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Contemporary Art, - - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Tom Lloyd, Moussakoo (from the Electronic Refraction Series), 1968
        
        Taken from the conversation between Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Lloyd states "The White community hasn't accepted Black artists for years and years, and they're not ready to now. Therefore I'm a Black artist." This fits into the idea of Colonization and Assimilation because when referring to White artists we just use the word artist. However, when referring to POC and Black artists we make it a point to point out race showing why POC and Black people feel the need to assimilate. We feel the need to assimilate because no matter what job we hold our skin color will always come first and always be the first thing to be seen. Lloyd is showing that he does not want to assimilate and he acknowledges that he is a Black artist because of colonization, yet this doesn't always have to be a negative thing, We shouldn't feel the need to assimilate because our art can be relatable if connected back to skin ton and ethnicity to other Black and POC people.
        
        Senga Nengudi (1943-Present) -In the '60s created art that did not surround her Blackness or political Blackness, she instead created interactive abstract art that was up for interpretation.
        -In Hammons quote about her he states; "No one would even speak to her because we were all doing political art. She couldn't relate. She wouldn't even show around other Black artists, her work was so outrageously abstract. She came to New York and still no one would deal with her because she wasn't doing 'Black Art.'"
        -Much like Lloyd this shows that Nengudi in her way defied assimilation and had no willingness to call herself a Black artist just because at the time that is what the White man would have labeled her. She made art for herself and for her viewers to enjoy without feeling the need to make her art political. She was cast away by other Black artists because of this showing that assimilation is real and we as human beings get scared when someone can defy the box that others tell them they need to be in.
        
        Tehching Hsieh, "One Year Performance" -A Taiwanese immigrant living in the USA illegally.
        -The experience of living in America as an immigrant can feel "alien."
        -He documents himself every time he punches in for work throughout the year and how he has changed.
        -In his "Time Clock Piece" he punches a clock every hour showing how one who is in America illegally although technically shouldn't be able to get a job is often used for labor because of their social status. This piece comments on the excess labor immigrants often have to go to to assimilate.
        
        Jones "Black West" reading; -"While the Black Panthers and US shared the goal of African American empowerment, the aproaches were different; the Black Panthers called for immediate armed struggle to this end, while US championed a revolution in black cultural life and thought as a precursor to radical material transformation. Both US and the Panthers took the strict view that art must be a 'tool for liberation.'"
        -This quote from the reading shows that even when trying not to marginalize Black artists we still do by shoving them into the idea that they cannot be artists and will always be Black artists because there art must always be focused around liberation or it means nothing. We do not hold these same standards to White artists and can appreciate them as just "artists." Within this module we explore the idea that Black abstract art must always have a meaning surrounding identity and race and cannot just exist on it's own because of assimilation. In order to assimilate as a Black artist one must accept that they will always be labeled as a Black artist.
- - - - Betye Saar wrote a letter to artists and politicians decrying Walkers art and how she displays negative images of African Americans throughout history. Showing how unnaproving Betye was towarda Kara's art shows how sensitive/how we keep quiet about certain topics within America. We must speak about Black stereotypes within history to show just how bad depiction of Black people was during the time and how it's affected us to this day. For example in Cartoons they often have white gloves because thats the one thing that stook during the minstrol period of cartoons.
        
        Chris Ofili, "The Holy Virgin Mary" (1996) -Addresses racial and sexual stereotypes in a "humorous" way, which in certain spaces can be seen as inappropriate and outrageous which is exactly what he is going for especially in this piece.
        -The Virgin Mary is painted as a black woman on top of elephant dung, instead of a halo having woman's butts cut around her head.
        -Mayor Rudy Giuliani called it offensive to Roman Catholicism.
        -A man seeing the painting pretended to be sick and when a guard came over he ran and threw white paint across the painting because the painting was "blasphemous."
        -Obviously, if an artist can evoke these types of emotions from people they have been successful in creating something "outrageous."
        -Ofili refuses to stay quiet about religious trauma and how American and European religion can play a case in colonization and getting rid of tribal culture and spirituality (this is seen with Native boarding schools.)
        -Ofili is reappropriating stereotypes and turning them into somewhat of a positive in this piece.
        
