Today I decided that I wanted to spend the day looking more into the exhibits we would be visiting at the Toledo Museum of Art, and the artists who contributed to them. James Lavadour is one of the artists whose artwork is featured at the exhibit "Expanded Views: Native American Art in Focus." He is a painter and member of the Walla Walla tribe. Lavadour is known for his massive landscape paintings of eastern Oregon, one of which we will get to see at the Toledo Museum. Wendy Red Star is another artist whose work is featured at the Native American exhibit at the Toledo Museum. She is a multimedia artist from Montana. She takes a different approach to her art about Native Americans than does Lavadour, including humorous aspects, connecting Native American culture with traditional media. Like a lot of the other work I am looking at, her art has an aspect of romanticism to it. Finally, Marie Watt is the last artists whose work is featured in the exhibit. She mainly works with textile arts and community collaboration to create her art. She lives in Portland, Oregon, like the other two artists I previously wrote about, and her art is focused on Native American themes. Throughout my independent study so far, I have focused on how people of color have been portrayed in art history by white artists. This exhibit at the Toledo Museum will allow me to look into how people of color are portrayed by other people of color. All of the artists featured in this exhibit have very different techniques when created and conveying these themes about Native Americans, from textiles to landscapes to multimedia.
Today I was able to do a lot of research on the artists at the museum, allowing me to gain a lot of background about them before seeing their art next week, which I am very excited about after my research from today.
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Yesterday I wrote a lot about "The Raft of the Medusa," which was painted by Théodore Géricault. This painting alone got me thinking about Géricault's general style and subject matter, which is why I decided to look into his other works today. Today we spent the majority of the day at a library in Sylvania looking through books and furthering our research. I borrowed a book from the library today titled Art: A visual history, which gave me some background into Géricault's work and the era of Romanticism during which he was painting. The book noted that during the 18th and 19th centuries, when Romanticism was gaining traction, artists no longer created works using logic and rationale; instead, the poured their raw feelings and emotions into their artwork, which led to new colors, movements, and ideas, which is why it is more common during this era to see more people of color, as this was deviating from what was normal and expected of the artists. "The Raft of the Medusa" was not the only time that Géricault included people of color in his artwork. Below is his "Bust of a Black Man" I've noticed that during Romanticism, black men are portrayed in a positive light, as strong individuals who take up leadership. But, as we know, African Americans were not always seen as such, forced to be slaves and seen as inferior in American history. I realize this, and I believe that it's important that this is also discussed, as the portrayal of African Americans in art is different depending on the location, time period, and political circumstances. I did a bit of research on some of these more negative portrayals of African Americans. Below are some pieces of art and a bit of information about each to give a bit of a background about what was going on at the time. Clearly, these paintings both point towards the negative portrayal of African Americans with respect to the time periods; this depiction differs from many of those evident in the era of Romanticism.
Today was extremely productive when it came to breaking down the different eras and time periods I feel are important to look into, and I will likely continue to do so tomorrow, as there are dozens of different eras important to my topic. I will need to dig even deeper as to draw greater conclusions about people of color in Western Art History. Today we spent the majority of the day completing more research about each of our topics and narrowing our focus to make sure that when we actually go out into the field, we are able to obtain an in-depth perspective into the artwork we are analyzing and researching. We met with Bob Schira at his art institute, "For the Love of Art," and he gave me many ideas about what I can focus on as well. We decided that my focusing on "the portrayal of colored people in Western art history" was way too broad, and that I should look specifically into the era of Romanticism and Abstract work. He then referenced many books and gave me many examples of pieces of art where people of color are depicted a certain way in the era of Romanticism. Below is one example, titled "The Raft of the Medusa" and painted by Théodore Géricault in 1818-19. As shown in the piece of work, the African American man is the one at the tip of triangle formed by the men, showing his power on the raft. This sort of depiction was not uncommon for the era, but was unusual to see in many other eras of art history, where white people were mainly depicted, leaving people of color mainly out of the picture. The remainder of my day mainly consisted of continued research of more artists like Géricault who contributed to the greater amounts of colored people depicted in a more positive light during the era of Romanticism in art. I have been able to narrow my focus due to our meeting with Bob Schira, and I have learned how crucial it is for me to focus on Romanticism when we begin attending museums next week, as this will be what directs me toward drawing my conclusions.
Tomorrow, Aneesa and I will be spending the day going to various libraries and completing our individual research as to gain greater understandings of our topics and artists who contributed to them, with respect to the time periods and depictions of the individuals or subjects in the art. Today I spent the day at Maumee Valley, where Aneesa and I laid down our schedules for the intensive, and narrowed down each of our topics. We decided that while we would both be looking into social issues in art, we wanted to focus on different aspects and issues. As a result, I will be studying the portrayal of colored people in Western art history. I have come up with the following sub-questions to help guide my independent study:
We also spent some of today coming up with a rough schedule of the next three weeks. It is as follows: Week 1:
Week 2:
Week 3:
We also touched base with Bob Schira, out off-campus sponsor, and we will be meeting with him tomorrow morning to discuss the trajectory of our independent study, our goals, and the steps we should take to ensure that our independent study is as successful as possible. Finally, I wrote out the exhibitions that I think we should target at each museum:
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