The Role of Stereotypes in Art

          Stereotypes are a powerful lens through which, if gone unnoticed and unchecked, people begin to develop their worldview.  When certain images conveying specific messages are consistently fed through the media, art, and culture, it is only human that they would begin to seem believable, even if they were not at first.  Especially throughout the 1800s to the mid-1900s, stereotypes of African Americans have been spread through many different art forms.  These messages were widely spread and encouraged through postcards, photographs, paintings, etc.  In the past, these pieces were widely accepted by a nation whose principles aligned with the messages these artists conveyed.  However, as our nation has begun to take steps of growth, the blatant stereotyping in art has begun to receive a response from many African American artists through their personal avenues of art.  This exhibition seeks to display the role of stereotypes in the world of art, throughout history, and to emphasize how the images we are fed can deeply effect the way we view one another.  

J.H. Bufford’s Sons Lith. Wilmot Clothing Company, In the Land of Cotton, 1882, American, Multicolored lithography on paper, 4.375 x 2.625 in., The Henry Ford Art Museum

This American piece was used by a clothing company that displays the stereotype of having African American slaves gathering the cotton the company uses for their products.  There are eight African American people shown working in the field.  Toward the top right corner, there is a white man on a horse in the background who, upon closer examination, appears to be giving two of the workers a thumbs up.  This piece reflects the stereotype of having African Americans working in the fields even though slavery was technically ended by the time this work circulated.

Charles Ethan Porter, Untitled (Cracked Watermelon), 1890, American, oil on canvas, 19 1/8 x 28 3/16 in., MET Museum

This piece by Charles Ethan Porter, a prominent African American artist, uses a still life of a watermelon to challenge a racist stereotype that was, and continues to be, widely circulated throughout America.  The large watermelon is cut open with pieces partially eaten and the black seeds scattered throughout the juicy, pinkish-red inside.  The watermelon is half-eaten, which is uncommon for a still life painting of food.  However, Porter uses his creativity as a statement to challenge the norm and the watermelon stereotype, unlike Martin whose piece was a part of embracing the stereotype.

William H. Martin, Carving One of Our Watermelons, 1909, American, gelatin silver print, 3 7/16 x 5 1/2 in., MET Museum

This tall-tale postcard by William H. Martin again uses the stereotype associating African Americans with watermelons.  The tall-tale postcard was common especially in the midwest as a way of communicating a message of being relatable and humorous.  However, sometimes humor can be at the expense of another.  In this piece, African American men are scattered throughout a field of giant watermelons as they collect them, cut them, and eat them.  The absurdly huge watermelons are a form of surrealism and the pairing of African Americans with a field of watermelons was a common stereotype especially following the Civil War.

Albert A. Smith, Les Danseurs (The Dancers), 1930, American, Lithograph, 7 5/8 x 10 1/2 in., MET Museum

This piece was created by American artist Albert A. Smith for Europeans who were unfamiliar with the African American ethnicity at that point in history.  Four African American people, consisting of two adult men, a young boy, and a young girl, are shown here.  The older of the men is playing the banjo, while the other man appears to be clapping and the children dance along.  Smith contributes to racial stereotypes through his depiction of African Americans in this piece, spreading these harmful notions throughout the European nations.

Hank Willis Thomas, The Cotton Bowl, 2011, American, Digital C Print Photography, 65 x 96 in., The North Carolina Museum of Art

This piece speaks loudly about the stereotype of African Americans in the world of sport.  Thomas creates two halves of the picture, one being an African American man picking cotton in a field, with an African American football player lined up directly in front of him on a football field.  The two appear to be looking at each other, though you cannot fully see their faces.  Drastic statements like this are a common tool Thomas uses throughout his art in order to point out certain harmful stereotypes.  In this piece in particular, he correlates the slavery of old with the way African American athletes are treated as commodities today in the world of sport which some consider to be the new form of slavery.

Seeing Race?

Seeing Race?

How should the race of an artist affect the perspective of the viewer?


