Feminist Art/Postmodern Art&Contemporary Art as Political Weapon/New Technologies in Art
Androgyne III. Magdalena Abakanowicz. 1985 C.E. Burlap, resin, wood, nails, and string.
Abakanowicz's Androgyn III (Image 228) utilizes the same molded-torso shell that she used in her sculpture series Backs. The earlier pieces sat directly on the floor, but the Androgyn torsos are placed on low pieces of wooden structures, the long poles suggest the presence of legs. Through these provocative almost ghostly images, the artist expresses the physical and spiritual condition of the human spirit. As she says, they are "about existence in general." Magdalena Abakanowicz for many years has dealt with the issue of "the countless". She says: "I feel overwhelmed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such quantity. A crowd of people or birds, insect or leaves, is a mysterious assemblage of variants of a certain prototype, a riddle of nature abhorrent to exact repetition or inability to produce it, just as a human hand can not repeat its own gesture".
En la Barberia no se Llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop). Pepon Osorio. 1994 C.E. Mixed-media installation
According to Osorio in PBS's series Art 21, En la Barberia no se Llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barber Shop) (Image 236) is: "Not so much about beauty but the contradictions of beauty. It's an installation that you're allowed to come into so that you're surrounded by its seduction. But it's also about the contradiction of male and female...the balance that it exist within the male and the female in all of us. It's contradictory because when you come in, you expect to see a joyous celebration, but you also see a lot of men crying in the presence of a general public... [It is] about recreating my memory. When I was five years old, my father took me to get my first haircut right around the neighborhood. And what was meant to be a celebration became disastrous event. I was crying a lot, I was scared...What traumatized me wasn't so much the haircut itself but the way that this barber dealt with my kind of hair...That experience was a combination of race and a right of passage into becoming a little man." Osorio pays careful attention to our personal spaces, both public and private spaces, and he created surreal yet realist art installations. The life-size re-creations he constructs are of everyday public spaces, but they are never literal reproductions. There is attention to even minor detail, and they act as carefully staged scenes exaggerating the psychological effects of social spaces we all personally encounter in our daily lives. The artist addresses the reproduction of masculinity in the context of a fake barbershop complete with ornate, thematically decorated barber's chairs, video images of grown men crying, and free haircuts for strangers off the street.
Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds). Ai Weiwei. 2010-2011 C.E. Sculpted and painted porcelain.
Ai Weiwei's take on the large hall was both simple and complex as well as pleasing and disturbing. He filed the structure with a thick layer of 100,000,000 handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds (with a total weight of 150 tons) and spread them across the floor of the great hall. It took more than 1,600 artisans in two and a half years to manufacture this huge pile of ceramic husks out of the kaoline clay from local mountains. Through an amazing 30-step procedure, each seed, which has been hand-painted and fired at 1,300 degrees, is unique. "This is perhaps the most costly work among all artworks, both Chinese and Western," Ai Weiwei said. The multiple layers, though simple in form, contain multiple meanings. The sunflower seed is a common street snack in China, an everyday object from Weiwei's childhood. It recalls memories of hardship and hunger during the Cultural Revolution, an era of a socialist planned economy with the collective worship of the "sun" - Chairman Mao. For Ai Weiwei, this work is one piece of art that is compiled of 100 million individual pieces of art. Through a simple sunflower seed, Ai Weiwei triggers a domino effect, enlarging the lengthy, complicated and exquisite process by 100 million times. Through his unimaginable patience, time, and energy, Weiwei brought into focus the significance of individuals and their strength when they work together. Like Ai Weiwei's other works, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds) is a work closely related to the society, politics and economy in China. It nods both to the globalization and mass production in China that caters to western consumerism as well as to the deemed insignificant element at the bottom of the production chain - thousands of cheap labors, assembly lines in gigantic factories, and tedious procedures. Acclaimed as the "seeds of hope", a work of "part prophecy, part threat", an installation intriguingly "contemplative and barbed", Ai Weiwei's Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds) has been exhibited in various versions at 12 galleries across 11 cities in 9 countries since 2009.
