New York City and the Arts

Courtesy of www.moma.org

What I found most fascinating about Gertrude Käsebier’s “Blessed Art Thou Among Women” was her portrayal of gentleness and purity in her mother figure.  The gown this woman is wearing is of a cool, breezy, and fluid white color, symbolic of unadulterated goodness and flowing freedom, yet retaining modesty as it cascades down her body to cover her skin, augmenting the overall notion of graceful virginity. Her gown is well contrasted with the child’s staid uniform, further glorifying her beautiful stature and benevolence by juxtaposition. Her hand seems to grasp her child’s shoulder firmly but tenderly, conveying a sense of love and protection as she sends her child off into the unknown frontier that lies ahead. The child’s expression is one of anxiety and perhaps a feeling of unpreparedness, and her mother’s touch, though comforting, will soon be gone and she seems aware of that. This photograph is endearingly reminiscent of the moments of utter struggle we must endure in relation to our mothers, such as leaving Mommy on the first day of school (as the child may be doing), going off to college and leaving your mother for a long time (as I am doing right now), and even the very instant it hits us how much our mothers were worth on the day they pass away, which will probably be the saddest, most crushing time of my life.  The depiction of these moments in this photograph hits home for me. I am filled with a sorrow over the inevitable loss of my mother but also a joy over the influence she has had on me and will hopefully continue to have in coming years. I interpret the title to mean that mothers are blessed among women, for the role of a mother is one that is revered across the spectrum of human life, beloved in an archetypal admiration you will find in almost all the vast and many cultures of the world. She gives us life. She nurtures us. She raises us. She is our origin in the very sense of the word. She is the ultimate love, unconditional and everlasting.

I have some questions for discussion: Do you think Käsebier intended the photographed relationship to be mother-child, or do you think she wanted to simply represent the ideal love and gentleness of a woman for a child whether it was hers or not – glorifying the woman figure and not simply the mother figure? (In my response, I had interpreted it as mother-child for the sake of discussion.) Do you think the child’s dark outfit was chosen not only to be contrasted with the woman’s white gown but also to symbolize darkness ahead (i.e. some sort of gloom, doubt, or challenges the child will be facing without her mother in the future) or do you think it was solely chosen for the brilliant contrast?  What other possible interpretations can you think of for the use of the title “Blessed Art Thou Among Women”?

Courtesy of www.sfmoma.org

Through “Martha Graham,” Imogen Cunningham has masterfully captured the essence of the human condition. The female subject appears to be at the junction of eternal pain and infinite pleasure, at the rendezvous of life and death. Her expression is one of neither discomfort nor jubilance but rather of neutral euphoria, a state of enlightenment and understanding devoid of overindulgence. She has reached the final destination of the mind, and she is enraptured by it. She possesses that single shred of vital knowledge that we have all sought in our lives at one point or another, that crucial justification for existence in all its forms. But she is not happy. She is not content. She merely knows. This is a quintessential problem of existence: What do we do with the ultimate knowledge once it has graced us with its presence? Do we go on? Do we continue to be? Or do we give up the daily grind and extinguish the inner light in hopes that something better is beyond, even if that something is oblivion? This conflict plagues me all day, every day, and I am haunted by its decadent, dark whispers. But that is why this photograph appeals to me.  In addition, I love the black and white contrast, which serves to expand on the opposing forces of pain and pleasure, of life and death, and the intense gamut of other applicable interrelated items.  What’s particularly intriguing about this photograph is how my perception of it could be fiercely different from what Cunningham had intended and what other onlookers perceive. I see the balance of light and dark, but it’s easy to see how this depiction could simply be construed as light or dark alone. She could be in horrible pain, or she may be having an exorbitantly positive epiphany, or perhaps she is experiencing something else entirely.

There’s another aspect of this that lies in the gender of the subject. Because she is a woman, the photograph epitomizes the idea that women, like men, also experience trials and challenges (as well as intense joy) in life. While this may seem elementary to many, there is still a huge gender barrier against women’s equality, and this portrayal of the same pain and pleasure in the “weaker sex” works as a symbol to breach the gender gap. The photograph represents a profound step toward an ideal egalitarian society.

Here are some questions about the photograph for others: What do you think the subject is experiencing – pain, pleasure, or something in between? Is she upset? Is she happy? What does the black/white aspect represent for you? What do you think Cunningham intended the answers to these questions to be?