Curated by Ian R. Banks

Contemporary artistic criticism assumes that an artist’s identity, background, and context inform the work that they create; an artist’s interaction with their racial identity receives particular attention. In the mid nineteenth-century, artists of color started to gain popularity and exposure that had previously been reserved for white artists. While still a distinct minority within the artistic community and while race-based chattel slavery was only beginning to be dismantled in the United States, the inclusion of artists of color in the national artistic dialogue provides art historians with additional tools to examine the impact of an artist’s racial identity on their work. This exhibition places the work of Robert S. Duncanson and Edmonia Lewis into direct communication with their contemporaries. Each painting is of a similar subject and each sculpture depicts a free standing female figure in some situation of distress. The continuity of subject provides a foundation from which the viewer can begin to consider the potential impact of critique based upon racial identity. Should the assumption that the racial identity of an artist is vital to understanding a work be accepted without exception or should an artist’s own perception of their racial identity be the guiding principle with which a work is examined? This question is of particular importance when examining the work of Duncanson. Robert S. Duncanson had a fraught relationship with his racial identity. His work is being contrasted with the work of Edmonia Lewis, a sculptor whose racial-identity clearly informed her work.

This exhibit examines the role of race in our assessment of works of art, with a particular eye towards the effect of an artist’s own relationship with race. For this reason, the works will all be presented with only numerical designators. At the end of the exhibit, the object label will be matched to each number and so will reveal the artist and their biography. This forces the viewer to initially consider each work independently of the race of the artist and to then re-examine the assessment of the work in light of the artist’s race and relationship to their racial-identity. This exhibit does not seek to definitively answer the question of the role of race in the assessment of art but rather forces reflection upon the impact that race has on the perception and making of art.

 

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1. Thomas Cole, The Mountain Ford, 1846, oil on canvas, the Met, 15.30.63

Thomas Cole is famous for popularizing American landscape painting through his integral role in the establishment of the Hudson River School. A white man born in England but an early immigrant to the United States, Cole was deeply concerned with American national identity. He painted the American landscape to highlight the unique beauty and power of the natural world that engulfed the continent that the nation was quickly growing to fill, regardless of its current inhabitants. This painting is exemplary of his presentation of nature as something that is explored and appreciated from within its wildness.

2. Albert Bierstadt, Merced River, Yosemite Valley, 1866, oil on canvas, the Met, 09.214.1

Similarly to Thomas Cole, Bierstadt was an immigrant to the United States, though coming from Germany rather than England.  Bierstadt quickly became enamored with the uniquely stirring landscapes and participated in the similar narrative of portraying American national identity as wrapped up in its geography. He places Native Americans in the scene but similarly to the figures in Duncanson’s Landscape with Cows, the human figures are simply a piece of the landscape. Unlike Duncanson, Bierstadt does not represent a pastoral scene; instead he focuses solely upon a wild landscape whose alienness is highlighted by the inclusion of the Native Americans as opposed to Duncanson’s cowherds, boaters, and farm.

3. Robert S. Duncanson, Landscape with Cows Watering in a Stream, 1871, oil on canvas, the Met, 1974.359

Duncanson portrays a pastoral landscape with the cows foregrounded and all signs of human progress shifted back. His figures are racially ambiguous, potentially reflecting his own struggle as a biracial man who spent most of his life in Cincinnati, a free city on the border of a slave state. This painting, one of the later works of Duncanson’s career, was painted the same year that Duncanson’s son accused him of hiding is African identity. Duncanson claimed that “his heart was with the down-trodden race” but nowhere in the letter does Duncanson deny that he has distanced himself from his biracial heritage.

4. Hiram Powers, Greek Slave, 1846, marble, National Gallery of Art, 2014.79.37

Hiram Powers was a white sculptor but used his sculpture to examine issues that concerned him. Completed 20 years before the end of the American Civil War, Greek Slave raises questions about the institution of slavery and its relationship to classicism. The title, pose, and medium all communicate the depiction of a classical work but it is not named as a Venus or another mythological or allegorical figure. Instead, the statue is titled after a nameless slave even if her pose belies greater dignity than that. Powers creates a connection between the classical world and the political issues of his day. Similarly to Harriet Hosmer’s he portrays a woman in chains. Unlike the other two sculptors on display, Powers’ figure has her eyes downcast, she is subservient to the viewer, who may view her naked body without any fear of her knowledge or reprobation.

5. Edmonia Lewis, Hagar, 1875, marble, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1983.95.178

Edmonia Lewis was biracial—African American and Native American— and often her choice of subject reflects her awareness of her identity as a woman of color with a difficult and robust heritage. Using Hagar, who was unjustly exiled and is the mother of Arab peoples, Lewis mixes the traditional associations of a biblical narrative with the portrayal of a woman of color who is the victim of the sin of a Patriarch. Completed after the abolition of slavery, Hagar shows a woman of color, who also happens to look very Caucasian in her representation, striding forward with hands clasped in reverent prayer and eyes lifted just above the horizon.

