Looking at Race in Art

In this weeks readings we were given extensive viewpoints on the role of art in understanding race and it's  subsequent meanings.  Before we could get into this though, we had to understand how race is functioning in today's society.

Through The Theoretical Status of the Concept of Race by Howard Winant, the ways people have of discussing race were outlined and then debunked.  Firstly, Winant explored what he calls "Race as an Ideological Contruct" outlined by its supporter Barbara Fields.  In this view, the concept of race fulfilled a need in society-the need for an explanation for the distinct social inequity of slavery.  Fields believes that society continues to reinvent race in order to fit itself, or in other words, race exists because people continue to make it a priority.  Winant argues that this viewpoint has become common sense (a person is just a person) but that it does not allow for a response to the sociocultural differences that have developed overtime and that it really only explains the origins of thinking about race.  He also contests that it fails to recognize the "deeply embedded social construct" of race in a society that uses it as a major part of identity.
Next, Winant looks at "Race as an Objective Condition." Here, he states that the proponents of this are committed to looking at race socially, but that they also fall into a sort of objectivism when it comes to racial identity and meaning.  In this viewpoint, race is part of group statuses that are ascribed to society, wherein then roles are performed accordingly.  Here race is treated as an object fact, one that eventually configures into rules of racial classification.  Winant again finds fault in that this view ignores the development of racial identity, denies historical and social comprehension of race and does give explanation for how people manage to navigate conflicting meanings of racial identity (one acting a race).
Once Winant puts these viewpoints down, he begins to call for a  "Critical Theory on the Concept of Race," or as he would coin it "racial formation." He contends that this new racial formation must recognize the history of the social construction experiences of race and race categories, as well as three other main defining factors all dealing with race in a contemporary setting, such as in the globalization of race.  He concludes his writing with hope for moving beyond the idea of race as an illusion and towards it being just another "marker of the infinity of variations" in humanity.

Carrie Mae Weems, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried

From there we moved onto a review and an essay from The New York Times writer Holland Cotter.  The review was about a show titled Only Skin Deep:  Changing Visions of the American Self.  This show addressed American identity which then encompasses ethnicity, sexuality and race.  Cotter focuses mainly on how race was portrayed as a social fact that is used by a group of people to control another group of people through both physical and mental force.  He writes that this show more specifically looked into how photography has been used to record, reference and enforce the hierarchal rankings in the history of race.  He goes onto explain about some of the singular works within the exhibit and how they function there, always coming back to the "problem of the color line" or rather how the show reasserts how much of an issue race still is.

In Cotter's second writing, we begin to get a better overview of his viewpoint on race and ethnicity in art.  He begins with how multiculturalism moved art visually and conceptually beyond the Western hemisphere and allowed the social and ethical construct of the art world to be seen.  In this way multiculturalism tried to be rid of the exclusion that was occurring, and in some ways it did.  For instance, minority artists began to be recognized, but with that more issues began to develop such as art careers based on ethno-racial identity.
At the end of this article, Cotter explains that he has seen a shift in how the world is dealing with ethnicity in art.  He claims that there is a developing movement called post-ethnicity and that it can give a path out of ethno-racial art being defined as a category while still keeping identity, as a whole, viable.  Ideally this would mean that minority artists are at the center of the art world, along with everyone else.
By far the most interesting article we read this week was The Sound of Light:  Reflctions on Art History in the Visual Culture of Hip-Hop by Krista Thompson.  This article deals mainly with two artists, Kehinde Wiley and Luis Gispert, and how they combine art history and hip hop to comment on contemporary culture.

First, Thompson takes us through the short history of hip hop and its culture.  She reflects on the main criteria of hip hop culture, which is "being seen being seen", and how some people within the culture go about this through there use of bling.  Bling takes on a whole new meaning in this article, with its definition varying from the "sound of light off of a diamond," to a "flashy accouterment that glorifies conspicuous consumption" and any commodity that can show its opulence in the visual field.  In other words, bling is usually shiny, allowing light to bounce off of it and literally, physically blind the viewer.

From here Thompson draws a connection from the shininess of bling to the surface treatment that developed out of 17th century Dutch oil paintings.  What the discovery of oil painting allowed artists to do was render objects with meticulous detail of the "tangibility, texture, luster and solidarity" of real life.  This led the artists to look solely at the surface of things, or rather, the canvas became a mirror instead of a window.  The use of shine on the objects within the canvas gave them a pictorial value to match their commercial value, thus shine become an intrinsic value of an object.  The only thing that was not rendered with shine in mind was the skin of the subject within the frame, because this would dictate them as an object.  Having said that, it was black skin that was depicted as a commodity through the use of surficism and shine.  Here is where Thompson states that perhaps bling, which is between hypervisibility and disappearance(so conspicuous the wearer is defiantly noticed, but not completely seen because of the blinding ability of bling), is what black subjects use to make their subjectivity real.

Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Andries Stile

With all of this background in mind, Thompson moves into Kehinde Wiley's paintings.  Here she claims that his paintings, particularly those of the black urban youth, show literally, through his process, how painters have used surfacism and light to construct opulence and power, not just on canvas, but also into real life.  For instance, Wiley uses a "super-rapturous light" to envelop his subjects, but he does so in such a way that the subject disappears through competition with that light.  This is because Wiley interprets that light into a super ornate surface decor, allowing it to out subject, as it were, the person that one would originally think is the subject.

Luis Gispert, Untitled from Cheerleader series

From Wiley, Thompson moves into Luis Gispert's Cheerleader series.  Again we first begin to see themes of hip hop through the lens of oil paintings, but in a much different way than Wiley.  Gispert is more interested in how the visual expressions of hip hop and bling are able to show a commodity's status as being a part of "blackness."  He does this through totally removing the illusion that surface aesthetics give to ground-figure relations.  For instance, in this series, he photographed girls of all different ethnicities in cheerleader outfits and the accoutrements of bling (grills, expensive, shiny jewelry, etc.), jumping into the air.  Behind them is nothing but a green screen, drawing attention to the fact that the illusion of gravity is created only by the use of perspective, scale and light.
Overall, all four of the articles were interesting and each gave me something else to think about.  There are so many issues facing minority artists and it seems as though things are only getting slightly better over time.  I do think it is frustrating that many artists who are actually able to support themselves as artists are white men, but I have also seen a lot of other types of people do great things, so that gives me hope.  As society is become more and more complex, so are peoples' identities, and hopefully in the future this will mean that there will be actual equality, and rightful subjectivity, between all people.