A Book from the Sky. Xu Bing. 1987-1991 C.E. Mixed-media installation. (Chinese Contemporary Art)
Beijing-born artist Xu Bing (b.1955) studied at China's Central Academy of Fine Arts and was trained in the Socialist Realim style popular under Communist regimes in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. Over time, the focus of his work has shifted to a reflection on language and the nature of writing. These ideas have been at the core of Xu Bing's art since the beginning of his career in China during the mid-1980s. His work A Book from the Sky (Image 229) was first displayed in China in 1988 and 1989. Considered one of the most iconic works of contemporary Chinese art, it has subsequently been displayed many times in different countries. Xu Bing's volumes of text are composed of 4,000 self-invented characters which cannot be decoded. In essence, these characters look Chinese but are completely meaningless according to standard Mandarin. Whether in its full form or as a single volume, this work provokes fundamental questions about Chinese identity and its relationship to the written word, which has long been intertwined with concepts of authority and morality. The artist believes that writing is the essence of culture, and his subversion of it alerts us to the ever-present need to communicate and the dangers of distorting or eliminating intended meaning.
Untitled (#228), from the History Portraits series. Cindy Sherman. 1990 C.E. Photograph.
Cindy Sherman appears in all of these history series photographs, as seen in Untitled (#228) (Image 231). She also served as the model, set-dresser, and photographer. This image (as well as the entire series) is full of evident prostheses, bad wigs, and theatrical makeup in order to give the images an artifical appearance. By revealing her disguise, she demonstrates to the viewer that pictures are constructed in order to draw attention to the staged and mannered nature of historical portraiture. Untitled, Number 228 (1990) is a full-length portrait of the artist as the biblical heroine Judith, who rescued the Israelites from the invading Assyrian general Holofernes by seducing and beheading him. Judith was a popular and frequently depicted subject in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Sherman maintains the grand scale of the work to give her photograph the same forceful visual impact of these earlier paintings. This work is nearly seven feet high by four feet wide, and it is filled with richly patterned fabrics that are saturated with rich color. Filtered through the lens of the camera, these fabrics seem sumptuous, but they are, in fact, cheap knockoffs from secondhand stores. Sherman explained, "I would go to a Salvation Army and look for certain kinds of costume-y things. But so much of it was junky stuff." The character of Judith is presented standing against a backdrop of brocaded cloth, and she is dressed in an iridescent, voluminous crimson robe. In one hand she is holding the masklike head of Holofernes, and in the other, she holds a blood-smeared knife used to decapitate him. Her feet, planted firmly on the dirt ground, are slightly spread and appear incongruously large and thick. She stares ahead stoically with her head slightly cocked, and her exprssion is open to many different speculations about her mental and emotional state in the aftermath of the violent act.
Dutch wax textiles (Shonibare's The Swing)
Dutch wax textiles have been a signature in Shonibare's work for many years, and he uses them to represent the cultural hybridity central to his practice. Dutch wax is a kind of resin-printed fabric that has long been manufactured in the Netherlands for a West African market. These fabrics have a complex history. First, during the colonial period, the Dutch appropriated Indonesian batik techniques from their South Pacific colonies. They brough these fabrics back to Europe, and then they began to manufacture and sell them. English manufacturers copied the Dutch fabrics, creating designs derived from Africa textiles. Next, these fabrics were exported to West Africa and sold in the markets. The bright colours and geometric patterns of the fabrics became associated with the struggle for political and cultural independence from colonialism, making them popular during the African independence movement. Today these fabrics continue to be sold in Africa as well as in Westernmarkets. Their designs are constantly adapted and changed (one of the layers of fabric in the skirt in this work has a Chanel logo motif). For Shinobare, the Dutch wax fabrics are a symbol of this multi-cultural identity. By dressing one of art history's most famous French coquettes in African print, Shonibare reminds us that identity is a construction.
