Week 10

This week we read  Amelia Jones, "Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: The Uses of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology in Art History,"  and within it Jones goes into talking about the relationship that is created with the viewers of art vs the creators.  There is defiantly a connection between the viewer and what is being viewed same goes with the artist and what they created. All of it has or comes from different backgrounds giving it a different perspective. I view the American Gothic differently because I was raised in farm lands and this piece quite literally reminds me vary much of my neighbors when I was growing up.  However the artist created it not to remind me of my childhood he created it to bring to life is own vision of this situation.  As the relationship of how I see the work vs the artists is different so is the relationship of each individual as they see the work. Each individual brings in their own background as they see a piece and that shifts the way we see the everything.  With That I feel as if we bring the same background and judgement to a returning artist. We will always view Edger Allen Poe's poetry and morbid and all about death because that is the stereotype connected to his work but not all of his work is like that. But because we know that he had a past were many of the people (women) he loved died to early this was defiantly something to influence his work.  I feel as if many people come to art with scratched glasses, something for some reason scratched them and that is how you see, you see with the scratch.  It will influence the way you see things but that the way it is and that is what you are used to. Everyone come to art with a different background and there for the piece hits people hard or not at all evokes different emotions in different people. Art is different to all because we all come from different.  

  

American Gothic : https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/grant-wood-american-gothic-whitney

Week 9

In todays society tokenism is still unfortunately part of our society.  As we grow as a culture and country we become aware of these things. But we still knowing and unknowingly are doing some things to target groups or to make groups feel left out. As we try to grow as a country I think we may see more tokenism as we try to reach all demographics. Unfortunately I see our country going into a little more tokenism for a while before it really just becomes part of our social norm to have people of different gender, rase, religion in various work environments and what not.  While I don't think anyone would really call tokenism great I can see where it can open the door for a lot of other opportunities and or discussions to be had with various individuals and corporations.  But even then I can see how creating equal opportunities in an environment where tokenism is present can be not particularly equal. If you only have two or three people that are different from the whole group and call that equal opportunity I can see where that would be a topic to argue about. How can it be equal if that group is outnumbered and what if that group never benefits form the equal opportunity then they may declare unfair activity thus leading to more unfair advantages or disadvantages. I think there is a problem with diversity and inclusion committees because if a company, school, or any organization was actually inclusive we wouldn't have a need for a committee we would just naturally be practicing that. We need to be diverse and inclusive but we have the committees to make sure that that is being put in effect rather then the actual people finding the correct people for the job no matter the background.  

 

The image I picked is a painting, to describe diversity. 

Week 8 Apply and reflect

 

Over the course of the week we read articles that talked about the originality of text and it defiantly brought up some interesting thoughts.  Is there any original thoughts? What qualifies as original these day and who checking to make sure if anyone is even paying that close of a concern.  So the "work" I choose to talk about today is the work of the constitution. Due to it being text so I thought it had more to offer then a painting or other art form but also because I do believe in it's originality. Perhaps not word for word but as a whole concept. I think in it's time the whole things was constructed to be a new concept for the new people to start a new age. I think that it's intent was not to copy any other document up it's kind or that of another working country or government but to crate something interiorly new. I think at the time of it's creation that it did succeed to do so. That being say I do think that as original text are crated the generation adjustment have to be made in order to stay current to the people in witch it serves if it is that kind of legal document vs just a historic document. The same thing to be true with the Bible. It was as generations evolved, it was then translated into a new way for us to understand. Form King James version to New King James and so many more. I believe the first one was original but all the others are simply translations in new wordings. 

