analysis

ARTS 1A

Topic 3

Topic 3

First, watch the following short video, “Etre-là: Zanele Muholi”:

https://youtu.be/RTvNHtD_iH8

Pair 1: Zanele Muholi and Frida Kahlo Zanele Muholi

I. For the series “Faces and Phases,” artist Zanele Muholi used portraiture to document the presence of LGBTQ people in South Africa, the first nation to acknowledge and include protection for this community in its constitution. Portraiture is a subject type in which the identity of the subject is the most important aspect of the work of art.

In spite of the constitutionally protected status of the LGBTQ community in South Africa, widespread homophobia has led to acts of violence upon many black lesbians and others who identify as LGBTQ. Zanele Muholi titled each portrait with the subject’s name and the location where each was photographed. Each portrait was meant to be a document of the existence of the subject.

Zanele Muholi

Xana Nyilenda, Newtown, Johannesburg From the “Faces and Phases” series

2011

Gelatin silver print

II. Zanele Muholi’s answer to the different forms of violence enacted upon members of this community is to increase the visibility of those who identify as LGBTQ in South Africa. In the portrait Xana Nyilenda, Newtown, Johannesburg, the artist manipulated photographic equipment to create a sharp, highly detailed portrait. The implied texture, that is, the illusion of variation on the surface of the image, especially the details of the subject’s t-shirt and leather jacket, aids viewers in seeing Xana Nyilenda as possessing a strong material presence and reality, defying attack or erasure.

Frida Kahlo

I. Unlike Zanele Muholi, who uses portraiture to document the lives of people, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted people and objects “just as I saw them with my own eyes and nothing more”. Even so, in her Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair the artist offered direct access to her identity. For this self-portrait, which refers to a portrait of an artist created by the artist herself, Frida Kahlo represented herself seated, looking directly at the viewer. The details of surfaces are less important than the artist’s need for the viewer to notice and consider the range of objects included in the picture plane: a pair of scissors, hair strewn on the floor, a bright yellow chair, an oversized man’s suit, and musical notes and lyrics hovering above the artist.

Frida Kahlo

Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair

1940

Oil on canvas

II. Largely self-taught, Frida Kahlo is often labeled a Surrealist. Surrealism refers to a historical period in the 1920s and 1930s during which artists produced imagery stemming from their subconscious or unconscious selves, including imagery from dreams. Whether or not Frida Kahlo applied this label to her work, she exhibited her work with Surrealists. Viewers were not meant to see Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair as a document of a specific event. Rather, the artist communicated her state of mind while making this self-portrait. The song at the top of the picture plane offers a clue as to the tone this work was meant to achieve: “Look, if I loved you it was because of your hair. Now that you are without hair, I don’t love you anymore.”

Pair 1

Analysis Exercises: Pair 1 Exercise 1: Observing works by Zanele Muholi and Frida Kahlo side by side, consider the use of clothing as an aspect of the identity of each subject. How have you used clothing to convey aspects of your own identity when posing for portraits?

Exercise 2: If you were to produce a self-portrait, what objects or props would you include in the picture plane?

Exercise 3: Both images are intended to communicate aspects of violence. Zanele Muholi portrays Xana Nyilenda to face and eventually overcome violence against the LGBT community in South Africa. Frida Kahlo represented herself enacting violence on her own hair. Take a few minutes to find additional portraits or self-portraits online. How typical is it for portraiture to contain a reference to violence?

Pair 2: Unidentified artists from Fayum and Ravenna

Unidentified artist from Fayum

I. Nearly for as long as people have been making art, people have been making portraits. The ancient Egyptians found it necessary to attach a portrait of a deceased person to her or his mummy: the preserved body wrapped in cloths, because they believed that an individual’s life force would go on living after death, and regularly needed to reunite with the body. Hundreds of portraits still attached to mummies have been found buried at the Egyptian oasis of Fayum.

Unidentified artist from Fayum

Isidora

100-110

Encaustic on wood

II. The portrait of a woman named Isidora made by an unidentified painter at Fayum was produced by means of a painting technique called encaustic, in which soft wax is mixed with pigment (ground minerals or plant matter) then brushed onto a wooden support. Such a technique was difficult to master but permanent, since the sticky wax adhered well to wood. A skilled artist using the encaustic technique could produce portrait likenesses in great detail. Isidora’s golden headpiece, as well as her earrings, indicate that she was an elite, like the others at Fayum who were sufficiently wealthy to be mummified and have their portraits attached to their mummy.

