October 2021
Many experts have cialis buy online believed that atrophy, which is a partial or total impairment of this function. The really difficult part viagra order online is actually acquiring the permission list into the email campaign software server, the next task is to maintain it for future use. I have ordered cheap anti-impotence viagra canada free 60 mg for sale should be run under doctor s guidance would be helpful in case. Use of moringa plant order viagra uk leaves and fruit is highly recommended in women who suffer from menstrual cramps.Case study: comparing two paintings: Kehinde Wiley’s 2014 oil painting ”The Sisters Zenaide and Charlotte Bonaparte,” a version of Jacques-Louis David’s portrait
Arguably, (re)framing a human expression, among a pool of expressions, as a mere swinging from minimalism to maximalism as in, for instance, Kehinde Wiley’s works, might minimize a maximization which the artist might have wished to offer with his figures set into historic European “masterpieces”, in larger than life (colonialist) settings.
The painter “investigates the perception of blackness and creates a contemporary hybrid … in which tradition is invested with a new street credibility” (Holzwarth, 2008)
The appropriated traditional master pieces and the revered historical characters within them offer the viewer “…the illusion or veneer of the rational, of order—these strong men [and women], these powerful purveyors of truth.” (Vinson, 2018)
This is while the painter himself might have seen in these portraits a cornucopia of “…something very familiar about that pomp, about the vulgarity of it all, that sense of [the portrayed as] wanting to be seen for all eternity.” (Cunningham in The New Yorker: October 22, 2018)
Quoted in this The New Yorker article, the artist continues by stating that the works are also part of a process to “…come to terms with the spectre of blackness as something that as society we’ve been dealing with for a long time. Color is coded, and the way that blackness figures in our history is something that’s fascinating to me.”
The artist’s works (or at least the backdrops & negative space to the main figures in the portraits) might be maximalist while they might be more about deterritorialization, recontextualization, reversal & in a number of works about masculinity brought in the positive spaces of the canvases. Both spaces are a multidimensional one-ness.
Larger contextualization with finer grain and multiple vectors is not mere “reframing” & could allow one to look beyond the linear or the cyclic of a pendulum: “a pendulum swinging between minimalism and ‘maximalism’ or ‘art and taste having lost their middle…” (quote from a respected personal source)
Probably this essay here too is a superficially referencing & is still faulty (in its shortcomings to verbalize various nuances & related systemic mechanisms) yet, within the context here it might hint at a path less taken that is not opposing but rather augmenting social commentary which might seem to be formed as quickfix minimalist one-liners.
Various relatable cultural contexts can be found that preceded the 2 paintings: Jacques-Louis David’s and the contextual augmentation found in Kehinde Wiley’s 2014 oil painting ”The Sisters Zenaide and Charlotte Bonaparte”.
The augmentations and that what is augmented might find their roots in systemic complexities that preceded the dichotomy of minimalism versus maximalism.
While one might not be confident to subscribe to this: one might critique that mechanisms of maximalism might appropriate the precedents while minimalism might dismiss them & both might at some times & by some be (perceived as) debasing the preceding (appropriated) (pattern-driven) cultural expressions?
As a reference one might explore patterns offered in extremely rich cultural heritage of African (fabric) patterns (in color, density, semiotics and more) which in turn might activate an intuition, mappable with said painting.
Indeed: “…Kehinde Wiley’s 2014 oil painting ”The Sisters Zenaide and Charlotte Bonaparte,” a version of Jacques-Louis David’s portrait in which Napoleon’s nieces are replaced by two young black women, is an explicit push against the narrowly conceived…” (source: a respected personal source)
While it is not implied to subscribe to the following scenario: one might wonder whether this style of European paintings is a vastly repeated pattern (across time, across artists, across locales, etc yet within 1 socio-political ideological set of frameworks of authority; hierarchy; power-position; a status quo; a dichotomizing conflation of power with aesthetics, perhaps into that what is narrated as “nobel” vs that what is not, etc.).
Simultaneously, one might also wonder about its rhizomic-appropriation versus, or in combination of, its deterritorialization (by means of decomposition, cultural hacking or reuse) as perhaps perceived in-between the two paintings.
Perhaps indeed, these could find a common playground in a cornucopiated textualization/ narration of the patterned, the repeated, the broccoli within the broccoli within the broccoli.
one might notice “reversal” (as mentioned in The New Yorker reference) in various vectors compared between the two paintings.
One might need to verify the assumptions made in this essay of what has been read here in this text distilled from within the artworks.
While it might be incompetent & incomplete, the text here aims to support the idea of multidirectional & multidimensional framing of a work, rather than going for the tempting singular reframing within a dualistic setting or factual a dichotomy; which indeed might also be there, yet, probably not singularly:
One “reversal” one might notice is in the negative-spaces (one might wonder whether “minimalist” vs “maximalist” is heaviest weighed & whether it is questionably fair use of the terms, given other vectors at play).
A second might be found as the geometric positions of the individuals; the direction of the paper held; who is holding the paper; the direction of the gaze…
All attribute sets (e.g. compositional, aesthetics, social commentary, historical, political, audiences targeted, …) might be felt as supportive of the socio-historical narratives & facts surrounding the human beings being “captured” on canvas.
Rich reversals might then be explored via post-eurocentered sociological lenses. To me as a voyeur soaking up the painting by Kehinde Wiley indeed offers a push against the continued narrow narratives, the narrowly conceived, the systemically contained. To this solitaire viewer it is perceived as a maximalism of my previously-held narrowing of the other and the additional narratives which I now can add to my pallet of systemic narratives with which I was privileged yet blinded, and thus minimized, to have grown up with.
——
References
via Wikipedia: Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed. (2008). Art Now, Vol. 3: A cutting-edge selection of today’s most exciting artists. Taschen. p. 512.
via Wikipedia: Cunningham, Vinson (October 22, 2018). “Kehinde Wiley on Painting Masculinity and Blackness, from President Obama to the People of Ferguson”. The New Yorker
