Charles Wilbert White and David Hammons - Research Paper Example

Visual Arts and Film Studies Introduction Thesis ment Visual art has evolved quite significantly throughoutthe last century. A relatively large number of visual artists have contributed to this evolution. Two of the most renowned visual artists credited with enormous contribution to this discipline are Charles Wilbert White and David Hammons. For purposes of this project, we are going to compare and contrast the works of the two artists and the influence that the artists had on each other. First, let us start with a brief biography of each artist. Biography of David Hammons Hammons is a worldly renowned visual artist mostly recognized for his visual art works in New York in the late 1970’s and1980’s.He was born in Springfield, Illinois in 1943 and was the youngest child of his single mother who had other nine children. Hammonds attended the Chouinard art institute in Los Angeles, California from1966 to 1968.Later he attended the Otis Art Institute where one of his teachers was the renowned Charles White. Hammonds finally settled in the city of New York from where he mostly worked. He is recognized as a performance artist, installation artist, and sculptor. Hammons made a significant contribution to the world of art. His work speaks of overtones of culture that employ provocative materials and aspects, for example chicken parts, strands of hair, and cheap wine bottles and elephant dung. Although some critics heavily criticized this, Hammons saw some kind of ritualistic power in them and that was the reason that he used them so frequently. Hammons work is generally centered in the black urban setting experience. He uses elements like sarcasm and irony to confront cultural stereotyping and race related issues. Hammons received the MacArthur Fellowship award in 1991. David Hammons first gained his popularity through a series of highly creative and magnificent body prints body paints that saw revolution in the American paints art industry in the early 1970’s. One of his most popular and greatest art works is the paintwork entitled the injustice case of the 1973 drawn in Los Angeles. This highly contradictive paintwork raised numerous concerns especially in relation to contemporary racial issue that was most prevalent in the United States during those times Hammons is an example of an artist that used a large number of visual styles and therefore he did not restrict himself to a single style. This made him stand out among other artists of his generation. Hammons works have been collected and exhibited in various art shows and seminars although he mostly prefers to sell his collections privately. Some of the institutions that have collected Hammonds works include The Contemplary Art Museum in Chicago, The New York Museum of modern art and the Museum of Contemplary Art in Chicago amongst others. Hammons art sought to understand the place of Black people in American society. This is more vivid in his work though in a variety of ways and use of different kinds of media. This he did by avoiding one signature visual style. He shared lots of concern of why the blacks were never allowed to participate in many public affairs and could not be seen contributing to nation building (Constance 63). With the cross-cultural society and tension among the various cultural groups, his work managed to point out both private and public gaps and tried to define the components of a highly valued product. Illustration of such is found in Bliz-aard Ball Sale of 1983, which is his performance work putting himself alongside street vendors in downtown Manhattan in order to sell snowballs whose prices vary with their sizes. This brought about paradox on the product being exchanged and clears information on the capitalistic nature of art. It is satirical in the sense that it brought the whiteness, criticizing luxury of racial classification. He also tried to put across social realities faced by the street vendors who have been discriminated against by virtue of their class or race. As established earlier, the artist also creatively made use of dumped or rejected materials including elephant dung, chicken parts, strands of African hair, and bottles of wine among other things. This conveyed a message about the desperation of the poor mostly the black persons living in the urban areas. Regardless of living in rich towns and cities of America, it is clearly seen that poor blacks were still struggling with the same kind of poverty as those in rural areas and as such expressed their desperation in this manner. Hammons intentionally justified the fact that non-art materials can also be used for excellent development of a wide range of creative artworks that can also be of far much value than the conventional artwork. This evoked mixed reactions among different people but led to a revolution to the art industry through its introduction of the clean art. The idea that was initially despised by many and considered a dirty task conceived and gave birth to a concept that has found a far much greater application in the today’s art industry. The initially perceived dirty work and an abnormal idea, is what brought David Hammons into the limelight in entire America. The weird idea that could be easily despised by any one is what brought him the greatest the greatest recognition ever in his entire career as an artist. In 