Week 8

This week we had two different readings one starting with an article by Barthes titled "the Death of the Author" Barthes goes in to talk about what happens to the words of an author and how words are used and almost constantly recycled. Barthes goes in with a hard approach by saying that no text is original and I would have to disagree with that. While I do believe that a lot of text is old ideas or conspectus chewed up and spit out as new text I still believe that there are some rarities of purely original text. I think there is text that was so original that it was considered ahead of it's time and just dismissed.  On the other hand you have works of text that was created and the glorified for its originality, such Dantes inferno.  When Barthes goes in to talk about  "once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile." From what I understand that Barthes is trying to get at in this statement is that ounce the author has died the text become so open to objections and can be taken as metaphoric as the reader would like but with the Author being alive they are able to defend their work and make sure it is being understood the way it was written. 

On a different spectrum, we read a statement from Levine who is some degrees has some similar concepts to Barthes article if I understand it correctly.  Levine is also saying the there are no original text but goes in to also say there are also no original paintings as well. But I think that Levine takes Barthes work a bit further, perhaps why she got away with the amount of plagiarism. Levine talks about that "birth of the viewer" I think Levine is really trying to show her readers that yes their is no original work but their is a cycle that comes with that, the death of one thing comes with the life of another. Almost a constant reincarnation of text in that way. Witch in my perspective is a better way of thinking about text and art. 

 

the image I picked is Dantes Inferno witch I think was at its time fairly original. 

Apply and reflect week 7

 

Kwame Brathwaite's photo of Nomsa Brath wearing earrings designed by Carolee Prince, AJASS, Harlem, ca. 1964. (Courtesy of the artist and Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles.)

Apply and reflect 

This week we read 'The Oppositional gaze' and the piece talked a lot about black female and how they were viewed and especially in film. This whole topic made me dig into some research and it led me to find some art work that I was surprise to find and it's relevance to some of the past events of this summer. Back in the 1960's photographer Kwame Brathwaite did a full series of photos of blacks and especially black females. With a title of 'Black is Beautiful' this whole series took black females with a variety of models with different ages but all focused on their natural hair and natural clothes. They were not dressed to fit a look of the common eye or that of a white persons eye. They pulled in an African culture, but kept their American culture as well. Kwame Brathwaite was really showing the true African American culture to date and the beauty of it. 

I can relate to these works a lot by how it apply to my photography and how I can try to adjust my photo shoots and how that can help make a difference. Photography is beautiful and it can be so powerful. I want to show the truth within my photography and the beauty that portraits photography can bring to the world and the messages that it can share.  As I get more into portraits I take a look at how those are being viewed these day and how important it is to have and share photos. To really show the beauty of the people and the black female people, is so important. These days there are so many platforms to share the photos of people and how that can really empower a group or simply just a single person. Even with Brathwaite's work, the photos made a come back with current event. As popular as they were back in the 60's more article have com up recently to show again the beauty that the public may not have been ready for in the 60's. 

week 7

Off of this weeks reading, we take a better look at the viewership of blacks in film and open up the discussion of how black work is being viewed through Bell Hooks article "The oppositional gaze." First we take a look at the background of how people viewed blacks in film. As stated in Hooks article black works were viewed as being lesser quality because it was thought that a white persons film wasn't good enough so it became a black persons film back in the day. "Since they came into being in part as a response to the failure of white-dominated cinema to represent blackness in a manner that did not reinforce white supremacy, they too were critiqued to see if images were seen as complicit with dominant cinematic practices."   Peoples first reactions to these were not great. To tag off of the discussions we had a couple weeks ago about women in works of art Black women in films were represented as "objects of male gaze" so not only were the blacks not viewed in the best way but the female blacks were viewed even worse.  Only recently have there been more voice from black females in the film world. By not saying anything you are intentionally saying it's ok, I think only within the last decade and now due to events over the course of this year are more blacks and especially female blacks will and ready to give you their opinion about how they are being viewed in films and their rolls.  

The photo I included is a work that was showing black female models in the early 60's and trying to make the beautiful look of natural hair more common among the general public. 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/lens/kwame-brathwaite-black-is-beautiful.html

manner that did not reinforce white supremacy, they too were critiqued