Early African-American Reaction to Modernism
Hey folks, I just found out about Google's whole Knol thing.
I suppose it's meant to be some sort of wikipedia killer, but whatever; I highly doubt that'll work, if so.
The use for me is that it's good to help me keep track of some of the essays and papers I had to write while in school. Otherwise, I'll lose them :P And I really enjoyed the topics I picked and was interested in the reading and research I did. Some of which I already mentioned, I think (re: the historical importance of Fairy Tales).
I'll point them out here as I finish and format them, doop dee doo!
If you've got something to say, do it! Some point of interest or study that you're carrying around with you in your head, share it! This world's not gonna just make sense of itself :P
Anyway...
This one came about during my Art History class, when we were talking about modernism in art. I remember in class, while hearing about all this non-western influence, wondering what black folk thought about it who were making art at the time. I mean, consider that you're a serious artist, thinking serious thoughts, and trying to hew away in your little corner of creativity. You're unable to get your work shown and be taken seriously because you're black, but then you wander around Paris and see these grotesque modern caricatures and garish new styles claiming not just black but African influence (a tradition denied you via The Middle Passage), then how do you make sense of that and what you're doing; particularly if you're working in the more traditional, academic/Renaissance style, seen to be old, stale. Where is that consideration in the history lesson? It would seem an obvious perspective but one that was missing in class. So I picked it to investigate and write about.
Early African-American Reaction to Modernism
The tl;dr is to just look at the above two images.
On the left is Noire et Blanche, 1926 by Man Ray, a prominent white male photographer who was making very cutting edge work at the time. On the right is Portrait of Anne Washington Derry, 1927 by Laura Wheeler Waring, a black female painter. The former is pure fashion, cool and cerebral, objectifying and fetishizing. It works and it's compelling. But it's about form and image, the building of a visual style. You have to remember how new that mask would have seemed. It would be like your iPhone. Very modern and novel and slick. But what is that mask? Where does it come from? Who made it and why? It's not important; because to Man Ray it's a complete new system of aesthetics to play with, rendered completely anonymous out of its orignal context. It's a cool alien "blackness" that identifies the art(ist) with the New and Now. It would be exactly like all the slick Illustrator vector/graffiti art you see these days which identifies as cutting edge. Or twee Etsy fare, etc.
Contrast that with the portrait on the right; we know who it is, it's a specific individual, not a type or "look". It seems much more like a genuine person than the other image, even though Man Ray's piece is a photograph! The painting is much more about portraiture, recognizing and honoring the individual depicted, rather than reducing them to archetypes and stereotypes. The artist, Waring, visited Paris during this time and returned back to the states to continue painting in this naturalistic way the rest of her life, resisting the pull toward extreme stylization that was all the rage. Her paintings of African-Americans were always exercises in finding a genuine vision and nobility in the subject. Even the contrast of titles for these two pieces is telling.
I suppose it's meant to be some sort of wikipedia killer, but whatever; I highly doubt that'll work, if so.
The use for me is that it's good to help me keep track of some of the essays and papers I had to write while in school. Otherwise, I'll lose them :P And I really enjoyed the topics I picked and was interested in the reading and research I did. Some of which I already mentioned, I think (re: the historical importance of Fairy Tales).
I'll point them out here as I finish and format them, doop dee doo!
If you've got something to say, do it! Some point of interest or study that you're carrying around with you in your head, share it! This world's not gonna just make sense of itself :P
Anyway...
This one came about during my Art History class, when we were talking about modernism in art. I remember in class, while hearing about all this non-western influence, wondering what black folk thought about it who were making art at the time. I mean, consider that you're a serious artist, thinking serious thoughts, and trying to hew away in your little corner of creativity. You're unable to get your work shown and be taken seriously because you're black, but then you wander around Paris and see these grotesque modern caricatures and garish new styles claiming not just black but African influence (a tradition denied you via The Middle Passage), then how do you make sense of that and what you're doing; particularly if you're working in the more traditional, academic/Renaissance style, seen to be old, stale. Where is that consideration in the history lesson? It would seem an obvious perspective but one that was missing in class. So I picked it to investigate and write about.
Early African-American Reaction to Modernism
The tl;dr is to just look at the above two images.
On the left is Noire et Blanche, 1926 by Man Ray, a prominent white male photographer who was making very cutting edge work at the time. On the right is Portrait of Anne Washington Derry, 1927 by Laura Wheeler Waring, a black female painter. The former is pure fashion, cool and cerebral, objectifying and fetishizing. It works and it's compelling. But it's about form and image, the building of a visual style. You have to remember how new that mask would have seemed. It would be like your iPhone. Very modern and novel and slick. But what is that mask? Where does it come from? Who made it and why? It's not important; because to Man Ray it's a complete new system of aesthetics to play with, rendered completely anonymous out of its orignal context. It's a cool alien "blackness" that identifies the art(ist) with the New and Now. It would be exactly like all the slick Illustrator vector/graffiti art you see these days which identifies as cutting edge. Or twee Etsy fare, etc.
Contrast that with the portrait on the right; we know who it is, it's a specific individual, not a type or "look". It seems much more like a genuine person than the other image, even though Man Ray's piece is a photograph! The painting is much more about portraiture, recognizing and honoring the individual depicted, rather than reducing them to archetypes and stereotypes. The artist, Waring, visited Paris during this time and returned back to the states to continue painting in this naturalistic way the rest of her life, resisting the pull toward extreme stylization that was all the rage. Her paintings of African-Americans were always exercises in finding a genuine vision and nobility in the subject. Even the contrast of titles for these two pieces is telling.