discussion
user1000
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May 2
Andrea May
Dr. Rinck
Introduction to Humanities
14 March 2022
Not So Subtle
Kara Walker was from Stockton, California and was born in 1969. She was inspired by her father to become an artist while also being inspired by obstacles on who she was as a person. One of her works, entitled A Subtlety, especially expressed her views on the obstacles she faced when she moved to Georgia. The statue I have chosen is called Attendant to the King of Hell by an unknown sculptor in Korea to compare it to A Subtlety by Kara Walker. A Subtlety explored the social angles of colonialism, post-colonialism, race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality.
Growing up, Kara Walker’s father was a painter and a professor. From witnessing this, Kara was inspired to take on becoming an artist as a part of her daily life as a career. However, because of the work that her father encountered, her family moved to Atlanta, Georgia when she was 13 years of age. There, she witnessed the profound impact of racism that became prevalent in the American South. She encountered moments of what is now known as the Klu Klux Klan around the years of the 1980s. In school, she was called profanities due to her race. As she grew as an artist, she became particularly interested in showcasing her experiences and standpoint on the racism she faced and read about. For her masters in art, she received the MacArthur Genius Grant in 1997 and used it to express more of herself through her art and along with it, her views on racism. An idea standing beside the works she created was the thoughts of other people being full of fears and longings, and that people were trying to steal the power that other people held within them. The ongoing theme of her work was that of melodrama, outrageous characters, pain, guts, glory, research and histeria (Fig. 4). In past works these themes went from silhouettes expressing racism’s effects to her creation called A Subtlety (“A Subtlety”).
Kara Walker’s A Subtlety explores the social angles involving colonialism, post-colonialism, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality. The work incorporated a sugar paste that was from sugar cane as well as corn syrup. The sugar paste, called marzipan, that was holding up the large sculpture was a symbol of slave trade. Marzipan was devoured in the medieval era after the main course as a fondant during the time of King Henry II. The piece was made out of 35 tons of sugar. The sugar was harvested by child workers during the slave trade, which were presented at the bottom of A Subtlety with children made out of brown sugar into statue form. The children at the bottom of the work dripped and oozed as a result of the sun in the Domino Sugar Factory (Fig. 1). The work was made to be ephemeral, which means that it would only last a short while for the exhibition. This was due to Kara Walker’s intention of showing how black lives had been neglected in the presence of slave owners in history. The sphinx was a representation of how women’s bodies were not their own and was a large reason as to why Kara had overly sexualized it based in the form of the body A Subtlety (Fig. 2). The formation of the body was inspired by the sphinxes in Egypt. Kara had researched many different components on sugar prior to the building of the statues. For example, the type of sugar that a person would consume back when slave labor was occuring had to do with their race. Europeans would consume crystal white sugar, while dark skinned people would consume brown sugar. The head of the Sphinx was inspired by the Mammy character which stood for a woman that would be political, asexualized, a protector, but would be an undesired woman on top of that. It was manifested in the movie called “Gone with the Wind.” Putting the Mammy character on the sphinx’s body expressed that they can be sexual as well, according to Kara. (“A Subtlety”) The meaning of A Subtlety to me meant that being oppressed for the meaning of the color of skin only leads to destruction of people, and does not lead to peace. It may lead to feelings of shame between individuals, and maybe an extreme frustration within to bridge the gap between the misunderstandings of people who may still think of colored skin as something to be segregated when there should be unity.
In comparison to the work that I chose, which was called Attendant to the King of Hell, and A Subtlety both had their similarities and differences. For instance, in A Subtlety and Attendant to the King of Hell (Fig. 3) both show an ephemeral quality. For example, the sugar in A Subtlety only lasted for a short amount of time for the exhibition for Kara, but in Attendant to the King of Hell, it held the message for the short lives that people lead because it discusses what may happen to someone after they die. Physically, both statues depict their eyes being open as well as front facing. Although the ethnicities are different between the two works, both have the social angles of race and ethnicity as well as gender playing a part in the messages they are trying to express. A Subtlety discusses slave trade and it’s impact while Attendant to the King of Hell discusses the after life and is based in Korea. On another note, the attendant figure from Attendant to the King of Hell physically doesn’t last a brief time like A Subtlety does because it is made of wood. There is no known artist for the attendant statue, but it was created in the 19th century. The full description of Attendant to the King of Hell comes from Buddhist beliefs such as trying to mitigate the punishments of the people who had passed away by the usage of prayer. On top of the usage of the statues in the subsidiary halls for Buddhists, paintings of the King of Hell would hold the same meanings for them. In the wooden figure depicted in figure 3, he is holding a scroll. Within the scroll holds the names of humans and how they are judged and it is recorded. The demographic background of the statue dates back to Korean folk sculpture artwork. It contains a mixture of religion with the beliefs held, is dressed in robes, and lacquered hat of a Confucian scholar official. (Korea) I discovered the artwork of Attendant to the King of Hell on a website called Jstor. What spoke to me about the artwork was that I am interested generally in Asian culture and different beliefs held. I think that having the belief of helping to save a passed beloved family member by prayer helps them to have peace afterwards.
In summary, A Subtlety depicts the social angles of race and ethnicity, post-colonialism, colonialism, and gender and sexuality and it thoroughly goes over the impacts of slave trade. Slave trade even lasted years after slavery ended and had an impact on Kara when she moved to Georgia. The inspiration from her father of being an artist drove Kara to become an artist and helped to express these firmly held beliefs she had on the topic of oppression against people who were black. Attendant to the King of Hell was another statue discussed and had many similarities as well as differences. Both shared the same social angles like that of gender, race and ethnicity being held in the messages. Both had an ephemeral quality, but it was not a physical quality, in the Attendant to the King of Hell it was in the message of life not lasting forever that made it brief, while in A Subtlety the physical statue was brief in how long it lasted because it was made of sugar that would soon ooze and turn into molasses.
(Word Count: 1309)
Figure 4: https://studiomuseum.org/article/silhouettes-relieved-kara-walkers-new-drawings
Works Cited
“Kara Walker ‘A Subtlety.’” https://usflearn.instructure.com/courses/1643138/pages/kara-walkers-a-subtlety-lectures-and-readings?module_item_id=24621757. Accessed 14 Mar. 2022.
Korea. Attendant to the King of Hell. https://jstor.org/stable/community.15649675. The Minneapolis Institute of Art;Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA;Gift of funds from Fred and Ellen Wells;97.122.2;http://www.artsmia.org/.
