Photography
What is polygenesis and who came up with that theory?
Polygenesis is the idea that that people of different races descended from different origins (in contrast to a single origin for all humans à la Charles Darwin). This theory was promoted by the Swiss biologist Louis Agassiz.
What are two types of stories Harriet Powers recounted in her Pictorial Quilt? How might we understand those two types of stories communicating one larger, overarching message?
Biblical stories (Garden of Eden, Jacob and the ladder, the crucifixion, the last supper, etc.)
Meteorological events (ie meteor showers, cold weather spells), some of which occurred before Powers was even born
Both types of stories share the concept of there being something bigger than ourselves -- whether that is god or the weather. We are but small players in the universe.
What was one result of Haussmanization and why was Haussmann called "The Demolisher"?
-wider boulevards leading up to specific monuments
- more formalized border defining the city of Paris
- division of the city into 16 arrondissements (districts)
- Haussmann (who had no background in urban planning) was known as The Demolisher because in order to construct this new city he needed to plow through old Parisian neighborhoods. It is estimated that he demolished some 20,000 buildings, which impacted 100,000 apartments, whose tenants were displaced.
What was a major landmark that was unveiled at the 1889 World's Fair?
The Eiffel Tower
Who was the most photographed man in 19th century America?
The abolitionist, writer, and orator Frederick Douglass
What are some defining qualities of a carte-de-visite?
- pocket- size – 4x2 inches that could be pasted onto the back of a little calling card or business card.
- 1 dozen carte-de-visite images for $1, which meant that they were much more accessible to a wider audience
- 10 different images of the sitter could be exposed on a single photographic plate.
- were collected and displayed in the home; some have compared the popularity of the carte-de-visite to the ubiquity of televisions in 1950s America.
What kinds of threads were often used in the creation of Ghanian kente cloth?
Kente is often made of dyed silk or cotton.
As early as the late 1500s, as the Asante empire became very powerful and wealthy, European traders brought colorful high-quality fabrics from Italy, France, India, and parts of North Africa. A practice thus began of unraveling imported fabrics and reweaving the silk threads
When Gauguin left Paris, he set out to live as a 'noble savage.' What did he mean by that, specifically as it relates to his stay in Martinique?
What was the premise of the ballet La Création du Monde? What kind of research did the cubist artist Fernand Léger undertake before making the sets and costumes?
The premise of the ballet came from a creation myth and fertility rite from the Fang people of Gabon in West Central Africa.
Léger researched African sculptures at Paris's Ethnography Museum and he visited the French art dealer Paul Guillaume’s collection of what was then called “primitive art.” However, we don't know exactly what types of objects he was looking at or what culture they may have come from.
What was the Great Quilt Controversy of 1992?
The Smithsonian began selling reproductions of Harriet Powers's Bible Quilt that were made in China.
Why did Sojourner Truth often have knitting in her lap in her portraits?
Knitting was not simply a pastime for Sojourner Truth. During the Civil War knitting acquired new patriotic connotations as newspapers would publish pleas for people to contribute knit goods. Truth was determined to teach her knitting skills to others, especially formerly enslaved people.
What did El Anatsui mean when he said "Cloth is to the African what monuments are to Westerners"?
Monuments are the physical embodiments of Western values and they commemorate important events and historical moments. Similarly, in many West African cultures, cloth is equally important and powerful in its communicative potential
While in Martinique, painter Paul Gauguin depicted many porteuses in his paintings. Who were the porteuses?
Porteuses were women who carried goods from the countryside plantations to markets in the harbor town of Saint-Pierre on their heads.
They did so because roads were too steep and mountainous for other modes of transportation.
What is the definition of Gesamtkunstwerk and what does it mean specifically in the context of the Ballets Suédois?
- total work of art
- Deep commitment to artistic collaboration with writers, composers, artists, and fashion designers to create these cohesive dance pieces in which no single element was “more important” than the other.
What are two examples of ways that textiles can be exhibited in museums? What are the implications (pros and cons) of each of those curatorial decisions?
flat versus on the body
Per art historian Deborah Willis, what is "mammy photography?"