I fell in love with this photograph the moment I saw it. This is one of the rare photographs that makes me question the distinction between the art of the photograph and fine art. It depicts an older African American woman looking beyond the edges of the photograph.  And everything about this photograph – from the contrast to the texture to the lighting – is perfect.

After reading a little about Solomon’s background and seeing some of her other work, the methods she used to capture this image make sense. This particular photograph is one of Solomon’s earlier works. She “discovered photography” in 1968, at the age of 38, after traveling the world with The Experiment in International Living. (http://www.rosalindsolomon.com/biography.htm) She began her career in photography with an intense interest in dolls. That is a very interesting concept. A photograph of a doll is not a mere still-life, because a doll is designed in the image of a human. And a doll is frozen. It has only one expression forever. In this sense, the thought that goes into photographing a doll is similar to the thought that goes into photographing a statue. The object is frozen, ready for the photographer to frame with his or her lens and either capture the message it was designed to voice or put a twist on it. With this comes the technical decisions that come in capturing the doll-statue. It is treated as an object, a work of art, and its texture, form, and color must be properly displayed.

All of this is visible in the photograph now hanging at the MoMA. Solomon captures the woman’s personality as well as the emotions inside her as she looks up and away from the camera lens. At the same time she makes the woman almost statuesque in her presentation of the woman’s face. The texture of her skin that is captured is almost three-dimensional, because it is so detailed and beautifully lit. This texture is in contrast to the (again finely-detailed) textures of her hat, and the beads around her neck. It also seems to almost merge with the darkness around her. The viewer is not sure where the shadows end and her skin begins. All of these visually-interesting elements work to focus the viewer’s attention on what is the center of the photograph: the woman’s eye.

Against the darkness of the woman’s skin and the shadows, and in contrast to the multitude of textures that makes up the form of the woman, we find the woman’s eye, bright and bold and looking at an unknown spot. We cannot tell what the woman is thinking, exactly, but perhaps she does not know what to think either, and here is where the photograph becomes more than just a photograph or “just art”. Chattannooga, Tennessee in the 1970s was a city known for its socioeconomic challenges, and racial tension. This woman was living in an uncertain city in uncertain times, and we, the viewers of this photograph, are left to wonder with her what lies before her, and what she is (quite literally) facing.

Sherrie Levine’s artwork consistently challenges ideas commonly accepted in society. More specifically, she often deals with the questions of mass media and originality. (http://moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3515) Her first Presidential Collage, and the series it began, perfectly demonstrate both themes in her work in a framework that is eye-catching.

What first caught my attention about this photograph was that the image of the woman within the silhouette strikingly defines the decade in which Levine lived and worked. Everything from the model’s hair to the colors around her are instantly recognizable as belonging to the early 1980s. Levine takes this snapshot of an era and plays with it. The woman, an image ripped from a magazine, is placed within the boundaries of a silhouette of George Washington. I believed that this photograph was supposed to be a statement about gender and power; behind every president is a woman, perhaps. Or it could be that the woman is imprisoned within the man who literally confines her in this image. I appreciated the image’s ambiguity – it could be a combination of both.

When I returned to my dorm I looked up the image to find out what exactly Levine was attempting to express in this photograph. According to art analysts at the MoMA and the College of William and Mary, Levine chose this particular silhouette of Washington because it is the most recognizable image of him, being the head on a quarter. (http://peterandjoan.blogs.wm.edu/2008/09/29/sl-untitled-president-4/) This brings into the picture the ideas of consumerism, mass culture, money, and, again, power. This woman, or rather model of a woman, is seen through the eyes of consumerism when we look at her through the frame of a symbol of money. This analysis intrigued me, and perhaps makes more sense than my own original interpretation. But I still believe there is a question of gender and power in this series. Levine could have chosen some different symbol of mass culture and money. Each model in this series is confined by the image of a man as well as a symbol of money, and this move was probably deliberate.

This series also embodies the question of originality and art that Sherrie Levine so often tackles in her artwork. None of these images are her own photographs. They all come from magazines. Levine simply framed them in presidential silhouettes to make a statement. Because Levine was manipulating others’ artwork rather than creating her own, this series was received with some skepticism when it was first released. But Levine is one of many modern artists who have helped to further the idea that art lies in the concept, and not necessarily the image. Fine art is a different level of art, where the concept must be joined with the skill to produce something of not only beauty but value. However, true Art is at its core the communication of an idea, and the medium through which this communication occurs is not as important as the idea itself.

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