I appreciate the fact that Lorna Simpson does not use violence to send the message of taking back power. Although some artists choose to use violence to show that a race of people is powerful and dominating, Simpson uses true, worldly ways to convey to the audience that African Americans have power. I also appreciated the fact that Simpson does not use victimization to convey the story of African Americans. In other works, some artist use victimization as a way to convey that the struggles their subjects have gone through have made them more powerful, Simpson uses her work to empower the subjects without degrading them in the process.
What held my interest the most were the panel photographs Simpson created. The subjects she chooses makes them seem that much grander and larger than life. For example, the 6 panels of Central Park in “The Park” are close to 6 feet tall, taller than a lot of people. I think that Simpson chose to enlarge the pictures of the park because she might be trying to tell us that nature is bigger than humans, nature is more important – it’s been around longer, it’ll be around longer than humans. I appreciate the message that I see in this piece of art. The other piece of work that caught my attention was the panels of the picture of the empty staircase in "The Staircase." The fact that the staircase, and the room it leads into, is empty is haunting and mysterious. The article talked about how Simpson tried compare how we live by viewing our culture and civilization in hindsight instead of living in the present. The message might be that we need to slow down and live our lives in the moment.
Exactly -- nobody likes a pity party. Now, I'm not bashing Glenn Ligon, because I think his art is fantastic. But I think that Simpson's art conveys a message to her audiences that welcomes many thought processes. In the case of Ligon, he's SO angry, but is a non-black person allowed, per se, to feel equally as angry? (I think that person would be criticized for such a reaction.) So through her more subtle style, Lorna Simpson asks all of us, regardless of color, to look at ourselves and at each other and question the things we do for and to each other. I don't think that blatant anger is an effective way to achieve this.
ReplyDeleteI think no one likes a pity party as well. At times, I think that people over do it, and continuously try to convey to the audience how bad "white" america was, or even it, and to be honest it's getting annoying. Simpson seems to be empowering the minority, not bashing America as a whole.
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