Portraying African-American Identity in Art: Hammons and Piper

1647 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Harlem renaissance art essay

David Hammons and Adrian Piper: African-American Identity David Hammons and Adrian Piper are both American artists known for different reasons. Hammons is well known for his artwork around New York and his range of materials, as well as his support for the black power movement. Piper is a philosopher known for her conceptual artwork, such as her performance artworks, and artwork addressing “otherness”. In this paper, however; the two artworks I will be discussing are David Hammons’ American Costume and Adrian Piper’s Self Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features. Both artworks are self-portraits relating to identity and the portrayal of African-Americans during the late 1900s, following the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the United …show more content…

David Hammons, American Costume, 1970, print (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1999), p. 43. On the other hand, Piper’s artwork, Self Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features (see fig. 2) provides a different perspective and uses traditional media. Piper’s self-portrait is direct, it provides a frontal view in which her gaze confronts the viewer. Piper uses pencil on white paper, and shows a spectrum of tonal value with an emphasis on central vertical axis, drifting to a more sketch-like quality outward but still resulting in a balanced composition of black and white. Self Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features is not a realistic rendering, as told in the title, and this exaggeration is purposeful. Figure 2. Adrian Piper, Self Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features, 1981, pencil and paper, Eileen Harris Norton …show more content…

They are also both conceptual artists, who were influenced by postmodernism and performance art, as well as the Harlem Renaissance. Their exaggerated self-portraits reflect primitivism and questions viewers what being considered “black” entails. The media Hammons and Piper use are different, but the use of their body as the subject and object was an integral starting point because their artwork confronts the viewer, and is intended to cause intentional discomfort to challenge society’s

Show More
Related

  • Kehinde Wiley: The King Glory

    873 Words  | 2 Pages

    Wiley’s portraits are based on photographs that were taken of young black, brown men, and

    Read More

  • Emory Douglas: All Power to the People

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    Emory Douglas was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, until 1951 when he and his mother relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time San Francisco was the hub of African American organizations that arranged events aimed at overthrowing the social injustices within the Bay Area’s black communities. As a minor immersed within the community Douglas became captivated by Charles Wilbert White, an African American social realist artist whom created various monochrome sketches and paintings, “transforming American scenes into iconic modernist narratives.” Not long after, Douglas was incarcerated at the Youth Training School in Ontario, California where he spent countless hours working in the penitentiary’s printery. It was not until the mid-1960’s when Douglas registered in the City College of San Francisco, majoring in commercial art and graphic design. Soon after, Douglas went to a Black Panthers rally, where he encountered Bobby Seale and Huey Newton; during ...

    Read More

  • David Earle Birney Essay

    467 Words  | 1 Pages

    David is a poem written by Canadian poet Earle Birney. The poem’s namesake, David, is a surveyor climbing the mountains with his friend, Bobby. Birney portrays him to be proficient, courageous and pragmatic.

    Read More

  • Jacob Lawrence

    1738 Words  | 4 Pages

    In order to add something to their lives, [black families] decorated their tenements and their homes in all of these colors. I've been asked, is anyone in my family artistically inclined? I've always felt ashamed of my response and I always said no, not realizing that my artistic sensibility came from this ambiance.... It's only in retrospect that I realized I was surrounded by art. You'd walk Seventh Avenue and took in the windows and you'd see all these colors in the depths of the depression. All these colors.

    Read More

  • Sara Smolinsky and Cultural Pluralism in Jewish-American Culture

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    George Schuyler’s article “The Negro Art Hokum” argues that the notion of African-American culture as separate from national American culture is nonsense. To Schuyler, all seemingly distinct elements of African-American culture and artistic endeavors from such are influenced by the dominant white American culture, and therefore, only American. The merit of Schuyler’s argument stems from the fact that it is practically impossible for one culture to exist within the confines of another without absorbing certain characteristics. The problem with Schuyler’s argument that Langston Hughes notes in his response article, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” is that it assumes complete assimilation of African-Americans by a singular national culture. Fundamental to Hughes’ rebuttal is the allowance of a unique African-American culture extant of the standards of a singular American cultural identity. For Hughes, this unique culture lies within the working-class, out of sight of the American national culture. This culture, while neither completely African nor American, maintains the vibrant and unique roots of the African-American experience. Schuyler advocates cultural assimilation, while Hughes promotes cultural pluralism, in which minority cultures maintain their distinctive qualities in the face of a dominant national identity.

    Read More

  • Portraying the New Negro in Art

    1382 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wolfskill, Phoebe. "Caricature and the New Negro in the Work of Archibald Motley Jr. and Palmer Hayden." Art Bulletin 91.3 (2009): 343-365. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 31 May 2010.