2007, Mr. Hammons had his first show at L&M Arts, an outlet of modernistic painting founded by Robert Mnuchin an idea he proposed and paid for because he desired a stage. Entering the town house gallery, you would see expensive full-length fur coats hanged on clothes dummies (Douglas 79). On a closer look, the backs had scorched as with blowtorch, then swiped with strokes of white paint and varnished. Most of the works are brushy with oil rubbed on them, with fabulous styles. He used a number of materials, such as torn towels and blankets, black plastic garbage bags and torn industrial tarps. He had overlaid Gerhard Ritchter. This showed street people, construction site and trash which is the most likely environment of the Black Americans. His arrangement of the plastic bags, the towels and torn blankets in a way also brings us into light of ordinary bodies, sweating, spending sleepless nights laboring and doing all they can to keep warm. In the Dark Age, he used metaphors such as barriers in getting expensive exhibitions, the falsehood found in racism, the human community. In this, he made all in attendance and the ones who had the experience of the movie that every person has to learn to appreciate him/her. He further went ahead to reveal cowries that is shells in shells circulating in Africa as money and as a ritual. He cracks images of cartoons displaying the blackness and symbolically does not dispose them. This instead if leave it for other people to pick the pieces and rejoin them together to make up the cartoons once again. This further gives us the picture of denial of the blackness. His refusal to appear on media and lack of obvious income gives us another new meaning. He appeared with artist’s style pages of newspaper and magazine. Charles White Biography Charles White was born in Chicago, Illinois on 2nd April 1918. White was the only child to his parents Charles White Senior and Ethel Gary. His father died when he was just eight years old. He discovered from an early change that he was talented in drawing. White’s mother noticed her son’s artistic inclination at the age of seven when he removed window shades from a house she was working in and used it as canvas (Romare 5). White generally performed highly in his art classes throughout middle school and high school although he lacked interest in his other classes. White worked as an artist of Works in Progress (WPA) at the Art Institute in Chicago where he had been given a scholarship to study art. It is here that he met Elizabeth Catlett his future wife. She was a sculptor and a tutor at Dillard University, New Orleans and was having a summer study session at the art institute. He also attended the Arts Student League in the city of New York and the Mexican Institute, Taller de Grafica. In the latter, his works were hugely recognized and he was granted lifetime membership At one time, he taught art at the Southside Art Centre in Chicago and the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California.. White emerged to become one of the most recognized and renowned African American artists. White mainly worked in sepia, and white, or black and white paintings, lithographs, and drawings. White’s artwork incorporated highly skilled artisanship, power, and artistic sensitivity that has affected, moved, and influenced many. White always attempted to highlight and explore common conflicts that constantly plagued humanity. His incredibly well executed paintings and drawings eloquently speak volumes about the beauty and humanity of the African American culture and people (Meyer 57). His work has played a significant part in the civil rights movement and struggle. His work did not just cover adjuncts of culture but was vital to their struggle. Throughout his life, White was a very vocal representative of his African American race. Some of the common subjects that were depicted by Charles White paintings and drawings were the history of African Americans in the US, economic and social struggles, human relationships, justice and injustice, hate and love amongst others. White most famous work is The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy, which depicted a lot of renowned black personalities like Fredrick Douglas, Peter Salem, Denmark Vesey, Marian Anderson and among others. White was a recipient of a large number of art awards in his lifetime from several art institutions further solidifying his stance as one of the best visual artists of the modern era. Charles White died on 3rd October 1973. Unlike Hammons, Charles White as artistic work described earlier primarily dealt with white and sepia or white and black paintings, lithographs, and drawings. His white paintings were particularly the most admired of his works. The paintings clearly exhibited the uniqueness of his style and therefore earned him critical acclaim from art experts beyond 1965. White had significant change in style something that we will look at later. Charles White work meticulously executed paintings and drawings affirm and speak of beauty and humanity of Black-American culture and people. The power of Charles White work has moved and reached millions of people. One of the people, who have been moved and touched with Charles White’s work, is David Hammons. Sample works of art by the two artists and their comparison and contrast. For purposes of this report, am going to compare and contrast