Representing Black Womanhood
Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude -Lisa E. Farrington
“Looking into the mirror the black woman asked, ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who’s the finest of them all?” The Mirror answered, ‘Snow White, you black bitch, and don’t you forget it!’”
-Carrie Mae Weems
The black female nude is surrounded by the problem of: what it means to be a woman in conjunction to what it means to be black. The female Afro-American artists of the modern movement have addressed this problem in a manner that has essentially reclaimed the black female nude from the stereotypes placed onto her by patriarchal and feminist society. Farrington brings to light many of the issues facing the black female artist in an art world that is still seething with patrimony. She states “They have discovered ways to remake and re-present their own naked images free from patriarchal and imperial association and, as makers of their own bodies, they have created commanding exemplars, not of the ‘other’ but of the ‘self’.”
The questions I would like to raise are:
-Have artist like Weems, Cox, Saar and their contemporaries, done an adequate job in reclaiming the black female image in the wake of modern pop culture and the stigma that is placed on the black female by the music industry?
-Carol Duncan believes that the male representation of the female body asserts sexual dominion over his subject. How does the “power of the gaze” play out in works of black male artists, such as Romare Bearden, who assert to be reclaiming the nude black female figure? Since the male artist has no idea what it is to be female can he adequately interpret her experience? Are they as effective as the female artist depictions of the same subject (the nude black female)?
Getting Down to Get Over: Romare Bearden’s use of pornography and the problem of the black female body in Afro-U.S. Art. – Judith Wilson
Wilson’s title begins the article with interesting food for thought : She is formulating an argument that in using sexually explicit and off-beat material to deal with black sexuality, Bearden was able to “recuperate the nude black female body from the clutches of the white purveyors erotic fantasies about the exotic Other and reposition it in relation to black vernacular culture.”
-Does Bearden really reclaim the black female nude, or is she(the nude subject) just replaced in the context of a spectacle for black male culture?
-Since male artists of the 20th century (both white and black) have been the dominating forces in the field of visual arts, do their representations of the black female nude create new boundaries for the black female artist to overcome through her representations of her own nude form?
Reclaiming Histories: Betye and Alison Saar, Feminism, and the Representation of Black Womanhood - Jessica Dallow
Dallow’s uses the work of Betye and Alison Saar to explore the intergenerational link between female Afro-American artists. The mother and daughter artists use race, body image, and the history of both of these factors to reshape the stereotype of the black female and to reclaim the nude female body for the Afro-American woman. Dallow’s goes on to examine the ideas present in the 19th century of the overtly sexualized black female and how that stigma was pictorialized in works by male artists of the 19th century (she uses Manet’s Olympia and Nana as examples). It was not until the 20th century that we begin to see works emerging from black artists, particularly black female artist. During the latter half of the 20th century women, in general black women, finally are able to gain a voice and begin to attempt to visually describe not only the female condition, but the Black female condition. The author raises some very interesting questions.
1) What happened during the latter 50 years of the 20th century that made the reclaiming of the black female body possible?
2) How exactly are issues of self-identy and the body in the art of Betye and Alison Saar unique?
3) How can they be more fully historicized?
Questions I would like to raise:
- Is Alison Saar attempting to take her mother’s message of black female identity a step further by using the nude?....Is she doing what her mother never felt comfortable doing?
- Does the work of more recent black female artist address the issues of racism and separatism as much as the work of their foremother’s…..How about the issues of body image?
- Do contemporary black female artist still feel as removed from the women’s movement as artist of the 60’s and 70’s? Is it more about the female experience now as a whole as compared to that of the white or black female experience?
- Do the issues of modern popular culture (music , television, and media) strengthen or discredit the plight of the black female for equality in depiction?
I find the work of Weems, Cox, A. Saar, B. Saar, and Ringgold as described by the essayists compelling and powerful. The readings were influential in terms of engaging my empathy, both with the artists’ artwork and the perspective from which they were creating their work. I appreciated learning about the separatist attitudes of the feminist organizations.
ReplyDeleteFarrington states, “African-American men were stereotyped as stupid, shiftless, lazy, irresponsible, and dangerous. African-American women endured the same racist stereotypes, but to these were added others, which were grounded in sexual bias. The impact of the stereotypes on African-American image and psyche was devastating.” These socially constructed stereotypes are far from abolished in the U.S.A.. Does popular culture reflect that the stereotypes about women were abolished by feminism? Fine art culture has a limited audience. As a result of both racism and sexism, African-American women have historically had fewer opportunities to get their work to an audience. While the artwork is powerful in reflecting the African-American female artists’ struggles to formulate and represent her owned identity, their artwork can’t possibly address the same population numbers that the popular music industry can address with their visual culture and mass media. I don’t believe that we can gage the artists’ adequacy in that manner.
I felt that the readings for this week were very strong. They were definitely very powerful in their context. I think that when the surge of African-American art came into view, and particularly the presence of female African-American art it really grabbed people’s attention. It was very fascinating to read about everything going on at the time with the feminist movements within the community. I found the Wilson article particularly interesting because it introduced a spin to me that I had really never thought of. But again, when you begin to think of it, female slaves were the desire to their owners during the 1800s because, and this is crass to say, they were something new and different. I believe Wilson does a good job of just throwing everything out there and letting people take it how they want to. Throughout all three articles there is the presence of trying to separate female African-American art, and artists trying to alleviate the stereotypes that went along with being a female artist, as well as being a Black female artist. However it makes me wonder if any of their efforts actually worked because there is still so much bias in today’s world against African-American artists, unless they’re part of a rap label…
ReplyDeleteOn page 22 of the Farrington article she mentions the effect of the Moynihan report from 1967. As it turns out this was officially called the "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action" and it is an amazing testimony to how much has changed in just a few decades. It turns out this report was put together by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later became a very liberal Senator from New York and regular TV personality.
ReplyDeleteHere is a quote from the report:
"The report concluded that the structure of family life in the black community constituted a 'tangle of pathology...capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world,' and that 'at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.' Further, the report argued that the matriarchal structure of black culture weakened the ability of black men to function as authority figures. This particular notion of black familial life has become a widespread, if not dominant, paradigm for comprehending the social and economic disintegration of late twentieth-century black urban life. (pp.218-219)"
As painfully naive as that sounds it ironically lead to some of the most progressive and successful aspects of the War on Poverty.
I'm interested to see where this class discussion goes. that being said, I'm not sure exactly what i have to bring to the table. Things I'm learning in this class so far: 1) identity is complicated, 2) theorizing identity can become as exclusionary a practice as any problem the theory hopes to subvert. 3) binaries are fairy pointless for anything other than tying up loose ends. I think i need to sit a little longer with this weeks articles... frankly, I'm a little confused. I thought we went "post-black" in 2001 (at least according to Thelma Golden).
ReplyDelete