When I first heard about this art
piece, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Finding out it was a video piece
definitely piqued my curiosity. I started out at BYU as a studio art major, and
one of the classes I took was the New Genre art class. I loved it because it
really broadens the idea of what can be considered art. This art piece was
creative because it took something ordinary and made something different out of
it. The artist statement explained the caricature of black face actors back in the
day, and wanted to show the absurdity of it by showing what black people would
look like if they imitated what black faced actors did back in the day. By
having them constantly smiling for as long as they can (a difficult feat I
realized after I tried it myself), it shows how ridiculous and fake it really
looks.
New genre art can be pretty
controversial. Can videos of black men smiling into a camera for as long as
they can really be considered “art?” Michelangelo might cringe at the thought.
But there’s something satisfactory for the underdog new genre artist who gives
classical artists the finger and declares that he or she is also capable of
creating art. When once artists would take the chaos of the world and try to
construct order out of it, artists now look at the ordinary things in the world
and turn it into chaos.
What Kehinde Wiley managed to do
was take something ordinary and simple and turned it into chaos, thus making us
think and ponder, which makes it art.
Love your comment about Michelangelo cringing at the thought of this video being known as art - I hadn't thought of that! It really makes me think - what is really art? Is there even a way to categorize it? Compelling thought.
ReplyDeleteCutri mentioned this idea in passing the first day of class– what is art or creativity? I think film itself is an established art, but you're right to say it is a new genre within that medium. I think if anyone gave Michelangelo the finger, it would be Picasso. Though far in the past concerning our place in time, Picasso's art would hardly have been considered classical, though produced in a studio. In turn the Lumber brothers gave every artist before them the finger by creating yet another way to express oneself.
ReplyDeleteI think much like ancient history was recorded in pictographs, establishing a foundation for the complex linguistic structures of modern language, only to be replaced again with pictographs (emojis), art will be cyclical. Including long shots of seemingly still portraits has the effect of forcing the viewer to see what changes. Our minds are programmed to look for motion, and where a painting or triptych of photographs might have displayed the same images, it is more moving to watch the smile become the frown.
Just like Katie I loved your comment about Michelangelo cringing at the thought of his creation as being "art". I think that's the beauty of art - no one can tell us what is and what isn't art. It's a very personal thing in which we all have different styles, tastes and preferences.
ReplyDeleteI really like the last comment you made, when you take something ordinary and simple and turn it into chaos to make people think. I think that statement can be applied into many different aspects, and I think that in order for creativity to be more of a force in our lives we in turn need to take some things that are simple and ordinary in our lives and turn them into chaos.
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