Dancing at the Louvre, from the series The French Collection, Part I; #1. Faith Ringgold. 1991 C.E. Acrylic on canvas, tie-dyed, pieced fabric border
Faith Ringgold's story quilt Dancing at the Louvre (Image 232) is from Part 1 of The French Collection. It is the first in a series of twelve quilts that tell the fictional story of Willa Marie Simone, a young black woman who relocates to Paris in the early 20th century. The narrative text is written around the margin of each quilt, relating her adventures that lead up to meeting artists and celebrities such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Sojourner Truth, and Rosa Parks on her road to becoming an artist and savvy businesswoman. Ringgold drew on her own struggle for recognition in an art world dominated by European traditions and mostly male artists, that essentially shut out both females and those of African descent. Ringgold uses this textile narrative format to literally rewrite the past by weaving and quilting together histories of modern art, African-American culture, and her personal narrative. This practice reflects the shift toward postmodernism in art of the 1980s and 1990s for many. In contrast to Modernism's emphasis on autonomy and universal meaning, artists like Faith Ringgold highlighted the biases in accepted forms of art, especially in their treatment of race and gender. She uses a gender specific medium of sewing and textiles to accomplish this. Characteristic is her use of appropriation, narrative, biographical references, and non-Western traditions. Through these gender specific devices/mediums, Ringgold offers an alternative to masculine perspectives that are prevalent in art history today.
Shibboleth. Doris Salcedo. 2007-2008 C.E. Installation.
Her works are not memorials, and their abstract forms are open to interpretation, serving as testimonies on behalf of both victims and perpetrators. Shibboleth (Image 248) was a temporary art installation that consisted of a meandering crack in the floor of the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. Initially a hairline crack, it eventually widened to a few inches and around two feet deep. Doris Salcedo constructs a complex socio-political art piece in a work with a tremendous formal presence. The sheer size alone is impressive, but the technical mechanics of the installation seem insurmountable. Salcedo's installation requires attentive physical viewing. The rupture measures 548 feet in length, but its width and depth vary. To peer into the crevice , one walks and shifts perspectives constantly to better glimpse inside the cracks and appreciate the interior space. The crack was made by opening up the floor and then inserting a cast from a Colombian rock face. A spokesperson at the Tate Modern said, "She's not specifying how it's been done. What she wants is for people to think about what's real and what's not. According to Salcedo, the crack represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred. It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe. For example, the space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space."
thangkas - Faith Ringgold
In 1973, she quit teaching to devote more time to making art, and she abandoned traditional painting, instead creating unstretched acrylic paintings on canvas with lush fabric borders like those of Tibetan thangkas (paintings on cotton or silk with images of the Buddha)
story quilts - Ringgold
In 1983, Ringgold began combining image and handwritten text in her painted "story quilts," in which she tells imaginative, open-ended narratives.
Electronic Superhighway. Nam June Paik. 1995 C.E. Mixed-media installation (49-channel closed-circuit video installation, neon, steel, and electronic components).
In Paik's 1995 work, Electronic Superhighway (Image 238), he challenges viewers to give a fresh look to the cultural map of the United States. Using 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 575 feet of multicolor neon tubing, and 3, 750 feet of cable, the artist creates a large-scale electronic map that is on display in the American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Neon is used to create the familiar outlines of the 50 states, and then each state is represented by video footage the reveal the artist's personal associations with places. He celebrates some states for their connections to his artistic friends and collaborators, such as performance artist Charlotte Moorman in Arkansas, composer John Cage in Massachusetts, and choreographer Merce Cunningham in Washington. Some states are presented using classic movies as this is how Paik knows these places best. For example, he shows clips of the films South Pacific for Hawaii, The Wizard of Oz for Kansas, and Showboatfor Mississippi. For some states, he chose video clips or slideshows that conjure familiar associations, such as presidential candidates in Iowa caucus races and the Kentucky Derby. For other states, he chooses topical events like the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta (Georgia) and the fires at the Waco Compound (Texas). Old black-and-white TV footage and audio of Martin Luther King's speeches are used to recall the struggle for Civil Right in Alabama. California has the fastest-paced imagery, with its monitors showing images of racing through the Golden Gate Bridge, O.J. Simpson, and the 0s and 1s used to create the computer code thathas led to the digital revolution. A mini-camera captures the viewers of the work, placing their images on a tiny screen representing Washington, DC, thus incorporating the viewer into the work as well as the overall narrative. Walking along the entire length of this gigantic installation suggests the enormous scale of the nation that confronted the young Korean artist when he arrived in 1964. It was a time of travel as Americans headed out to "see the USA in your Chevrolet" on a new interstate highway system that was only a few years old. The neon that outlines the states recalls the multicolored maps and glowing enticements of motels and restaurants that beckoned Americans to take family open road trips. The different colors remind us that individual states still have distinct paths and cultures, even in today's Internet age. Paik was the first to use the phrase "electronic superhighway," and this installation proposes that electronic media provides us with the images and information that we used to leave home to discover. But Electronic Superhighway is real. It is an enormous physical art object that occupies a middle ground between the virtual reality of the media and the sprawling country beyond our personal communities.
