Month: January 2021

In this advert, we can see a naked woman/housewife lying down as if she’s missing her husband a lot with her hair perfectly made and makeup done. The text that says “Keep her where she belongs” is used in a very thick font so it can be clearly seen. The woman is portrayed as if she is long fully gazing at her husband’s shoe, waiting for him to come home. The values and assumptions being made are that it is women that must be staying home and taking care of the household as said in the text. The idea that she is down on the floor at her husband’s shoe level, shows that women are inferior to men. The audience of the advert/product is men and the woman lying has the intention that men will have a wife like the one in the ad if they buy those shoes.

Kehinde Wiley’s sculpture named ‘Rumors of War’ challenges a number of other sculptures present in Virginia, mostly of white males in the history of the US. Wiley’s work is able to form a perspective on both America’s past and present. America’s past where white people were dominant in the country, and when slavery was still a thing. America’s present is where slavery has been abolished and white people are no superior anymore, but there are still cases of racism and racial injustice towards people of color in America. Rumors of war also represent a monumentally unequal America as there are plenty of white monuments and statues that evokes the history of slavery in the US. Rumors of War is a really strong piece of art as it challenges the many statues already present that brings up the idea of white supremacy and suggests that we are now living in a period of time where the color of our skin doesn’t matter for someone to be dominant in today’s world.

The art traditional canonical sets of work which are regarded as masterpieces all have a certain bias, Kehinde Wiley told us to think about. Biases in the representation of the identity, issues of race, and gender that is presented in the sets of work would not be acceptable in the world today. Kehinde Wiley’s work challenges those biases that are present in past works of art, and he challenges them by changing the whole idea of the person that is being represented in that piece of art, showing that people of color can also be represented that way. For example, Kehinde Wiley’s painting of ‘Napoleon Leading His Army Over The Alps’ is inspired by Jacques-Louis David’s painting of ‘Napoleon Crossing The Alps.’ Both of these paintings have compositional elements that represent the strength of the characters shown in each painting. The white horse acts as a symbol of wealth and power in war and Napoleon Bonaparte who is a white male is seen to be riding the horse as white males were the highest power discourse seen in historical canon art. Kehinde Wiley is able to recast and challenge traditional canonical representations of power through his painting by replacing the image of Napoleon Bonaparte with an ordinary black man who is using casual streetwear, to show that an ordinary black man also has the potential to be portrayed and become great. The black man is seen to be wearing camo pants which represents the ongoing battle and struggle that African Americans face against racism and racial injustice around the world. This also challenges the original painting where Napoleon Bonaparte is using a canonical war uniform while fighting for his country. Wiley challenges the power dynamics of white males being superior to black males through the representation of the black man’s identity while he is sitting on the horse, which is represented very mightily. In the background of Wiley’s painting, the sperm that is visible acts as a symbol of the masculinity of the black male. Kehinde Wiley has made the scale of his painting really big, so when people are looking at the painting in a museum, they are looking up at the black man in the painting which is a sign of idolizing someone. In the background of the painting, Wiley also uses a Victorian design that is usually used on wallpapers or curtains, and it represents a perception of wealth, royalty, and power.

I was able to analyze and pick up points from the image well, but next time will need to relate it to the wider and bigger concepts in depth. I should also try to write a better thesis next time to have a more clear idea of what my essay is going to talk about. I also need to spend more time on the annotation in order to work out my ideas and thinking which would have helped develop them. It was an improvement from my first attempt which was 11/20, and I got 13/20 this time which is a little bit of an improvement, and my goal for the next test would be to get to that next level which is at least 14/20 to achieve a 6.

The story “The Finkelstein Five” is about a heavily biased trial in a dystopian setting where a white man was acquitted of murdering five black children. The main character is a black man named Emmanuel and throughout the story, we see his perspective on how he views the trial and the struggles he goes through in his everyday life. Emmanuel’s experiences of identity in the story are very interesting as he is able to tone down his ‘blackness’ on a scale, for example in the story when Emmanuel leaves his house, he tones down his blackness scale in order to make his appearance more palatable to white people. This part of the story can show how some white people stereotype black people to be inappropriate and immature. The man who was acquitted of the murders, as a defense used that he has a god-given right to protect himself and his children from what he thought was a threat. Adjei-Brenyah is trying to show that there is still racial injustice happening in the US today where black people’s families are getting treated unfairly as guilty people aren’t getting punished as they should be.