6. Harriet Hosmer, Zenobia in Chains, 1859, marble, the St. Louis Art Museum, 19:2008

Harriet Hosmer’s sculpture shows a Zenobia, a Syrian Queen who declared secession from Rome in the mid-3rd century. She was subsequently captured by Emperor Aurelian and died in captivity. She represents a strong female figure who retains her dignity even when she is subjected to the spectacle of being paraded through the streets of Rome. Hosmer represents her with her face and eyes straight and she is clothed. She retains her agency that Powers’ Greek Slave has lost and without the same desperation that is evident on the face of Hagar. Hosmer and Lewis both choose a woman of color (albeit Syrian rather than Egyptian) for their subject even though they are represented with the appearance of Caucasian women. While Zenobia recalls a classical legend, Hagar recalls a biblical narrative which may communicate the greater degree of connection that Hosmer feels to Western European culture as compared with Lewis’ heritage of African American spiritualism which draws her to biblical narratives.

Entartete Argumente

With the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany in 1933, the Reich began to collect and
control the artwork that was displayed through the areas that were controlled by the Nazis.
Part of this included an exhibit titled “Entartete Kunst” (degenerate art) that showed art that the Nazis
believed to be less than, or degenerate. Many artworks from the 20th century were placed under this
name, and some from that collection have not been recovered since then. After the Second World War,
German artist, Anselm Kiefer, began to create artworks that wrestle with the Nazizeit
(the time of Nazi rule), in some of his work focusing on the fascist element of the Nazis and how
that affects a person’s worldview and interaction with other people and new ideas.
This exhibit examines the concept of ideological isolation in Anselm Kiefer’s
Everyone Stands Under the Dome of His Own Heaven and how the isolating effects of fascism
can be see in Greco-Roman purism that lead to the Nazi rejection of a selection of works featured in
the Entartete Kunst exhibit.

Anselm Kiefer, Everyone Stands Under the Dome of his Own Heaven, 1970, Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on joined paper 1995.14.4

Kiefer’s Everyone Stands highlights the isolation of ideologies, and how everyone has their own
dome which contains the extent of their worldview. The small figure with his arm raised in the
signature Nazi salute highlights the placement of fascism as an ideology with its own purview that
does not extend very far. The works exhibited in Entartete Kunst do not fit within the ideology of the
Nazis, as such they were considered “degenerate.” This is the centerpiece of the exhibit, a work that
would most likely be considered Entartete Kunst by the Nazis, continues to exist after the fall of the
Nazi powers, and goes so far as to critique the limited worldview of the Nazis.

Lyonel Charles Feininger, Gelmeroda, 1936, Oil on Canvas, 42.158

The Gothic church of Gelmeroda in Weimar Germany was one of Feininger’s favorite buildings to
study, and in this artwork he explored perspective and cubism as a way of tapping into the spirituality
of the religious space. The Nazis had isolated the purity of art down to Greek and Roman styles,
and anything outside of that was considered degenerate, and was derided as such, thus falling outside
of the dome of fascism.

Paul Klee, Ghost Chamber with the Tall Door (New Version), 1925, Sprayed and brushed watercolor, and transferred printing ink on paper bordered with gouache and ink, mounted on cardboard, 1987.455.16

Many of the works produced by Paul Klee were considered Entartete Kunst by the Nazis. This work,
with its spectral lines and use of perspective failed to fall within the parameters of art acceptable to the
Nazis, as such it was considered degenerate. Because of the isolating effects of aesthetics that fascism
had on the Reich Ministry of propaganda, there was no room for Klee or his
Ghost Chamber in “good art.”

Max Beckman, Descent from the Cross, 1917, Oil on Canvas, MOMA

Derided as being “unGerman”, Beckman’s Descent from the Cross was featured in the Entartete Kunst
exhibit, The presentation of bodily suffering that is so boldly exhibited in Descent from the Cross did not
fit well with the Nazi understanding of religion and the Christ figure because it did not depict Christ as a
hero, but rather as a weak and broken victim. As such this work was dismissed as Entartete.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Berlin, 1913, Oil on Canvas, MOMA

Considering Kirchner’s openness in critiquing German culture and people, it is no surprise that his
harsh use of color and themes would be considered “degenerate” by the purist Nazis. As the Nazi
ideology was based on a foundation of superiority, the work and critique of Kirchner did not sit well
with those in charge of the use of culture as propaganda in Nazi Germany. The Nazi worldview did not
overlap with Kirchner’s, so in their minds he was a degenerate artist.  