Unidentified artist from Ravenna

I. A mosaic is made by embedding small pieces of stone or glass in cement, on surfaces such as walls or floors, and was a widely used technical process throughout the period of the Roman Empire. Later, during the sixth century, when the Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora ruled over Byzantium, a territory roughly equivalent with that which had been ruled by the ancient Romans, an unidentified artist designed a representation of the empress to be constructed on the wall of San Vitale, a church in Ravenna, Italy. In this mosaic, Theodora is depicted as participating in the Christian ceremony of the Eucharist (also called “communion” or “mass”) which celebrates the death and resurrection of Jesus. Robed in purple at the center of the composition, she holds a ceremonial cup of wine.

Unidentified artist from Ravenna

Empress Theodora Participating in a Ceremony San Vitale, Ravenna

c. 526-547

Mosaic

II. More than most technical processes of art making, a mosaic has actual texture: physical surface variation. If a mosaic is constructed on the floor, the variation in the surface diminishes over time, since it is walked on, and eventually becomes worn smooth. But the mosaic depicting the Empress Theodora participating in a church ceremony was constructed on a wall at San Vitale, and as such it has retained its textured surface. If someone holding a candle were to stand near the mosaic, the tiny pieces of colored stone or glass used to construct it would reflect the candlelight unevenly, since the surface of this work of art is highly textured.

Pair 2

Analysis Exercises: Pair 2

Exercise 1: Look closely at each image. What can you determine about the social status of Isidora from her portrait? Is she wealthy? Is she poor? What can you determine about the social status of Theodora from her portrait?

Exercise 2: The artist who painted Isidora likely met his subject. What in the portrait itself suggests this? The artist who designed the mosaic of Theodora did not likely meet his subject. How does the portrait suggest this?

Exercise 3: If you were going to ask an artist to make a portrait of someone you care about, would you prefer that the artist work with encaustic paint or produce a mosaic? Explain your choice.

Pair 3: Amy Sherald and Joshua Reynolds

Amy Sherald

I. In March of 2020, twenty-six year old Breonna Taylor was killed while sleeping in her bed in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. She was shot by law enforcement officers when they entered her home during a failed narcotics raid. The tragedy of Breonna Taylor’s death became a matter of intense public outrage. Artist Amy Sherald, the first African-American artist to win the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery, was asked by a guest editor at the magazine Vanity Fair to produce a portrait of Taylor.

The recipient of a heart transplant, Amy Sherald is immuno- compromised. For this reason she had been unable to participate in Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020. In a published interview with Vanity Fair, Sherald referred to this portrait of Taylor as her way of contributing to the “moment and to activism—producing this portrait keeps Breonna alive forever.”

”I also made this portrait for her family,” said Sherald. “I mean, of course I made it for Vanity Fair, but the whole time I was thinking about her family.” Sherald normally makes physical studies of people whose portraits she constructs, but she did not have this opportunity with Taylor, since this is a posthumous portrait, that is, a portrait made after the death of the subject. Instead, Sherald talked to Taylor’s friends and family. She learned, for example, that Taylor’s boyfriend had been planning to propose marriage. Taylor wears an engagement ring in Sherald’s portrait.

Once the painting was finished, it was photographed and printed by means of lithography as the magazine’s cover for the September 2020 issue, six months after the death of Breonna Taylor. But what would happen to Sherald’s original painting?

Amy Sherald

Breonna Taylor

2020

Oil on linen

Like many professional artists today, Amy Sherald works with a private gallery to sell her work to individuals or institutions. (Most galleries retain half of the sale of a work of art if they can identify a buyer for it.) But in the case of this portrait of Breonna Taylor, Sherald worked with nonprofit arts organizations to place the painting at museums who have made a commitment to share it with the public: the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Taylor’s home town. A nonprofit arts organization is a group who use their resources not to make money but to further specific causes or goals. The nonprofit arts organizations which helped Sherald find museums to share the responsibility of keeping this work in the eye of the public are the Ford Foundation and the Hearthland Foundation.

Joshua Reynolds

I. Completed soon after becoming the first president of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts in London, Joshua Reynolds painted The Archers not to sell but to exhibit at the annual exhibition of the new academy. Exhibitions, that is, public displays of works of art, were the primary ways that academic artists like Reynolds attracted public attention to their work. A portrait of two friends, this painting remained in Reynolds’s studio until the death of Colonel Acland, pictured on right. In 1779, the colonel’s widow, Lady Harriet Acland, purchased the painting from Reynolds.