        Bell Hooks "Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness" (1989) -How one should speak when they are colonized; do you find a different place perhaps a higher up place to speak or do you speak from your margin? -Do we make new language in order to stray away from the fact that we are colonized? -"Our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting." Meaning in American History we hide certain aspects of the past and instead try to shed a positive light on POC and Black people. Hooks is saying we cannot do this without remembering the hardships we've been through. -"The meaning of home changes with the experience of decolonization, of radicalization." -Our place of safety is altered, she states that home is nowhere because due to colonization we have been alienated. The tough question to ask is do we construct a new world order or stay within this box of colonization in order to reclaim our own cultures. -Hooks is not speaking about a space where White and Black people get along which is what we tend to speak about when we bring up the topic of how can we move past colonization. -Places like universities expect Black people to play the role of "other." -Directly against the idea of assimilation, again bringing up tough questions and suggestions on how we can truly be independent as Black and POC.
        
        Issac Julien "The Attendant" (1960) -Disturbing in the sense that it connects the history of the slave trade and masters and slaves to BDSM and sexual play.
        -His response against the criticism of his work.
        -Can be interpreted as how being Black and gay is often harder because of Colonization and assimilation, however, this topic is rarely spoken about especially the fact that his queerness is being connected to this idea of slavery and colonization.
        -The attendant not coming out at the end and going back to his wife can also show how Black people need to assimilate even more than their white counterparts and this causes hiding so much about themselves to be seen as "socially acceptable" in America.
        -The attendant reacts against these margins when he feels safe.
        -There's a discomfort in Americans when it comes to sexuality in art especially when it's related to points of history we try to erase.
        
        Lorde "The Masters Tools" reading; -"Poor women and women of Color know there is a difference between the daily manifestations of material slavery and prostitution because it is our daughter who line 42nd street. If White American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the woman who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part poor woman and woman of Color?"
        -When we speak about feminism as a whole we must keep in mind that there is still a hiearchy and some sort of seperation between White women and women of color because of race. Yes feminism must apply to all women but at the end of the day it is very hard to talk about the difference of how one is treated as a White women VS a Black women without at least one White person getting offended.
        -The author makes it a point to say that we cannot move forward with feminism if we cannot recognize the different ways White women and women of color can have or not have oppurtunities and experience racism because of their skintone.
- - - - Taylor Performance reading; -"Artists have used their bodies to challenge regimes of power and social norms, placing the body front and center in artistic practice."
        -When the body becomes the main focal point of art especially if it is the artist's body there is room for vulnerability because immediately one of the only things for viewers to critique is the artist's body.
        -"Performances can normalize behaviors, or shock and challenge the role of the spectator very frontally and directly."
        -Usually, there's a pattern with art that has vulnerability to it. This can include but is not limited to it being a performance with nudity, or it is about something having to do with real-life situations that we often avoid talking about. When a piece is more precious and held more dearly to the artist this in a sense can make it vulnerable. One's body is often the most vulnerable part of themself as seen in these pieces.
        
        Zanele Muholi is an artist who takes pictures of Black LGBTQ individuals as seen in their documentary when speaking to a person they will be photographing a vulnerability is shown when they make their subjects feel confident and let them do what makes them feel confident. In South Africa, it's a lot harder to be LGBTQ+ than it would be here already making their subjects vulnerable because of their identities and the environment sadly. Muholi's art also shows that vulnerability can be a beautiful thing for marginalized groups. It can bring those groups together.
        -Muholi says their art is visual activism, they are allowing their subjects to be critiqued but also adorned within the viewer's eyes, we get an insight into their subject's lives connecting us a bit more to the art.
- - - - Muhammad Ansi "Drowned Syrian Refugee Child (from Images Seen on TV)" (2016)
        -3-year-old Syrian toddler who drowned in the sea as his family was seeking refuge during the refugee crisis.
        -Takes on a loaded social-political challenge because it's about the refuge, people fleeing from war, and how we welcome them as the "land of the free."
        -Not only this but because the artist who created the piece is in jail there are even more social-political issues on how it is being sold and how the artist can make money through his art being he is in jail.
        -Featured in Ode To The Sea that was shut down by the pentagon for reasons that the artists were in jail and they were bringing attention to major political issues.
        -The law that artists in Guantanamo Bay cannot sell art was passed by the government after this show.
        
