analysis/discussion

ARTS 1A: Group Analysis 10

Lubaina Himid Between the Two My heart is Balanced, 1991 Acrylic on canvas

James Tissot Portsmouth Dockyard, c. 1877 Oil on canvas

For our final group analysis consider Lubaina Himid’s Between the Two My Heart is Balanced in relation to a painting she had carefully studied, James Tissot’s Portsmouth Dockyard, produced more than a century earlier. Address the following question in your group analysis post: The objects stacked between the African women in Lubaina Himid’s painting represent maps, charts, and books written by European colonizers about Africa. The women take turns reaching to the top of the stack to remove a map, chart, or book, then rip up its pages, tossing the pieces into the sea. The painting that motivated this work is James Tissot’s Portsmouth Dockyard, which depicts a Scottish soldier seated in a small transport vessel in one of the busy English harbors from which ships departed for, and returned from, Britain’s colonies. What is significant about the fact that both artists set their subjects for these works on ocean water?

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