther King wanted to protest about equal rights. This data looks rough in uneasy. I believe this is how I see's black America. The flag is black and white given the fact that America is divided by race. Wavy and curved lines throughout the sketch. The boots and the dollar could represents have big and far and hard you have to work in order to get one small amount of money. Spots
The artist, Kevin Cole, used a great medium to draw with. If you are using paper for artwork, charcoal is very ideal for this. He used a lot of smudges and bleeds coming off the page. The texture created a ton of ties, wrapping them all together. The shades blend nicely onto the paper itself. In my opinion, it is a fantastic product with all the symbols and dark lines coming together.
Cole’s framework of neckties and motifs are very uplifting by providing energy. Kevin Cole’s If Color Could Speak series all have something to
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
Did you know that in 1960, Betye Saar collected pictures of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, and Little Black Sambo including other African American figures in areas that are also invalid with folk culture and advertising? Since, Saar collected pictures from the folk cultures and advertising she also makes many collages including assemblages, changing these into social protest statements. When her great-aunt passed away, Saar started assembling and collecting memorabilia from her family and created her personal assemblages which she gathered from nostalgic mementos of her great aunt’s life.
After reviewing Jacob Lawrence’s direct and dramatic paintings, it was clear that his painting helped him express himself. The painting was and still is a product of the economic and cultural self-determination that African-American dealt in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, during the migration and still evident in society today. The visual qualities in Jacob Lawrence artwork that is appealing are the vibrant colors and his clever way of self-expressing the time he was so familiar. In final analysis, his artwork expressed how he felt about his environment and what his perspective were during that time. And, how restrained his painting were, for instance, Street Scene – Restaurant, even though African- Americans had access to restaurants in the neighboring area but, he still place patriot outside the restaurant waiti...
Anything from a police man leaning on a wall that gets lost in the crowd on busy days to a cleaning lady next to a garbage can. Duane creates life like art pieces that you can lose the fact that they are fake. The amount of detail along with the expressions on the figures’ faces tells the tale. The spectator creates a relationship to the piece because its the familiar look or feeling they receive from the experience. Duane uses the figures’ as they are portrayed to accomplish an everyday ordinary person moreover with that technique displays the ability to relate the viewers to the art
Faith Ringgold was born in Harlem on October 8th 1930, the great depression had just ended and although she lived in the north, racism was still going on all throughout the country. As a young child, Ringgold was often bed ridden because of harsh asthma and during this time she often would draw. In 1950 she got her own studio and started working on oil painting projects. By 1962 she had gotten her MA in Art at the City College of New York, had two daughters and had been divorced and remarried. Ringgold was greatly influenced by a family who loved storytelling and learned from her mother’s stories about the ancestry of the slaves. Ringgold was both an artist as well as a teacher of art within the New York City public schools and a professor at the University of California, San Diego. Throughout her lifetime and time of her paintings, the civil rights movement was in full force.
Kara Walker’s Silhouette paintings are a description of racism, sexuality, and femininity in America. The works of Kara Elizabeth Walker, an African American artist and painter, are touched with a big inner meaning. A highlight of the picture displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco will be discussed and the symbolism of the sexuality and slavery during the Atlantic slavery period will be enclosed. The modern Art Museum has works of over 29,000 paintings, photos, design and sculptures among others. The use of black Silhouette is her signature in the artistic career.
This investigation will examine a few key works by the anonymous female artist group know in popular culture as the Guerrilla Girls. In this essay it will reveal several prominent themes within the groups works that uncover the racial and gender inequalities in politics, art and pop culture with the use of humor. These collaborating artists work and operate with a variety of mediums, their works display a strong message concerned with activism connected by humor allowing the Guerrilla Girls to communicate and resonate a more powerful message to the viewer. The ways in which this collaborating group has employed many questions and facts against the hierarchy and historical ideologies which have exploited women and their roles in art. This investigation will allow the reader to identify three areas in which the Guerrilla Girls apply a certain forms of humor to transform society’s view on the prominent issue of gender in the art world. These specific ploys that are performed by the Guerrilla Girls are in the way they dress, the masks they wear, pseudonymous names of dead women artists and the witty factual evidence in their works. These are all examples to evoke audiences in challenging not only the art society which dictates the value and worth of women in art but also to confront yourself and your own beliefs in a way that makes audiences rethink these growing issues.
In conclusion, scholars have come to identity “Ethiopia Awakening” as one of Fuller’s most meaningful works. 34 The sculpture demonstrated multiple and diverse meanings. “Ethiopia Awakening” embodied symbolic language that pointed to the struggles of contemporary African Americans. Fuller’s use of symbolic language demonstrated that like music and religion, art has the power to express emotion. Today, “Ethiopia Awakening” stands in the reading room of the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. The sculpture reminds researchers to recover, document, write and share African American history.
By comparing “A Little Taste Outside of Love” (2007) by Mickalene Thomas (1971-Present) and “A Black Woman” (1775) by an unknown French painter this paper will demonstrate that although blacks were once degraded through the sexualization of their bodies in art, their nudity is now used to convey empowerment in contemporary art.
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
Growing up she wished to attend art school but segregation in schools didn’t allow for her to study art like her white counterparts instead she studied design with a minor is sociology. At the time, there was a great struggle for black artists to find financial success/gain from their art as they were considered inferior in comparison to their white counterparts and were “lucky” to get jobs as a window designer or a job in graphic designs of which Saar did the latter. Saar would create studio cards until after the birth of her second daughter which refueled her passion for fine arts. After returning to school and gaining and additional degree in printmaking, she began experimenting. In the beginnings of her career she focused solely on printmaking and as time progressed, she fell into “junk art” or assemblage, thusly finding her own artistic signature in the midst of the Black Arts movements.
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
This essay illustrates the Black Arts Movement's "manifesto" or plan. Neal wrote: "The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community" (Smith). Meaning, all black people must reorganize the creativity of the Western culture because of their "desire for self-determination and nationhood" (Smith). Neal hoped that when the black community collectively joined to create a new art form, they would become powerful and strengthened in their society. Neal was just one of the important writers of the Black Arts Movement era.
In Confronting Images, Didi-Huberman considers disadvantages he sees in the academic approach of art history, and offers an alternative method for engaging art. His approach concentrates on that which is ‘visual’ long before coming to conclusive knowledge. Drawing support from the field of psycho analytics (Lacan, Freud, and Kant and Panofsky), Didi-Huberman argues that viewers connect with art through what he might describe as an instance of receptivity, as opposed to a linear, step-by-step analytical process. He underscores the perceptive mode of engaging the imagery of a painting or other work of art, which he argues comes before any rational ‘knowing’, thinking, or discerning. In other words, Didi-Huberman believes one’s mind ‘sees’ well before realizing and processing the object being looked at, let alone before understanding it. Well before the observer can gain any useful insights by scrutinizing and decoding what she sees, she is absorbed by the work of art in an irrational and unpredictable way. What Didi-Huberman is s...
The exhibition is not too large as it only contains around eighty artworks. These works all have African Americans as the main subject since Marshall believes that African Americans deserve more attention in art because they are almost “invisible” in a way. Mastry is arranged chronologically, starting with Marshall’s earlier works and then leading to galleries with themes such as beauty or the civil-rights struggle. Mastry should be visited because it allows a person to learn about African American art which is underrepresented and underappreciated. The general idea or thesis of this exhibition is that African Americans have been looked down on throughout history and viewed as subhumans, or even invisible. Marshall’s exhibition is about appreciating African Americans and viewing them as what they are: humans.