Henri Matisse, The Blue Window, 1913, Oil on Canvas, MOMA

While the majority of the works that the Nazis attacked as “degenerate” were German in origin, their
attack on Modern artworks extended internationally, and included the works of Matisse. The German
understanding of and typical dislike of Modernism had begun during the Weimar Republic, but continued
through the Nazis and was enhanced by Nazi purism and propaganda. This dislike is notable in the
dismissal of artists such as Matisse as “degenerate” due to the failure to meet the standards of the
ideologically isolated Nazis.

The Adaptable Madonna

The iconic “Madonna” figure has been used throughout paintings, sculptures, and other means of art for many centuries. This female figure has been a symbol of youth, faithfulness, and purity in the religious realm and has been translated through the lens of many different cultures over time.

Even though then “Madonna” figure is an icon of Mary the mother of Jesus, it has been used to highlight the painters current cultural depiction of the female figure. By that I mean the female figure somewhat represents the way a woman would dress and or look like during the time it is being painted.

In a way painters essentially give the “Madonna” figure a makeover by modifying the female to mimic their societal take on beauty, piety, and maternity. By making a “Madonna” figure with cultural influence demonstrates to viewers what a “Madonna” like figure in their time and place would be like. Those characteristics given to that figure is now transferable onto those that are suppose to represent her.

As time progresses the “Madonna” figure in the art world is a representation of what the artist and or society says it is. There is no longer a strive to accurately depict what the true Madonna would have looked or posed like instead the “Madonna” figure is adapted to fit all the characteristics of purity and femininity that this icon represents, and mixing it with the artist and societals depictions of those characteristics as well.

Paul Gauguin, la Orana Maria (Hail Mary), 1891, oil on canvas, 44 3/4 x 34 1/2 in., 51.112.2

la Orana Maria is an example of an artist recreating the idea of the "Madonna" into something they believe encompasses the essence of the icon. Gauguin sees this idea of purity and youth while he was in Tahiti. His painting taps into a more "primitive" representation of the "Madonna" figure. He adapts the figure who is to represent Mary as a Tahitian woman wearing Tahitian clothing in a tropical Tahitian setting. Gauguin still uses recognizable symbols such as the halo's on top of the two figures heads.

Duccio di Buoninsegna, Madonna and Child, 1290-1300, tempera and gold on wood overall, with engaged frame, 11 x 8 1/4 in., 2004.442

In this depiction of the Madonna and Child both figures are the focus with a gold background used to highlight the supernatural realm. It is clear that Mary is much larger ( hierarchical scale) and because of that her presence seems to overpower baby Jesus. This helps highlight the importance of her role in the coming of Christ. Duccio paints both figures with halos on having some interaction with each other with their poses. Mary is more dominant in scale, but continues to appear motherly while holding baby Jesus up in her arms.

Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child, 1440, tempura and gold on wood, transferred from wood, 49.7.9

The “Madonna” figure in this painting looks resembles a more European looking woman in clothes that are more typical of the 1400’s. She seems to also have less control of baby Jesus and is following along with him reading scripture. Her role seems to be more of a on looker than a participant. She continues to act motherly by supporting baby Jesus as He reads. They appear to be in a study like room with a window showing a more developed city.

Bernard van Orley, Virgin and Child with Angels , 1518, oil on wood, 33 ⅝ x 27 ½ in., 14.40.632

In this painting the Virgin figure is dressed and appears to resemble what women would wear in Orley’s time and place. She is covered with lots of fabric and her hair is loose. It is clear that she is embracing baby Jesus tightly, while angel look at scripture in the background. The garden scenery with the structures in the background looks like a castle somewhere in Europe.

Frederick William MacMonnies, Madonna of Giverny, 1901, oil on canvas, 45 3/4 x 45 ⅜ in., 1983.530

This “Madonna” figure is not as prominent as others. Her features contrast baby Jesus in that she has darker hair and tanner skin while baby Jesus is very blond and fair skinned. This sets them apart in making him closer to the foreground while she fades back with the rest of the angels. Her roles appears to be a chair for baby Jesus to sit on. Unlike the other “Madonna” she is less engaged with the infant.

Salvador Dali, Madonna, 1958, oil on canvas, 88 ⅞ x 75 ¼ in., 1987.465

Dali portrays the Madonna in a pix-elated type way inside of a large ear. The female figure is embracing the infant Jesus while directly gazing at the viewer. In the “Madonna’” before they were all focused on baby Jesus, but Dali Madonna is more confrontational in that she stares straight on. Her role is more active in her gaze, which gives her figure a more powerful position.