Joshua Reynolds

Colonel Acland and Lord Sydney: The Archers

1769

Oil on canvas

II. In The Archers, Reynolds represents two friends, Lord Sydney and Colonel Acland, as hunters within an extensive landscape. To achieve this, he relies on a strong sense of foreground and background. In the foreground, the part of the landscape closest to the viewer, he places the friends in a thick grove of trees, along with the animals they have killed during the hunt. Reynolds achieved the illusion of depth receding into the landscape by opening up the trees to offer a glimpse of the land in the background, the part of the landscape behind the subjects.

Angelica Kauffman arranged Cornelia, Mother of the Gracci (recall chapter 2) with similar attention to foreground and background. Recall that it was Joshua Reynolds who invited Angelica Kauffman to become a founding member of the British Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Pair 3

Analysis Exercises: Pair 3

Exercise 1: In what ways did the makers of both portraits succeed in representing real people, while at the same time suggesting a sense of timelessness about them?

Exercise 2: The portrait by Joshua Reynolds includes a strong presence of the natural environment. Why do we call it a portrait rather than a landscape?

Exercise 3: Both portraits were painted in oil, a medium which gives artists great potential for mixing the exact colors they want to convey. With this in mind, describe each artist’s approach to color.

Pair 4: Lina Bo Bardi and Thomas Jefferson

Lina Bo Bardi

I. Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi completed her university training as an architect in 1939, opened a professional studio in 1942, and oversaw the realization of one of her designs for the first time in 1950: The Glass House, built in the rain forest outside of São Paulo, Brazil. A proponent of rationalist architecture, that is, an approach to architectural design and construction which values efficiency, visual simplicity, and practical function, Lina Bo Bardi also worked as an illustrator, journalist, and administrator for prominent magazines such as Domus and Habitat. Prior to moving to South America, she traveled throughout war-torn Italy, advocating for reconstruction.

Lina Bo Bardi

The Glass House Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil

1950-1951

Concrete and glass

II. Lina Bo Bardi’s efforts at raising public awareness for postwar reconstruction in Italy eventually served as the basis for a prominent architectural career in Brazil, where she oversaw the transformation of several existing buildings into museums, a theatre, and a community center. For herself and her husband she designed The Glass House, a structure composed of concrete slabs and glass walls set on a hillside. The architect raised the house on pilotis: piers that elevate a building above the ground or water. The use of pilotis allowed the couple to live up amongst the trees. An intensely personal project, Lina Bo Bardi described the house as “an attempt to arrive at a communion between nature and the natural order of things; I look to respect this natural order, with clarity, and never liked the closed house that turns away from the thunderstorm and the rain, fearful of all men.” She lived in the house for four decades.

Thomas Jefferson

I. Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House and the Virginia home that Thomas Jefferson designed for himself and his family, Monticello, may be linked to the practice of self-portraiture, since both projects emphasized the values of the architect residents. Jefferson’s Monticello was informed by his engagement in the Age of Enlightenment: a seventeenth and eighteenth century cultural movement which prioritized pursuits of reason, science, and individual liberty. Jefferson had begun construction on his home prior to relocating to France in the 1780s, where he served as U.S. ambassador. Upon being exposed to Neoclassicism (recall chapter 2), wherein architectural design was inspired by ancient Greek and Roman forms, Jefferson redesigned Monticello to reflect the ideals of his Enlightenment education.

Thomas Jefferson

Monticello Charlottesville, Virginia

begun 1792; redesigned 1796-1809

Brick

II. In the truest sense of the word, Thomas Jefferson was an amateur architect. The word amateur has its roots in the Latin verb amare: to love. An amateur is one who engages in an activity not as a result of financial necessity but because she or he is passionate about that activity. Often called “the architect of the Declaration of Independence,” Jefferson approached the practice of architecture with a degree of seriousness similar to his devotion to political ideas. In addition to designing Monticello, he also designed the campus of the University of Virginia, the Virginia State Capitol, and his vacation home, Poplar Forest—structures which are nationally protected and widely considered to be among the most accomplished examples of architectural design in the United States in the nineteenth century.

Few people have the resources to practice architecture as an amateur, but Jefferson inherited the land on which he built Monticello as well as most of the slaves who provided the labor to build it.

Analysis Exercises: Pair 4

Exercise 1: In what ways may Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello be linked to the subject category of portraiture?

Exercise 2: Consider that both houses are located within heavily forested areas. What are the similarities and differences of The Glass House and Monticello? Are there more similarities or differences between these structures?

Exercise 3: Which house would you rather live in: The Glass House or Monticello, and why?

Pair 4