    Read More

  • The Root Of Representation By Lorraine Hansberry

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    Race has consistently been a major component of our society’s structure. Although the 13th amendment abolished slavery, the attitudes held by the majority of white Europeans towards African Americans did not change—and the effects can still be seen in our society today. During the civil rights era, many African American artists and writers began emphasizing the importance of art and how it held the power to dissolve the stereotypes and stigma that surrounded African Americans; to them, this was necessary to actually create change. One of the most prominent African American writers who sought out to portray true representation was Lorraine Hansberry. Hansberry’s family was involved with the Hansberry v.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of How It Feels To Be Colored Me By Zora Hurston

    97 Words  | 1 Pages

    Through the use of imagery, diction, and several literary tools Zora Hurston shows love for her culture and color; therefore Hurston contributes to the essay’s theme, of celebrating her African American culture, by conveying her emotions. Hurston’s use of imagery allows readers to easily imagine the things which she so vividly describes, her diction conveys the emotions she felt throughout her experiences, and her use of literary tools captivate readers. The theme of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” is not sad or dreary, rather it is upbeat and optimistic because Hurston loved who she was.

    Read More

  • Work Projects Administration

    1453 Words  | 3 Pages

    "For the first time since the plantation days artists began to touch new material, to understand new tools and to accept eagerly the challenge of Black poetry, Black song and Black scholarship."1

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis: Is Our Country As Our Athletes Are? '

    594 Words  | 2 Pages

    The New York Times journalist David Brooks has wrote countless editorials about the political climate of today’s current election. Brooks also contributes to the New York Times by writing various articles regarding culture and the social sciences. The issues Brooks presents in his pieces is about the political candidates and how they’re faring in their respective parties. In addition to this, Brooks provides an overlook on the various aspects of American culture which can date back to the 18th-century America. His focus is on the national issues and includes United States history that has effected today’s society such as Frederick Douglass, who wanted to change his society’s perception of African Americans so he had 160 photographs of himself

    Read More

  • A Critique Of Augusta Savage's Gamin

    373 Words  | 1 Pages

    One of Augusta Savage’s most captivating works of art is “Gamin”, a sculpture made of painted plaster. This is an image of a young street urchin who is thought to be Savage’s nephew, Ellis Ford. This sculpture represents the many young African American men of Harlem who roamed the streets. This sculpture is not very large. It is only 9 in. x 5¾ in. x 4⅜ in., but it is a suitable size considering the subject is a young urchin. He is wearing a shirt that appears to be wrinkled and a loose fitting hat. He appears to be poor and hopeless. He looks as though he is looking at something that is far away or just looking for someone to restore his hope again. His face shows loneliness or sadness. If you look closely,

    Read More

  • Marilyn Nelson Waniek's The Century Quilt

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    Often times, there is a sense of shame among people of mixed races. Not being able to identify with one particular race can create an unnecessary stigma of disgrace. As an African American poet, Marilyn Nelson Waniek sought to combat the idea that identifying as one race is superior to identifying to another. In Waniek’s poem, “The Century Quilt”, a nine-squared quilt represents the complexities of the speaker’s family heritage and the simplistic beauty that extends beyond their physical attributes.

    Read More

  • Negro Art Essay

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early twentieth century, it was nationally debated as to whether or not Negro art was a category of art in the United States. Even for some today, it remains a debate. George Schuyler, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. DuBois, all had strong arguments for the concept of “Negro Art” in the mid-1920s. After reading the essays of each writer, each one offers a different perspective. Their arguments help to build off one another and to counter argue with one another. Negro Art is very much alive in America; and it deserves to be respected as American Art without leading to the stereotypical absolute difference between the white and black races. The art piece I selected is a fist painted by an Upper School Art 1 student at McDonogh School, that

    Read More

  • James Van Der Ze Essay

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    I met my friend, James Van Der Zee, at his glorious studio on 135th Street as the sun set and he finished up his work day. His studio, in which he has worked for nearly 20 years, is like a fantasy land. The chronicler of our people has spent nearly the last two decades capturing the rich details of Harlem life that would otherwise go forgotten and unnoticed. There are racks of lavish clothes and piles of architectural elements that James uses as props to capture images of middle class African American life. Some may be critical

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The African American Revolt Of The 1950s And 1960s

    1532 Words  | 4 Pages

    Perhaps the African American revolt of the 1950s and 1960s should not have come as a surprise, for those oppressed people always have the memories, and with those memories, revolt is always very near. Those oppressed in the United States have memories of slavery, segregation, cruelty, humiliation, and death; not only was it a memory, but also present in their daily lives. Many African Americans turned to art in order to convey their anger, the blues, and rebellious attitudes, jazz, secretly. In poetry the thoughts were no longer kept secret, but published for al to read. Poets such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and many others used literature to show the hope, struggles, and disillusionment of the black

    Read More

More about Portraying African-American Identity in Art: Hammons and Piper

Open Document