Rashad Newsome's Shade Composition Analysis

Iced out, blinged out, fresh to death, gory are all descriptions that can be made about rappers in today’s society. They are also comments that apply to Rashad Newsome’s mixed media creations that have a great use of gold, silver, diamonds, leather, and etcetera. This parallel is an intentional one and is used by Newsome intelligently and cohesively to make desirable creations. Rashad Newsome is American born African American artist from New Orleans Louisiana that uses many mediums to express his feelings of the vast pop and hip hop cultures. Newsome received his BFA from Tulane University in 2001 and afterwards went to New York and studied film at the Film Video Arts in New York City along with music at Harvestworks in New York City. All

This special performance is very modern and is full of the cultural additives that exist in Hip hop and urban culture. The performance of Shade Compositions I will focus on will be the one that was performed in San Fransisco at the Museum of Modern Art. This performance was 49 min in length and consisted of several performers. In the beginning of the performance several women of several ethnicities and men dressed as women stand in red, black, and white some have on dresses others have shirts and others have on blouses. All of them have heavy makeup with different shades of lipstick, and each of them looking into the crowd with a great distain and disgust. With mics in front of each of their faces the man dressed as a women begins by sucking his teeth and chews gum madly with his mouth hanging open after every bite. Next, the other respond but in a special cadence. With earrings glistening and eyes rolling every time one sucks his teeth a rhythm is soon developed. As time progresses and the rhythm continues each person begins to add to the overall beat. “Snap! Snap! Snap” fingers snap “Hmmmm… Hmmmm…” women moan to show their displeasure. Then the cadence briefly begins to soften and fade then from out of nowhere a performer in the back says “Please!” and keeps repeating it and then more sounds of disgust follow. Briefly

First, the name of the performance piece is special because he calls it Shade Compositions. In this instance Newsome is not referring to “shade” as being a place of brief darkness from the sun or even the technique used to show perspective on a 2 dimensional surface, but rather a slang term referring to the slight disrespect shown toward an individual for any bevy of reasons. Newsome strategically selected a varying number of understood disrespectful actions that are heavily rooted in the black and urban communities and compiled them together into this performance. However, the intelligent and intriguing part of this presentation was that he not only compiled the various disrespectful tendencies together but thought to arrange them in a rhythmic sound that even if not desired can be appreciated. I believe this thought is so intelligent because music does not isolate anyone and is helpful in trying to learn new concepts or even understanding new ways of thinking. In addition, Newsome also is making a statement about the people who participate in these actions by the people he chose to act out this performance. Newsome chose what could be perceived within the context of the artwork as gay men along with women of several races fashioned well and all with attitudes. The choice to fashion each person performing well