Preying Mantra. Wangechi Mutu. 2006 C.E. Mixed media on Mylar.
In its concept and imagery, Mutu's work Preying Mantra (Image 247) centers on female subjectivity, exoticism and the notion of hybridity (the mixing the cultures of colonized peoples and the colonizer). Colonialism and resulting cultural hybridization often produces a disruptive understanding of cultural identity. Mutu's work is shaped by this complex history of colonialism in Africa as well as by issues such as the rights of women. In Preying Mantra, a female creature reclines on a geometrically patterned blanket that resembles the traditional cloth created by the African Kuba people. The cloth has been spread between trees (or tree branches), and the figure stares suggestively at the viewer as she lies with her legs tightly crossed in front of her and her right hand positioned behind her head. Her skin appears dappled by sunlight aand mirrors the colors of the tree's leaves. The use of the tree is symbolic because trees, like the female body, are important in the creation myths found in many cultures, including Mutu's Kikuyu ancestors in Kenya. The figure holds a green snake t in her left hand, which links the figure to the role of Eve in the biblical creation narrative. The tree envelopes the female figure reinforcing links between history and fiction, African and Non-African cultural myths as well as natural versus unnatural phenomena. The title Preying Mantra recalls the praying mantis, and the pose of the subject in Mutu's collage resembles the insect with her prominently bent legs. During mating, the female becomes a sexual cannibal and eats her submissive mate. This imagery and its association with natural phenomena creates a primal sensibility. Despite this reference to a real praying mantis, Mutu's "preying mantra" is also vulnerable to our gaze, suggesting that the figure may be a victim that is "preyed" upon by "mantras." Mutu creates a natural, even primitive, fictional environment that entices and disturbs us even as she invites us to explore stereotypes about the African female body as explicitly sexual, dangerous, and aesthetically deformed in relation to Western standards. Given that elements of the collage are assembled from sociocultural documents found in popular literature from the West, the figure may be preying on the viewer's own fears and desires.
Women of Allah by Shirin Neshat
In this series, the viewer finds a strange juxtaposition between femininity and violence. Many of her photographs are actually mixed-media pieces of silver gelatin with ink, since Neshat covers the parts of the female body that are allowed to be seen according to Islamic regulation (face, hands, and feet) with abstract designs and Persian calligraphy. She was struck by the tradition of tattooing in Middle Eastern and Indian cultures. When she was composing her images which focused on the body of a Muslim woman, an inscription on her skin seemed appropriate. The artist felt the use of poetry was particularly appropriate since literature has played a major part in the struggle against political repression. Poetry is the literal and symbolic voice of women whose sexuality and individualism have been obliterated by the chador (veil). Neshat wants to understand and comment on the experience of being a woman in Islam, so all images concentrate on the body, the chador,and the text.
Darkytown Rebellion. Kara Walker. 2001 C.E. Cut paper and projection on wall.
Kara Walker (b.1969) is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes examining the underbelly of America's racial and gender tensions. Her works address the highly charged themes of power, repression, sexuality, and race. Her work is layered with images that reference history, literature, culture, and the darker aspects of human behavior. A theme running throughout her work is the examination of power, and the characters she presents in her environments display a range of power struggles that confront physical, emotional, personal, racial, sexual, and historical issues. Darkytown Rebellion (Image 243) occupies a 37 foot wide corner of any given gallery. This image, made up of over a dozen characters, plays out a nightmarish scene on a single plane. One figure stands over his severed limb, despite his bleeding leg stump, with bones protruding from his hips. Another figure, also showing a severed limb and rolls onto his back. A woman with a bonnet and a large hoop skirt may be attacking a smaller figure on its back with a long instrument. Most remarkable about these images is how much each silhouettes conceals. Lacking detail within, the viewer can lose the information needed to determine gender, or discern what exactly is in the black puddle beneath the woman's tool. The color projections, whose abstract shapes reflect and recall the 1960s liquid light shows projected with psychedelic music, heighten the experience of the scene. In addition to creating a creative viewer experience, Darkytown Rebellion reflects on the historical representation and narrative stories of African Americans in American visual culture. Powerful visuals have shaped African-American stereotypes and inform how popular culture perceives this community. Walker is one of several African-American women who use art to engage with and challenge visualizations of race within popular culture. Focusing solely on the controversy Walker's art generates is a disservice to her artistic training and the strength of her art, especially in a stunning and absorbing installation like Darkytown Rebellion. Here, a brilliant pattern of colors washes over a wall full of silhouettes enacting a dramatic rebellion, giving the viewer the unforgettable experience of stepping into a work of art. Walker's talent is not about creating controversy for its own sake, but building a world that unleashes horrors even as it seduces viewers.
