![]() ![]() However, museums like the High Museum of Art in Atlanta are trying to buck this trend. But what happens if we believe that these spaces can only be claimed by people of color if they are the Obamas or the Carters?īeyoncé, Jay-Z, and dancers in front of the Winged Victory of SamothraceĪ 2010 study by the American Alliance of Museums found that while people of color will make up 46% of the American population by 2033, they are on track to only represent 9% of museums’ core audiences. ![]() The unveiling of the Obamas’ portraits provided an opportunity for under-represented populations to see themselves in spaces from which they’re so often excluded. The event was remarkable for a multitude of reasons, including that the paintings were the first presidential portraits commissioned by Black artists - Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald that they fit into an all-white historical context and that they represent rare examples - like the “Apeshit” video - of Black people being heralded in predominantly white spaces. However, while the Carters’ accomplishment underscores the egregious lack of representation and audiences of people of color in art spaces, it also perpetuates the damaging notion that art is a luxury.Įarlier this year, the former US President and First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama nearly broke the internet when their official portraits were unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery. The music video is a true feast for the eyes as beautiful people take over a beautiful place in ways we’ve never seen - because people of color rarely have the opportunity to claim such spaces, a fact that adds to the extraordinariness of the couple’s feat. ![]() The couple, duly proud of their feat, proclaim repeatedly throughout “Apeshit,” “I can’t believe we made it,” while celebrating and contemplating their range of accomplishments in the most hallowed of European halls. It was an extraordinary feat: a top-secret mission to shoot a music video in one of the most prestigious museums in the world - a space where the art is incalculably valuable and security is tight. The mission was seamlessly accomplished by pop culture superheroes Beyoncé and Jay-Z. (A red sash tied around a white swatch of fabric that covers the lower part of her body has also been cut.) The unknown sitter stares out in the video, taking up the full screen, her hair wrapped in a turban, her eyes angled slightly to her right as she shows one golden hoop earring (a pose that brings to mind Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Painter), 2009).Beyoncé and Jay-Z in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the video for “Apeshit” (all screenshots by Hyperallergic via YouTube) The video crops Benoist’s portrait so that the servant’s exposed breast is no longer visible. Kadish, a scholar on French slavery, has written that, while some have read the woman in Benoist’s painting as an allegory for the republic (she is surrounded by the tricolor) or noted her resolute gaze, the art historian Griselda Pollock has compared the image to that of a scene in a slave auction, and the art historian Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby has written that its offensive title, which dehumanizes the sitter, “exercises a form of mastery or subordination: the sitter is robbed, like a slave, of her person’s property.” Possibly showing a servant brought to France from the Antilles by Benoist’s brother-in-law, it was painted in 1800, after the abolition of slavery by France but just as Napoleon was working to reinstate it in the nation’s colonies.ĭoris Y. Perhaps the most intriguing inclusion is a close-up shot of Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s Portrait of a Negress (1800) near the end of the video. Occasionally the lyrics and paintings cleverly sync up, too, as when Beyoncé sings, “Sippin’ my favorite alcohol/Got me so lit I need Tylenol” while details of wine being generously poured in Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana (1563) flash on screen. 2600 B.C.), the Venus de Milo (101 B.C.), The Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 B.C.), and David’s Coronation of Napoleon (1805–07), their movements and poses sometimes loosely mirroring those of figures in the artworks. The leading couple and their accompanying dancers also spend time with iconic works like the Great Sphinx of Tanis (ca. Jacques-Louis David’s Coronation of Napoleon (1805–07). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |