Abstraction and Performance Art
How does Frank Bowling upend our assumptions about maps?
- Unlike a traditional map that is meant to give you a clear sense of where different things are in space, he would oftentimes mix and match countries and continents, placing them in new orientations.
- sometimes the outlines of the continents themselves were obscured by his dramatic washes of color
- Bowling was adamant that he started making stencils of continents by accident -- it wasn't intended as a political statement from the outset
What does the name Musée Dynamique imply?
The space was not designed to house a permanent collection; as a living institution looking toward the future, it was in a constant state of readiness
(we might think about this in contrast to colonial museum collecting practices)
What are El Anatsui’s “cloth pieces” made of?
Julie Mehretu's massive paintings look abstract, but they are indeed based on specific sources. What are some examples of Mehretu's reference images?
- layered maps and architectural drawings from Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia
- blueprints, diagrams, and maps of airports and transit stations, ie spaces of mobility.
Why did Betye Saar call upon fellow artists to boycott the work of Kara Walker?
- she felt that Walker's work was revolting, negative, pornographic, and ultimately humiliating to the Black community
Throughout the 20th century, there have been major debates around whether Black artists “should” be making figurative art versus abstract art. Please briefly describe both sides of the debate.
- idea that Black artists should be making overtly political figurative works that can clearly communicate messages of protest. This goes back to the idea of the "burden of representation" -- Black artists "need" to speak for the entire community.
- who is "allowed" to make abstract art, or art for art's sake?
- Being a Black artist doesn't need to be the same thing as being an activist
What was Négritude and where did the movement coalesce?
- coalesced in Paris in the 1930s
- literary and ideological movement of French-speaking Black intellectuals that rejects the social domination of the West
- they posited a collective Black consciousness based on common experience
- took pride in their Blackness and rejected the idea that they needed to assimilate to a dominant culture
We discussed Faith Ringgold's story quilt Tar Beach (1988). What does the "tar beach" refer to and what was the basic premise of the story?
- the Tar Beach evoked in the title refers to Harlem rooftops overlooking the George Washington Bridge.
- Tar Beach follows the story of a girl named Cassie Louise Lightfoot who dreams of being free to go wherever she wants. And one summer night, with the help of the stars, she flies across the city.
- the story memorializes simple pleasures and fantasies of a childhood in Harlem, as remembered from Ringgold’s own
What kind of "performance" did Fred Wilson do that illustrated the theme of his work Guarded View (1991)
- Guarded View "forced" viewers to look at security guards, who are always present and easily identifiable at museums, yet most often remain invisible.
- Wilson was invited to give a tour of the current exhibitions at the Whitney Museum to museum staff. He had lunch with the staff and then said "ok I’m going to change my clothes. I’ll meet you in the galleries by the sign that says "Fred Wilson speaks at 2 pm.” He changed into a guard's uniform and stood by the sign. The staff stood there waiting for Wilson to show up..then once he started talking they were embarrassed when they realized this "security guard" was indeed Wilson
Describe the exhibition Tendencies and Confrontations at the 1966 Festival of Black Art. What did it reveal about the category of "Black Art"
- this was an exhibition of contemporary Black Art that took place at the Palais de Justice, featuring 200 artists of 25 different nationalities
- There was no real cohesion among all participating artists...the exhibit revealed (as its title points to) some tendencies that might be shared among the artists as well as confrontations in which different artworks might seem diametrically opposed despite the fact that they were both made by contemporary Black artists
How do Nick Cave’s Soundsuits both conceal and reveal the body?
- they are full body costumes that camouflage the body and thus conceal one's age, race, and gender.
- at the same time, they are literally and visually loud; they undoubtedly call attention to the wearer's body
Why was the Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor so intent on promoting culture in the mid-1960s?
As a founder of Négritude, Senghor took pride in a collective Black consciousness/identity that could connect people from across the Diaspora. He felt that the arts were the best way forge links between people of African descent from around the world.
Where does Bisa Butler source her images from?
-She begins with a photograph, most of which are black and white.
- Most often the photos come from archival databases like the Library of Congress or a photographic archive from a newspaper and she picks images of anonymous individuals.
- particularly interested in images taken in the 1930s-1940s under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration
– Butler feels she owes it to these anonymous individuals to ascertain what their identity may have been
In Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps (2005), Kehinde Wiley reimagines a historical painting. What was the reference image and name at least 2 ways that Wiley "updates" the image
- black man in the "Napoleon" role
- wearing contemporary clothes
- includes the sitter's last name on the stones among the other historical figures
- background that looks like French fabric interspersed with sperm
How does El Anatsui conceive of the relationship between his “cloth pieces” and actual kente cloth?
-claims that he was fairly unfamiliar with types of kente and any visual similarity happened by chance
-He has explained that it is a mistake to try to match the patterns with original cloth types. He is not trying to reconstruct kente through his sculptures
According to Adrian Piper, what is one reason why is it problematic for curators/critics to focus on the identity of an artist?
- “it turns the artist into little more than a cryptic, exotic object that provides the occasion for Euroethnic self-analysis.”
- “Falsely presupposes a background of Euroethnic homogeneity against which the person can be identified as ‘other.”’
- In other words, when we only focus on the identity of the artist, the works are interpreted as autobiographical expressions of identity and are thus understood as "other" as seen by the majority white audience
What did the organizers of L'Art Negre mean when they said they didn't want the exhibit to be a "piece of ethnology" or "didactic"?
What did Faith Ringgold mean when she described her American People Series as "Super Realist"? To answer, please describe two paintings in the series.
- the works themselves aren't actually "realist" in the sense of them being photorealist; rather, she wants us to think about realism more conceptually. The message of the paintings is what makes them super-realist as Ringgold exposes the realities of Americans navigating oppressive racial social structures.
- paintings include "For Members Only," "Neighbors," "The Flag is Bleeding," and "Die"
Describe the basic premise of Fred Wilson’s 1992 Mining the Museum and please give at least one specific example of his intervention in the museum.
- curated an installation using the collection of the Maryland Historical Society
- Wilson was given one year to research the collection and he had free reign
- wanted to highlight the fact that the narratives being promoted within this institution were neither reflective of the entire Maryland population nor were they giving the full story of Maryland's history (aka they were excluding almost all histories pertaining to non-white, elite people as well as the history of enslavement)
- Wilson made many interventions including: poster in the elevator asking viewers a series of questions, rewriting the labels to give voice to non-white figures in paintings who might otherwise be ignored, surprising juxtapositions like installing a KKK hood inside of an antique baby carriage, showcasing whipping posts alongside antique cabinets, showing luxury silver vessels alongside shackles, the "Truth" installation with empty pedestals
How does Bisa Butler "fuse" history in her quilts?
Through the act of quilting, she literally layers history together.
Example: Mannish Boy: photograph from the 1930s, title referencing a song from the 1950s as well as the 1968 "I Am a Man" civil rights poster, 1990s hip hop culture (in the print on his shirt) and made in 2018
Example: Four Little Girls: initial reference photograph from the 1930s, title referencing the four little girls who were murdered in the KKK bombings of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL in 1963, made in 2018
Example:
Describe Howardena Pindell's work Free, White, and 21 (1980). Why did some curators refuse to exhibit this work?
- film in which Howardena Pindell narrates various racist acts that have happened throughout her life, including many examples that pertain to the contemporary art world
- She includes a "white woman" character who interrupts Pindell and questions the validity of her concerns and experience
- in a very direct way, this work exposed the racism in the art world more broadly and among the white feminist art groups
How did the 1972 Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts that took place in Guyana belie the lived reality of Guyana?
- the festival was a celebration of Pan-Africanism and specifically focused on celebrating Caribbean cultures.
- in reality, this festival explicitly excluded the Indo-Guyanese population (which constituted the largest racial group in Guyana at the time) and was only celebrating certain aspects of and ideas about Caribbean culture
What kinds of fabrics does Yinka Shonibare use in his artworks? How do they contribute to his ideas about representing “Africanness” in his artwork?
- Ankara fabrics or "African" dutch wax fabric
- The colorful patterned fabric, which is now commonly associated with Western and Central African clothing, was first introduced to Africa in the 19th century by Dutch merchants.
- the textile is thus neither fully Dutch nor fully African – instability in their meaning.
- Sonibare buys all the fabrics himself from a well-known Afro-Caribbean market in London. “It’s important that I don’t go to Africa to buy the fabrics, so that all African exotic implications remain fake."
In works such as A Subtlety (2014) and Fons Americanus (2019), how does Kara Walker subvert the traditional idea of the monument?
Fons Americanus - rather than regular monuments that celebrate power, Walker questions narratives of power and the empire, particularly as they pertain to the interconnected histories of Africa, America, and Britain. Throughout the entire sculpture she quotes specific artworks including Turner's Slave Ship, the Sable Venus print, and Damien Hirst's shark
- also both of these "monuments" were destroyed
Compare and contrast how Faith Ringgold and Kara Walker reframe the "mammy" figure
Faith Ringgold: Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima (1983); one of her earlier story quilts. 56 panels some with text and some with images. Tells the story of a fictional Black woman named Jemima Blakey (named after the mammy caricature Aunt Jemima). This Jemima, however, is a business owner and independent matriarch -- quite the opposite of the larger bodied, devoted, and submissive mammy archetype.
Kara Walker: A Subtlety. Makes the "mammy" figure so large you can't ignore her; almost like a goddess. Forcing viewers to really look at her and not ignore her