Lying with the Wolf. Kiki Smith. 2001 C.E. Ink and pencil on paper.
Kiki Smith (b.1954) is the daughter of Minimalist (Lesson 8.18) sculptor Tony Smith (1912-1980). Her work has addressed the themes of birth and regeneration, cultural taboos surrounding bodily functions, AIDS, gender, and race. Her more recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature, such as her work Lying with the Wolf (2001) (Image 242). This large-scale work on paper, a nude female lies alonside a wolf The pair is locked in an intimate embrace, as the wolf nuzzles affectionately into the nude woman's arms as she wraps herself around the animal's body. She seems to comfort the animal as her fingers stroke the soft fur beneath its ears and along the side of its stomach, taming the wild nature of the beast. The figures nurture one another as they float inside the abstract space of the textured paper surface upon which they are delicately drawn. Smith presents a tenderness that is characteristic of her style in this act of bonding between human and animal. Lying with the Wolf is one in a short series of works that illustrates women's relationships with animals in visual, literary, and oral histories. Smith is interested in stories that speak to shared mythologies, such as folk tales, biblical stories, and Victorian literature. She is also interested in combining the familiar with the unfamiliar to form new meanings and associations. Some critics cite Smith's work as reinterpretations of Red Riding Hood and Sainte Geneviève as a feminist approach to popular folktales. Not only is this supported by her placement of "woman" in the natural world, but also at a structural level as she fragments and combines elements of the two narratives. Smith borrows from different sources to create a new storyline, thus demonstrating the layering of meaning as well as the slippery connection between a visual image and its multiple references. As the curator Helaine Posner has explained: "Instead of presenting them in their traditional roles as predator and prey, Smith re-imagined these characters as companions, equals in purpose and scale." The distinction between "predator" and "prey" may be a metaphor for human power relationships, which have traditionally been established along lines of gender, race, and class. Patriarchal societies typically grant more power to men and requiring that women be submissive or dependent. Works like Lying with the Wolf suggest an overturning of this male-dominance as the artistic narrative in the drawing portrayed reverses roles and melds oppositions into one. In this way, Smith asserts a critical feminist position that promotes an articulation of multiple meanings.
femmages
Miriam Schapiro, along with being one of the founders of the Feminist art movement, is also known for what she called "femmages." These canvas-backed, sewn collages, made from highly patterned fabrics, ribbons and such, were an attempt to raise what was traditionally seen as "low" (and particularly feminine) art, to the level of high art.
Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000). Michel Tuffery. 1994 C.E. Mixed media.
Pisupo lua afe (Corned Beef 2000) (Image 237) is a life-size bull made from flattened cans of corned beef by New Zealand artist Michel Tuffery. In the Pacific Islands there are many traditional gifts of trade such as fine mats and tapa cloth, however, at weddings, funerals, feasts, or other special occasions, tins of pisupo (corned beef) are consumed as well as given as traditional gifts. The bull represents the cattle raised on many Pacific Islands, and the use of the pisupo cans, which are imported to the Islands, represents its important role in the Pacific Island diet and in the culture as well. The work combines the art of recycling with a light-hearted and ironic comment on the value of the economics. Tinned pisupo is an example of the replacement of traditional items (real beef from cattle) for imported ones (processed, canned beef) in the colonies. This 'un-Polynesian looking' bull raises the issue of whether foreign intervention encourages independence or actually fosters dependency. According to Tuffery, 'My corned beef bullock talks about the impact of global trade and colonial economies on Pacific Island cultures. Specifically it comments on how an imported commodity has become an integral part of the Polynesian customs of feasting and gift giving.'
