What I Know About Art: Quotes
“I don’t want to make art just for people who can read Fredric Jameson sitting upright on a Mackintosh chair. I want to make art for people who watch The Golden Girls and sit in a big, brown La-Z-Boy chair. They’re part of my public too, I hope.”
Art becomes more gracious the more available it is to the common person. The notion that enjoying art in a gallery setting is only for high-class folks is quite hypocritic, as artists themselves are more often than not poor and struggling. Creativity does not have a numeric value.
____
"...I’d met a former guard who, upon meeting me, said, “The Met hired someone like you.” I remember offhand remarks from my department head about how I didn’t dress like anyone else at the museum. I took them in stride. I did not want to be like everyone else at the museum. I loved wearing glitter-covered sneakers and letting my locs bounce around as I went from meeting to meeting. I didn’t want to fit in. I also didn’t want the museum to be monolithic in that way."
The art world has been so white and male-centered for a long time that someone entering it who doesn't meet the aforementioned criteria is often looked down upon or treated differently by people who don't understand how they view the world. It's also damaged the reputation of art (being able to create regardless of personal background) by perpetuating the belief that artists must look, act, and talk a certain way.
____
"The memory of [an] ethnographic filmmaker’s gaze haunted me for years, to the point that I began to wonder if I had become paranoid . . . Those are the moments when I am glad that there are real bars there. Those are also the times when, even though I know I can get out of the cage, I can never quite escape."
Repeated abuses over a long period of time can sometimes be irreversible to recover from. Even when said abuses stop, the areas it's touched will stain the body forever. It eventually gets to the point where the comfort of the cage is all someone knows, better to sit in what someone's known rather than try to embrace change, something new and scary.
The Breakthrough Women of Artist - Deborah Roberts
This art piece by Deborah Roberts is interesting to me because of how uncanny it looks. The viewer knows this is a collage piece and made of recognizable parts like eyes, noses, mouths, hair, and bodies, yet they're placed in such a way to make the figures read more as artificial, a failed attempt to replicate what a human should look like. This compliments the meaning of the piece well, as it's a commentary on how girls (spesifically Black girls) start questioning what they believe beauty is and what influences their thought process (A Spring Fashion Portfolio by Artist Deborah Roberts). This work would be best viewed in an exhibition called Me, She, We, with the theme of exploring common shared expereinces among Black girls and women.
No comments:
Post a Comment