        Ai Weiwei "Recreating photograph of Alan Kurdi, drowned Syrian Refugee Child" (2016)
        -Went to the exact beach Kurdi died and reenacted the death in photo form.
        -A performative protest piece
        -International artist is using their "well-known" to bring attention to social-political issues and trying to convert them to a global political issue. The drowning of a toddler should not be political and, sadly, we label these things as politics.
        -This connects to Ansi's piece in the way that it speaks on issues of America welcoming refugees and how we tend to ignore problems that do not directly link to America.
        
        Jones "Teabowl Cultural Apropriation" reading; -"Daisetz Suzuki described tea drinking as a 'momentous event' that leads directly up to Buddhahood and it's abseloute truth."
        -"Kenneth Ferguson who recieved his MFA from Alfred in 1958 and travelled to Japan in the 1970's said 'I make teabowls as an exercise. They're alot of fun to play with, just to get an idea out of.'"
        -These quotes are so drastically different and can show just how much we take advantage of and can know so little about the meaning of objects in one's culture.
        -From this reading it's important one understand the cultural importance of Asian teabowls and can ackowledge this when making them with the most respect possible.
        -Cultural apropriation is such a new social political issues (or at least is getting the most attention now) and it is important to look at it through the lens of art as well. When a white artist wants to recreate something so cultural and that of cultural importance it is so important to respect it and be so careful when talking about so.
        
        Ronnie Goodman "San Quentin Arts in Correction Art Studio "(2008)
        -Artists in jailed have this label on them that they are a "social problem" and this is why they are confined.
        -This piece speaks about how artists' opportunities in jail are so limited.
        -Shows the point of view of the artist within the institution, the camera can mean that the government or those on top of these inmates are "always watching" and "always limiting them."
        -This brings up the question of whether or not correctional facilities are actually pro making inmates better people because they limit their opportunities.
        -This also brings up the question of whether or not prisons are actually changing and teaching the inmates to be better people rather than just isolating them and maybe even making them worse and traumatizing them.
        -Speaks about the social-political issues on whether or not prisons are actually "correcting" and "teaching" inmates for the better.
        
        "Marking time" reading; -"Prison art practices resist the isolation, exploitation, and dehumanization of carceral facilities.They reconstitute what productivity and labor mean in states of captivity, as many of these works entail laberous, time consuming, and immersive practices and planning."
        -"To consider art by incarcerated people as existing outside of art discourses or institutions rehearses the violent erasure of being imprisoned."
        -We have this harmful stigma in our mind that being imprisoned means one can never exist within society again, that the prisoners have no interests and are merely just existing. Because of this notion it makes artists in prisons productivity merely not exist to the real world because of harmful laws placed against them and selling their art, thus tying back to social political ideas like mass incarceration and how we can fix the prison and judicial system for the better.
      - Chris Burden "Shoot" (1971) -Bruce shoots Chris in his upper arm with consent for this performance piece.
        -Bruce speaks about being drafted into the army, while Chris talks about how on television it was normal to see guys his age being shot.
        -This piece can be an interpretation of how desensitized we are towards weapons and violence within America. This could be because of war, the army, and what we see in our daily lives on television. Yes, this piece had a shock factor in the sense that we'd ask 'why would this guy want to get shot?' But the idea that we don't question the gun so much can be a commentary on desensitization which is a huge social-political topic today along with gun control.