The Kitchen Table Series by Carrie Mae Weems is a photo series comprised of 24 black-and-white images that represent the weight household spaces carry regarding intimacy and domesticity, as well as the woman’s role in a nuclear household. Carrie Mae Weems is both an artist and an activist, reflecting on her personal experiences as well as the experience of specifically black women contextualized through history and art. This essay argues that Weems uses her art, specifically this photo series, to hold a space for black women who are historically misunderstood and underrepresented in art; Weems' use of lighting, gesture, and position in these images brings attention to her lived experiences as well as that of the black woman, which harbors a …show more content…
Growing up in the mid-late 20th century, Weems had her own experiences of photography and the way it frames perspective, as well as the social and political climate regarding black Americans throughout this period. Weems uses her body as a vessel to draw the viewer in, and the context of the image to keep the viewer’s attention. In a journal article about Weems, Deborah Willis details the meaning behind these actions; “By re-staging and re-imagining the political climate in American history, Weems's role as provocateur forces us to visualize a moment which ultimately heightens our sensibilities to want to inquire and question the history memory. how her work is immersed in this interlocking of racial politics and feminist ideologies. She uses the photograph as an extension of this type of black feminist thought. ‘[Weems] invites us to look at the representation of women as she is situated in context: a context in which her beauty—and the value-laden concept of "beauty"—operates historically, culturally, and politically’.” Weems draws inspiration from photographers in the 1930s-1960s who documented the civil rights movement. She saw the struggle these photographers faced in even publishing their work and their will to uncover the truth despite having to put themselves in challenging and dangerous positions to do so. Weems admired this ability to use photography as a method of accurately preserving history and the ability to reinvent and modernize it. Harry Gomboa Jr. did something similar with his former art group, ASCO. ASCO is a Latin group of artists who work mainly in photography. One work in particular that highlights their similarity to Weems is La Mode, created in 1976. This work is part of a series called “No Movies” because they shot these images as if they were movie posters for a nonexistent film. Both the physical characteristics of these photos, as well as the meaning behind them, resonate
The film “Documenting the Face of America: Roy Stryker and the FSA/OWI Photographers” amplified how things were and how the photographers that worked on the project were affected from taking these photographs. When Dorothea said, “If you come close to the truth, there are consequences” was especially true. These photographers had to see things that could never be unseen. The photographs that I discussed in the paragraphs above show how the photographers were affected from what they had to see. Also, they had the control to be able to show what they wanted the viewers to get from the photos. In the end, sometimes one has to push the limits of the truth in order to get what one is really looking for and this is exactly what all of the photographers did for the FSA
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.
Brown stresses the importance of recognizing that being a woman is not extractable from the context in which one is a woman. She examines how both black and white women’s lives are shaped by race and gender, and how these affect life choices. Historically, women of color have filled roles previously attributed to white women
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
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
Collins, Patricia Hill. "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images." Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. 89. Print.
Warren, Nagucyalti. "Black Girls and Native Sons: Female Images in Selected Works by Richard Wright." Richard Wright - Myths and Realities. Ed. C. James Trotman. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988.
Malcolm X stated that, “the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”. The media thrives for ratings and increasing the outreach of their shows and sponsors. They want to increase numbers of viewers and if they have to report unfairly or ignore some things they will do that. In bell hook’s article, “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life”, she talks about how photography gave great opportunities for African Americans to combat stereotypes and show their true colors. However, as technology advanced and media outlets spread, photographic technology in black life turned towards a darker road. A road of oppression. While bell hooks was initially correct that photographic technology combatted stereotypes of African Americans, the media today perpetuates them for ratings and views.
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.
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
Though people can look into color and composition, others can still even look into the source of the art itself. Cole goes deeper, delving into the source of the art, looking in particular into the idea of cultural appropriation and the view a person can give others. Though it is good for people to be exposed to different opinions of a group or an object, sometimes people can find it difficult to tell the difference between the reality and the art itself. Sometimes art can be so powerful that its message stays and impacts its audience to the point where the viewer’s image of the subject of the art changes entirely. Cole brings up an important question about art, however. Art has become some kind of media for spreading awareness and even wisdom at times, but in reality, “there is also the question of what the photograph is for, what role it plays within the economic circulation of images” (973). Cole might even be implying that Nussbaum’s advertisement can sometimes be the point of some media, and that sometimes the different genres of art can just be to make someone with a particular interest happy. One more point that Cole makes is that “[a]rt is always difficult, but it is especially difficult when it comes to telling other people’s stories.” (974) Truthfully, awareness and other like-concepts are difficult to keep going when a person or a group is not directly involved.
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
Feminism and political issues have always been centered on in the art world and artists like to take these ideas and stretch them beyond their true meanings. Female artists such as Hannah Höch, who thrived during the Dada movement in the 1920s in Germany and Barbara Kruger who was most successful during the 1980s to 1990s in the United States, both take these issues and present them in a way that forces the public to think about what they truly mean. Many of Kruger’s works close in on issues such as the female identity and in relation to politics she focuses on consumerism and power. Höch, like Kruger, also focuses on female identity but from the 1920s when feminism was a fairly new concept and like Kruger focuses on politics but focuses more on the issues of her time such as World War I. With the technique of photomontage, these two artists take outside images and put them together in a way that displays their true views on feminism and politics even though both are from different times and parts of the world.
Williams, Bruce. "The Reflection of a Blind Gaze: Maria Luisa Bemberg, Filmmaker." A Woman's Gaze: Latin American Women Artists. Ed. Marjorie Agosin. New York; White Pine Press, 1998. 171-90.
When looking at two nineteenth century works of change for two females in an American society, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Stephen Crane come to mind. A feminist socialist and a realist novelist capture moments that make their readers rethink life and the world surrounding. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in 1892, about a white middle-class woman who was confined to an upstairs room by her husband and doctor, the room’s wallpaper imprisons her and as well as liberates herself when she tears the wallpaper off at the end of the story. On the other hand, Crane’s 1893 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the realist account of a New York girl and her trials of growing up with an alcoholic mother and slum life world. The imagery in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets uses color in unconventional ways by embedding color in their narratives to symbolize the opposite of their common meanings, allowing these colors to represent unique associations; to support their thematic concerns of emotional, mental and societal challenges throughout their stories; offering their reader's the opportunity to question the conventionality of both gender and social systems.