Pure Land. Mariko Mori. 1998 C.E. Color photograph on glass.
Pure Land (Image 241) provides an excellent example of digital art that uses space to affect the viewer. Space and the viewer's perception of it become an important part of the meaning. In order to participate in the experience, which has the ultimate goal of Nirvana, the viewer is led in to a dark room and asked to don 3D glasses before the before viewing the work. The artist appears as the popular deity Kichijoten, who floats over a Dead Sea landscape tinted an acidic orange-pink in a peach-colored kimono. She seems to be a dancing Shaman in her traditional garb as she floats above a lotus flower. She executes a sequence of ritual gestures, and she is surrounded by pastel coloured elves called tunes, each playing a different Japanese musical instrument. Mariko hums and sings Japanese pop songs through a fuzzy echo chamber and the audience is treated to burst of cool, scented air on their faces. The work consists of a 10 x 20-foot digital photomontage layered in glass. It is part of an installation created by this young Japanese performance artist/photographer. Mori's background in performance art and heightened audience awareness shows her sense of the spatial relations between the artist and the viewer. The aura of the object stands in for the artist's presence, therefore decreasing the distance between the artist and the viewer. The shear size of the piece (in combination with the 3-D glasses that enhance the experience) makes it impossible to view the piece in its entirety without placing the viewer nearly inside the work.
"crowds" - Magdalena Abakanowicz
She is best known for her "crowds" (as she calls them) of headless, rigidly posed figures whose anonymity and repetitious presentation have been regarded as the artist's personal response to totalitarianism.
Stadia II. Julie Mehretu. 2004 C.E. Ink and acrylic on canvas.
Stadia II (Image 246) is part of a triptych of works created in 2004. Mehretu explores themes and concepts such as nationalism and revolution as they occur in the arena of art, athletics, and contemporary politics. Mehretu also considers art historical precedents for these themes. Take a look at the orange diamonds at the side edges, the black quadrilaterals interspersed above, or the dynamic red "X" found at the top edge. These lines and shapes are unmistakable references to the Russian constructivist and Bauhaus movements of the early twentieth century, and to artists such as Alexandr Rodchenko, Kasmir Malevich, El Lissitzky, and Wassily Kandinsky. These artists conceived of pure abstraction as a way to wipe clean the slate of history and to promote universalism and collectivity in art, politics and culture. Mehretu has long explored the use of abstraction in service of revolution and utopian politics throughout the history of Modernist art. She explains, "I am (...) interested in what Kandinsky referred to in 'The Great Utopia' when he talked about the inevitable implosion and/or explosion of our constructed spaces out of the sheer necessity of agency. So, for me, the coliseum, the amphitheater, and the stadium are perfect metaphoric constructed spaces." These can represent both the organized sterility of institutions and the "chaos, violence, and disorder" of revolution and mass gathering.
The Swing (after Fragonard). Yinka Shonibare. 2001 C.E. Mixed-media installation.
The Swing (after Fragonard) (Image 244) is an installation piece created by appropriating the Rococo (Lesson 6.36) painting The Swing by Fragonard (Image 101). Using a life-sized headless female mannequin, Shinobare recreates extravagantly attire of eighteenth-century France using bright African print fabrics. The figure reclines on a swing that is suspended from a verdant branch attached to the ceiling of the gallery. As in the original painting, the figure is poised at the highest point of her swing's forward trajectory with her right knee is bent. Her left leg stretches out in front of her, causing her skirts to ride up. She has just kicked off her left shoe, which hangs mid-air in front of the figure, suspended on invisible wire. Shonibare's work paraphrases the orginial scene, reproducing only a portion of the original composition in three dimensions. He has kept the figure of the woman on the swing with her shoe in mid-flight as well as some of the foliage that surrounds her. He has not, however, chosen to include the two men and the surrounding garden. Using African print fabric to clothe the figure represents a decorative opulence different from Fragonard's silk and lace, creating some disjunction and causing the sculpture to be simultaneously familiar and strange. While the artist's intention is that the piece should be viewed straight on, the installation is rendered in three dimensions, so viewers can actually walk around the swinging woman and place themselves in the position of either of the men in the original painting. The erotic voyeurism of Fragonard's image now encompasses the viewer, who, like the reclining man in the painting, can also look up the woman's skirt. In this way, the sensuality of the original painting has been maintained as well as critiqued in Shonibare's version. The opulent clothing and the frivolous tone of the woman swinging make Shonibare's figure a direct translation of the Fragonard original. However, Shonibare's coquette has no head, which may allude to the literal fate of the guillotine that awaited the aristocracy after the French Revolution.
shahadat (Shirin Neshat)
The Women of Allah captures devout Iranian woman and their realities. It provides a visual for the personal and public lives of women living under extreme religious commitment. A majority of the photographs deal with the concept of shahadat (martyrdom).
Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People). Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. 1992 C.E. Oil and mixed media on canvas.
Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People) (Image 233) is a large mixed-media canvas that illustrates historical and contemporary inequities between Native American peoples and that of the United States government. Trade references the role of trade goods in allegorical stories like the acquisition of the island of Manhattan by Dutch colonists in 1626 from unnamed Native Americans in exchange for goods worth 60 guilders (gold pennies) or equivalent to $24.00. Though more doubtful than true, this story has become embedded in American folklore and suggests that Native Americans had been lured off their lands by inexpensive trade goods. The misunderstanding between the Native American and non-Native worlds—especially the notion of the private ownership of land—speaks to the work titled Trade. Smith stated that if Trade could speak, it might say: "Why won't you consider trading the land we handed over to you for these silly trinkets that so honor us? Sound like a bad deal? Well, that's the deal you gave us."* In Trade, Jaune -Quick- to -See -Smith layered images, paint, labels, and objects on the surface of the canvas, combining layers of history and complexity. The triptych is divided into three large panels and the arrangement is reminiscent of a medieval altarpiece. Smith covered the canvas in collage, with newspaper articles about Native life, photos, comics, tobacco and gum wrappers, fruit carton labels, ads, and pages from comic books, all of which feature stereotypical images of Native Americans in modern America. She mixed the collaged text with photos of deer, buffalo, and Native men in historic dress holding pipes with feathers in their hair, and an image of Ken Plenty Horses.
shibboleth
a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group. The history of the word "shibboleth" illustrates how fine, linguistic lines separate friends and enemies. A stranger in a foreign land can appreciate the vulnerability this entails. The fear of being exposed as a foreigner in a hostile environment can be terrifying. The artist is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world.
The Crossing. Bill Viola. 1996 C.E. Video/sound installation.
a dual video projection piece in which the visual force is amplified by high-intensity stereo sound. Co‐commissioned by SCAD in 1996, Bill Viola's The Crossing premiered at the university and since has been shown throughout the world. Rich in metaphor and based on common spiritual beliefs of the East and West, The Crossing reveals the cycles and dualities of life through the universal symbols of fire and water. Viola's ability to convey extraordinary complexity via simple action and expert use of scale and sound—characteristics that have established him as a leading artist in video and new media art for more than three decades. In the original installation, synchronized image sequences were projected onto both sides of a double-sided screen, each of which showed a dark human form walking in slow motion toward the viewer. The figure eventually filled both displays, stopped, paused, and was slowly subsumed by a growing mass of roaring flames on one side, and by a trickle of water that swells into a rushing deluge on the other. In the 1997 exhibition Bill Viola: Fire, Water, Breath at the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, the projections were presented side-by-side, playing the images against each other and allowing the viewer to absorb them simultaneously. A pioneer in video art since the early 1970s, Viola says that he has "never lost faith in the image." He has embraced new mediums while maintaining classical aesthetic values. The repetition and extreme slow motion of The Crossing and The Messenger root the works in a mesmerizing temporality that displaces the space-time of the exhibition space and draws the viewer into visual sequences that seem to play out in perpetuity. Viola's imagery has an immediate visceral impact, but his ability to stretch and slow elemental sensory experience through the use of art and technology is what deepens his works into vehicles of spiritual meditation.
Rebellious Silence, from the Women of Allah series. Shirin Neshat (artist); photo by Cynthia Preston. 1994 C.E. Ink on photograph.
a woman covered in a veil holds a gun, and her face is covered with writing, making it appear as if she is one of the more extreme veils women must wear in order to show their obedience to the male supremacy in Islamic culture. The woman looks determined and ready to fight as she confrontationally stares straight at the viewer. The woman in the picture makes the viewer what she is fighting for— for herself or for the benefits of others? Like Cindy Sherman, Neshat uses self-portraiture in a non-traditional way which meditates on larger issues rather than herself. Their work has elements of performance as the women each function like actresses as they explore the identity of women in society. They focus, however, on different societies and use different techniques. Sherman takes her own photos, which are in color with intricately composed backgrounds, while Neshat is more of the director in her process, works in black and white, and creates close-up compositions which are more minimalist.