Mammy photography consists of a family portrait that includes an enslaved woman. Drawing on the racist caricature of a mammy as a loyal, joyful, and desexualized mammy that circulated in caricatures, illustrations, and figurines as early as 1830, mammy photography similarly was meant to show that enslavement was "good" for the enslaved.
What kinds of materials did the Gee’s Bend quilters often use to make their quilts? Why is that significant?
fabric scraps, especially scraps from denim workwear or burlap fertilizer sacks
emotional transference -- aestheticizing and memorializing labor
Why do art historians say that Gauguin used a "cut and paste" or "collage" technique when making his Martinique paintings?
He was not painting en plein air. Rather, he made preparatory sketches that he then went back to the studio to refine. We can see examples of him copying the same women, trees, and animals from one painting to another.
What took place in the “living displays” at the colonial pavilions of the 1889 World’s Fair?
There were "native villages" set up that necessitated bringing in groups of people people from all areas of the French empire (likely against their will and without adequate compensation). They were given materials to build their own dwellings as well as foodstuffs and raw material to make meals and clothing. They were expected to perform their “normal” activities for the World's Fair visitors -- praying, weaving, making dinner on an open fire, arts and crafts demonstrations.
Often, people from different cultural groups were brought together in these "family units" despite them not having a common language or overlapping cultural traditions.
One example = the Village Nègre with over 400 people from Central and West African colonies
What was the architecture like for the Palais des Colonies and Colonial Pavilions at the 1889 World's Fair?
Designed by an architect who helped work on the Eiffel Tower, the Palais des Colonies blended French architectural style with a vaguely exotic “styles of the colonies." Visually, this building stood in stark contrast to the ultra modern pavilions across the Seine.
The colonial pavilions were similarly vague. French architects designed a "visual identity" for each colony so that viewers could distinguish one from the other, but still resulted in a harmonious whole. Synthesis was the name of the game with inspiration coming from all kinds of disparate sources.
Describe Carrie Mae Weems' From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried and explain its significance
- She created an installation that comprised of 30 photographs– which included the Zealy daguerreotypes among other images of enslaved people that she found in museum and university archives.
- Weems then re-photographed and enlarged these images and printed them through colored filters – most of them are red
- She also framed the red-toned prints in circular mattes, and then superimposed text
- the circular matte evokes the camera lens and/or a scientific tool like a microscope, so Weems is emphasizing the mode in which these photographs were originally taken.
- she very clearly implicates the viewer in this "othering" perspective
How were Gee's Bend quilts initially exhibited in New York and why was that problematic?
Beginning in the 1970s, Gee's Bend quilts were exhibited alongside contemporary works of abstract expressionist painting, where they were compared solely on a formal level. The quilters were not credited and there was little-to-no context provided for the quilts. Art critics couldn’t understand these quilts as independent artworks; rather, they were only considered art when compared to works that were already seen as epitomizing modern art.
How would you describe the landscape paintings Gauguin made in Martinique?
Aesthetically they are quite beautiful, particularly in his use of color. At the same time, they are quite nonspecific and thus don't offer much tangible information about the landscape of Martinique. Rather, these paintings offer the idea of a simple life, innocence, wilderness, happiness, timelessness, and the beauty and abundance of nature.
What does James Clifford mean when he writes: "The concrete activity of representing a culture is always strategic and selective. [...] Collecting––at least in the West, where time is generally thought to be linear and irreversible––implies a rescue of phenomena from inevitable historical decay or loss. The collection contains what 'deserves' to be kept, remembered, and treasured.”?
Representing a culture ≠ presenting a neutral, complete record of that culture's history
Collecting is about making choices that ultimately reveal more about the collecting culture than the one who you are collecting
What made the Ballets Suédois modern?
- sought novel forms of intermedial artistic expression with a wholehearted embrace of the contemporary avant-garde
- not recapitulating the tropes Romantic ballet (long tutus, pointe shoes, stories based on fairytales) or even traditional ballet technique