chapter 12: race, gender, clan, and class

Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum?

Guerrilla Girls (USA)

1986

street poster

• Guerrilla Girls = collective of anonymous female artists who protest the lack of exhibitions/jobs and lower pay for female artists

• they show up in gorilla masks at galleries/museums where women were underrepresented

• purpose: cause exposure, embarrassment, change

all persons are born with race/gender characteristics, class standing, genealogy → will affect their lives

characteristics contribute to: personal identity; downside is that they will trigger prejudice + discrimination; art reflects those issues

race and art: some artworks help form a _.

cohesive identity for a racial group; others challenge negative attitudes

often art examines the _.

history or values of a certain ethnic group

Rank Badge with Peacock

Qing Dynasty (China)

late 1700s—early 1800s

metallic thread on silk

Over Vitebsk (after a painting of 1914)

Marc Chagall (RUS/FR)

1915-1920

oil on canvas

• beginning of 1800s: Russian Jews considered outsiders; segregating housing (ghettos), restricted from attending uni, subject to anti-Semitic terrorism

• Chagall = Russian Jew; imagery = personal, cultural

• figure floating over village = thousands of Eastern European Jewish refugees that fled to Russia

• rootless floating

• Cubism = instability; Fauvism colors = greater power/expression

Society Ladies

James VanDerZee (USA)

1927

black and white photograph

• record of Harlem Renaissance; subjects = intellectuals/merchants/writers who wanted full participation in US culture/politics

• well-dressed, nice furniture, comfortable environment; confidence, humor, directness, wistfulness

• VanDerZee was influenced by movies/copied poses from films; costumes/props allow sitters to show personalities

The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

Betye Saar (USA)

1972

mixed media

• 1960s: Saar began collecting stereotyped African American figures from folk culture/advertising (ex: Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, Little Black Sambo)

• Saar incorporated found images into collages/assemblages → transform them into statements of political/social protest

• Aunt Jemima: depicts domestic servant ("aunt" = commonly used term for black domestic servants)

• shows/protests ways black people were often depicted in folk art + commercial imagery

The Artifact Piece

James Luna (USA)

1986

installation/performance

• challenges viewer to reconsider what museums teach about cultures; what is a cultural artifact?

• portrays himself as an artifact; personal items on display in glass case

• challenges how contemporary US culture/museums have presented Native American people/culture as extinct and vanished

we develop ideas about foreign or ethnic groups from _.

the mass media images we consume; viewer = privileged; "consuming" images of other people w/o interacting w/ them

Buddha Duchamp Beuys

Nam June Paik

1989

video installation w/ Buddha sculpture

• relation to east/west; title, Buddha statue, TV = reference parts of the world + consumption of culture thru media, w/o direct contact

gender issues: artwork gives clues about _.

social restrictions of gender roles/acceptable behavior

Painting from a Cult House

Slei, Middle Sepik Region, Papua New Guinea

1900s

palm leaves on a bamboo frame, painted w/ earth pigments

• early 20th century pre-colonization, men dominated women among the Sepik people of PNG

• Tambaran rituals in decorated cult houses; men saw rituals = creating men from infants → usurping women’s procreative power

• paintings and carvings were created in order to pass power on to younger men

• many South Pacific peoples believe: person’s being = built thru a lifetime of ritual experiences

gender roles are often revealed in art and _.

reflected in architecture and fashion

Abduction of the Daughters of Leucippus

Peter Paul Rubens (Flanders)

1617

oil on canvas

• depicts what was considered masc/fem during that era

• figures represent ideal body types

• women: voluptuous, soft, fleshy, stay inside/domestic = sexually attractive, healthy/wealthy

• men: darker skinned, muscular, go outside; privilege over women’s bodies; subdued/determined expressions

• women: learned to be helpless, relied on social structures to protect their virtue; more emotional, nude, displayed/showing off

• western art = many examples of female nude providing pleasure for male viewers; legitimized because it was "art"

Oath of the Horatii

Jacques-Louis David (FR)

1784

oil on canvas

• scene from ancient Roman history

• heroic actions = masculine; reinforced by women’s passivity

• male bonding: 3 brothers become single force

• men: hold weapons, clothing made of angular lines; masculine classical architecture, popular during French Rev. era

• women: concerned w/ children, clothing made of soft curves

• Neoclassicism: revival of Greek/Roman aesthetics

• bare and oppressive

Hall of Mirrors

François de Cuvilliès

Amalienburg Hunting Lodge (München, DE)

1734—1739

• Rococo = feminine and elegant, uplifting and imaginative

• elements include: curved walls/ceilings, nature-based decoration, mirrors, crystal, silver/gold, ceilings depicted as open sky w/ birds

gender roles combined w/ political + social changes = controversial

body modification to enhance femininity/masculinity include:

dieting

plastic surgery

implants

scarification

bindings that mold body parts (ex: foot binding)

Trauma

Hung Liu (China/USA)

1989

ink on plywood cutouts, acrylic on wall, felt cutout, wooden bowl

• Liu’s Chinese heritage; work based on historic photographs

• examines practice of foot binding = sexually attractive to men

• bound feet ensured that women remained subservient (they couldn’t do things on their own)

• publicly shows her bound feet: erotic in private; public exposure = shameful

• below the woman: dead Chinese student; killed by govt in Tiananmen Square

a clan is a group of people _.

joined by blood or marriage ties

art helps solidify extended families by:

• making major ancestors available to the living clan members

• depicting important events in the clan’s history

• acting as an important element in rituals

Statue of Togato Barberini

Rome

early 1st century CE (1—100 CE)

marble

• portrait sculpture made for worship; holding portrait busts that boasts of his lineage

• Ancient Romans believed ancestry = important preserved portraits of ancestors + venerated their memory

• ancestor portraits were first death masks, made with soft wax

• around 1st C. BCE, rich Romans had copies of death masks made in marble

Portrait Heads from Tomb 6

Lambityeco, Oaxaca, MX

640—755 CE

stucco

Interior House Post

Arthur Shaughnessy (Kwakiutl, Gilford Island, BC, Canada)

1907

carved and painted red cedar

Bisj Pole

Asmat, Papua New Guinea

mid 1900s

wood, paint, fiber

Epa Headdress Called "Orangun"

Bamgboye of Odo-Owa (Yoruba, Erinmope, Nigeria)

1974

wood and paint

The Family

Marisol (Venezuela)

1962

painted wood nad other materials in 3 sections

Sail Baby

Elizabeth Murray (USA)

1983

oil on 3 canvases

Baby Makes 3

General Idea (Canada)

1984—1989

lacquer on vinyl

Temple of Ramses II

19th dynasty, Abu Simbel, Egypt

1275—1225 BCE

Seated Scribe

5th Dynasty, Saqqara, Egypt

2500—2400 BCE

painted limestone

Las Meninas

Diego Velázquez (Spain)

1656

oil on canvas

The Swing

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (France)

1766

oil on canvas

Great Beaded Crown of the Orangun-Ila

beadworkers of the Adesina family of Efon-Alaye (Yoruba, Ila Orangun, Nigeria)

1900s

The Kitchen Maid

Johannes Vermeer (NL)

1660

oil on canvas

Along the River During the Qingming (Spring) Festival

Zhang Zeduan (China)

late 1000s—early 1100s

handscroll, ink on silk