Feminist art
as a coherent movement, dates from the late 1960s. Feminist art has been most prominent in the United States, Britain, and Germany, although there are numerous precursors to the movement, and it has spread to many other cultures since the 1970s. Two of the founding and leading figures in the movement were Americans Judy Chicago (b. 1939) and Miriam Schapiro (b. 1923). Feminist artists have been particularly interested in what makes them different from males, and what makes art by women different from art by men. Feminists also point out that throughout most of recorded history males have imposed patriarchal (father-centered) social systems in which they have dominated females. Although it is not the goal of this article to recount the development of feminist theory in general, the history of feminist art cannot be understood apart from it. Feminist art notes that the preponderance of art made by males is significant in our patriarchal heritage. In addition, male audiences sometimes transgress against females. Men have maintained a studio system that has excluded women from training as artists, and a gallery system that has kept them from exhibiting and selling their work, albeit somewhat less recently than before. Feminist art history must be considered as part of this subject. Its proponents have demanded that women's arts from all cultures, of all periods, be included in studies and exhibitions of art. Feminists have asked why there have not been more women artists as well as what kept women artists from producing more and better work. Numerous histories of women artists were published in the 1970s, and some since. Before the late 1960s, most women artists struggle to participate in the male-dominated art world. There were overwhelming disincentives for female artisit to put feminist meanings into their work. In this way, critics and the male-dominated art establishments have sought to de-gender art work by women as well as encourage women to de-gender their own art. On the basis of appearance alone, works of art created by women could not be identified as woman-made for thousands of years until the 1960's. Some gender issues have been of interest to both male and female artists. Although feminist art has arisen from the concerns of artists of one gender, and some of those concerns are sexual in nature. More often than not, feminist issues have been about women's power in arenas of which sexuality (reproductive acts and roles) is an important part.
Old Man's Cloth. El Anatsui. 2003 C.E. Aluminum and copper wire.
he has begun to work with the discarded metal caps of liquor bottle as seen in his work, Old Man's Cloth (Image 245). Anatsui breaks with sculpture's traditional adherence to forms of fixed shape, creating large curtains of metal that can be hung or laid on the floor. In fact, he sends his work to galleries without installation instructions, giving these institutions the freedom to display his work in a way the works in their individual setting. This freedom and flexibility visually reference the history of abstraction in both African and European art. The colorful and densely patterned fields of the works assembled from discarded liquor-bottle caps tells a broader story of colonial and postcolonial economic and cultural exchange in Africa using these cast-off materials. Old Man's Cloth by El Anatsui has been constructed using thousands of flattened liquor bottle labels that the artist has collected near his home in Nigeria. The labels and bottle caps are typically fastened together methodically with fine copper wire and attached corner-to-corner. Critics often write about Anatsui's metal wall hangings using the language of textiles due to the nature of their designs and construction. Anatsui's choice of discarded liquor bottle caps as an art medium has as much to do with their formal properties as with their historical associations. As an African artist whose career was forged during the utopia of mid-century African independence movements, his work has always engaged his region's history and culture. The bottle caps, for Anatsui, signify a history of trade between Africa and Europe. As he explained in an interview, "Alcohol was one of the commodities brought with [Europeans] to exchange for goods in Africa. Eventually alcohol becomes one of the items used in the transatlantic slave trade. They made rum in the West Indies, took it to Liverpool, and then it made its way back to Africa. I thought that the bottle caps had a strong reference to the history of Africa." The luminescent gold colors also recall the colonial past of Anatsui's home country—modern Ghana was previously a British colony called The Gold Coast until its independence in 1957. The fluid movements of the work's surface remind us of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, which carried slave-ships and traders between Africa, Europe and the New World. Bestowing his works with titles such as Man's Cloth and Woman's Cloth, Anatsui also makes reference to the significance of textiles in African societies and their identities, and their own historical role in trade networks globally.