Janine Antoni, a Bahamian-born conceptual and sculptural artist, works with themes such as architecture, the physical body, and maternity.
The most constant theme of Antoni's work is the use of her body as an art tool. Her hair is the brush, her urine is the patina, and her breast or face is the mold. Sometimes she brings her audience in an uncomfortably intimate to her body, for example in Wean or Conduit. Or her process is uncomfortable like Lick and Lather. For the chocolate bust, she licked and gnawed away the chocolate to form the bust. The process to all four of these works is uncomfortable to a degree. But they also often bring together concepts in an interesting way. In all four of these selected works, Antoni is bringing her body into the architecture. In this way she contrasts natural and man-made, impermanent and permanent, everyday and monumental.
Antoni was born in Fremont, Bahamas and studied at Sarah Lawrence College and Rhode Island School of Design. She has been productive in artmaking for nearly thirty years. She has received many awards and is recognized internationally.
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The project is finished this week. I enjoyed this project more than others this year. I just started mixing and painting and getting in the groove. My favorite part of this is the babies and I also like the pink tendril plant things. I also appreciate the color scheme.
If I were to do this again, I would perhaps make the pink plants at the bottom less dominant. I would make the ombre on the green underpainting more dominant. I will definitely do more like this. I especially like how the figures turned out. I started by painting my canvas a nice shade of Shrek green. Step two was to get a nice gradient on the background. No time to waste so I got down to business and started painting the succulent leaves. Much frustration and time wasted color matching. I began to add highlights and details on the leaves. The deadline is alarmingly soon so I really must finish it this weekend. It’s a lot to do but I’ll get ‘er done.
Today Kirk spoke about the developments of the 50s American comic industry. He spoke of the emerging art form of Entertainment Comics, the Comics Code Authority's strict standards, and how US cartoonists reacted to those standards.
The Comics Code Authority represents an idiosyncrasy in American society and law. We Americans love to hold ourselves up with lofty political and social ideals like liberty and democracy. Our most important document, the Constitution, guarantees freedoms for all Americans, including the right to free speech. In America we think of ourselves as champions of the oppressed and voiceless. But the Comics Code Authority is a serious breach to that idealistic self-image. A quasi-governmental group censored many individuals' art and imposed their worldview upon the readership. This represents the dominance of entrenched white views on individuals' art. And it's surprising that censorship this blatant happened in our free United States. Another dimension of the lecture was the idea of art versus industry. That is, to what degree are the comics art and to what degree are they industry? They are not completely art because they are made for commercial rather than strictly art-related reasons. They would not usually belong in a museum. But also, they do usually have subject, composition, and content. They do show technical skill. And usually they have substantive content: civil rights, retribution, morality. I would be more comfortable labeling these types of comics as art rather than more basic superhero comics designed for children. A foray into surrealism.This week I started my new in-class project. For Christmas I got a wonderful gift: a small succulent with tiny baby figurines. I thought it was surreal and ironic, especially when closely cropped and that gave me the idea for the project. There's even a humor about the image. This entire Art 4 year has been extremely experimental for me and this is my next experiment. This is unlike anything I've done before.
This is the first time I have ever worked on a canvas with high quality paint. I was raised on paper with crappy acrylics and that is all I really know. After a while, I came around but using high-quality materials made me uncomfortable when I was first exposed to them. I suppose I'm in the big leagues now. I think my biggest challenge will be painting the elements of the image somewhat realistically. It will just take time. But I'm very excited about this project and I'm hoping a successful result. A reflection to "The Fight Over Virginia's Confederate Monuments" by Benjamin Wallace Wells, in the New Yorker, published December 4, 2017 As a nation, we have not yet completely reconciled the legacy of the Civil War and race relations. This is characterized by the continued debate over monuments representing Civil War heroes. In the process of righting our national wrongs, many say that it is time for the monuments to come down. They cite several reasons for this - one is that the monuments were constructed not right after the Civil War, but in the Jim Crow Era afterwards. They were built in the context of the "Lost Cause" ideology: that the Confederacy will rise again. They were also built to remind the South's blacks of white supremacy and serve as symbols as oppression after emancipation. The opponents to dismantling the monuments say that the monuments have nothing to do with hate and instead glorify Southern heritage. Corey Stewart, a Virginia republican, defended the monuments by saying that "Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don't matter." Stewart's comment highlights continued feelings of sectionalism in our nation and also exemplify a strong identification with Southern heritage. Another way that supporters of the monuments defend them is by using the "What's next?" philosophy: that if Lee and Jackson come down, then someday Washington and Jefferson will too. After the 2017 Charlottesville rally, Trump spoke to this viewpoint. "George Washington was a slave owner ... will George Washington lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? ... You're changing history, you're changing culture ..."
As always, the answer is not clear. It's important to understand and accept every viewpoint on this issue. I cannot identify with the hatred a black American might feel when looking upon our monuments. I never will be able to understand that feeling entirely. I also can understand, but not identify with, Corey Stewart's idea of glorifying Southern heritage. I understand how for many Southerners it's a way of life and a culture that has nothing to do with hate and oppression. I don't find the argument that the monuments have nothing to do with hate to be entirely convincing. If they are not symbols of white supremacy, why does a busfull of Klansmen come to defend them? I know that there are many supporters of the monuments that are not white supremacists; but the monuments are inextricably tied to white supremacy. For these reasons, I support some reforms. For some monuments, we should take them down from their high pedestals and add context around them. The article mentioned adding Robert E. Lee's slaves' accounts around the his monument. For some monuments, it might be the right answer to move them to a museum. The monuments are relics from the past and do not represent the values of the twenty-first century. In a museum they can still be viewed and understood by posterity. In a way, moving the statues to a museum is just a more extreme way of adding context to them. Supporters of Southern heritage can still have other symbols of the South. But the the legacy of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow expands past the monument debate. The races in the U.S. are theoretically and legally equal, but we still face continued inequality, segregation, and inequality. In many cities, Richmond included, we still face economic and residential inequality. Certain neighborhoods are prone to poverty, drug addiction, violence, and educational inequality. Our penal system is disadvantageous to African Americans. Unfortunately these divisions tend to follow racial lines. These are a more stark and more real reminder of our nation's history of racial inequality. These issues self-perpetuate and grow in an escalating cycle. These are reminders of the era that truly affect people's lives. It's not that Confederate monuments are not an important issue. But the only thing that will truly reconcile our race inequality in the U.S. is sweeping societal reform. The Confederate monument debate has garnered much support from both sides, but it's ultimately the bigger underlying issue is continued racial inequality. Social reform is far more difficult to enact due to a wide variety of factors and I believe it will take many decades or even centuries to fully correct past wrongs. For the last several centuries, we as a world have been moving generally in the direction of correcting past wrongs, less violence, more equal opportunity and democracy. In this slow transition to a better world, we sometimes experience a backwards slide in history. But it's important to remember than in Charlottesville a few dozen klansmen faced a crowd of thousands of anti-protesters. |