Hammon’s Body prints/Spade series and White’s drawings and paintings post 1965. David Hammonds Body prints/Spade series The spade series of works comprised three pieces of art work. These were the Spade with Chains in 1973, Bird also in 1973, and Spade in 1974. In Spade with Chains, the artist makes use of derogatory and provocative terms accompanied by a spade, which is a gardening tool. The essence of this is to create a visual pan between an African mask and a shovel’s blade, and in the process air the contemporary issues of resistance, oppression, and bondage that have plagued the African American community over the years. In his other spade series, work called ‘Bird’ , Charlie Parker, a famous African American composer and jazz saxophonist also known as ‘Bird’ or ‘Yardbird’ is displayed as a spade emerging from the musical instrument, the saxophone. In the final work in the spade series, simply called “Spade” (released in 1974), the artist presses his face on a spade’s shape therefore leaving a imprint that is caricature in nature and is characterized by Negroid features. The main aspect reflected by these Spade series was Hammons commitment to the black civil rights movements. David Hammons’ ‘Spade Series’ were part of his ‘Body Prints’ set of works for which he first gained reputation in the art industry. They were imprints of the body directly configured on paper with grease. The prints resembled x-rays in their translucence and their detailed structure. An example of this is the Injustice Case, released in 1973, which dealt with contemplary racial matters by using an image of the American flag to present opposition to racial and cultural stereotyping. The Body Prints and the Spade Series served as an influence to the sculptures of found objects that he started to produce in the late 70’s .These pieces of art were made from discarded and cheap items bottles, bags, and chicken bones like stated earlier in this report. Unlike White’s pictures, the pictures in David Hammons Body Prints appeared to capture a single moment in time. This way, he made them appear as if they had been frozen in actual movement. Hammons was very vocal about the fact that he preferred to create his art without expressing any message at all, feeling that the messages were naturally aesthetically restrictive. However, he found this hard because he was deeply affected by the events of his times, which therefore forced him to pass a message in his works. Semiotic perspective of his works Hammons work can be analyzed from a semiotics perspective. A comprehensive semiotic analysis of his works conspicuously reveals some hidden human truth. A spectacular example would be his most famous works, Spade with Chains that majored on the issues of bondage and resistance. In this art series, the message behind the art has to be extracted by a semiotic analysis of the image themselves. In this scenario, a semiotic analysis is used to to fully understand art as instrumental or functional and not as a direct expression of a particular perspective. Charles White prints and drawings post 1965. Charles White prints and drawings after 1965 varied in many aspects to his previous works. This was because of new influences and his often liberal and receptive nature to new ideas or innovations. White had started teaching at the Otis Art Institute in 1965 a job he held for 14 years. One of his students there was David Hammons who was a great influence to him even though he was his student. An example of a distinct feature from his previous work was The Exodus II Gemini which was a monolithic image of a single figure, something he had not tried before. The crouched figure in the work evolved from a related figure from a White’s earlier drawing called Wanted Series #10. This modified drawing depicted an infant dressed in swaddling clothes (resembling Christ). Above him, White horizontally placed a crouched figure that was conveniently integrated into the composition. This piece of coded artistry can be seen as a direct influence from White’s student, David Hammons who was particularly known for coded artistry. Another distinct feature of White’s drawings and paintings post 1965 was the fact that he started using a new medium of expression, that is, dry point, contrary to his many years of experience in lithography. White had originally planned to work using etchings but he was not comfortable with the exposure to deadly acids that etchings required and naturally, he decided to use dry point. White most famous work involving dry painting was the Matriarch made in 1970. However, the constant factor was that the themes of universal conflict that plagued mankind, that normally characterized White’s previous works were still visibly employed in his post 1965 paintings and drawings. The influence that the two artists had on each other David has stated that Charles White was an artist that he greatly related to ever since they met at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. The main reason for this was because both were black and Hammons considered White to be the only artist that had stature in comparison to other artists he had met. Before White became his teacher, Hammons had become familiar with his works through reproductions and exhibitions. A particular feature of White’s works that captivated Hammons was the figures with exaggerated gestures, the often-enlarged hands, and the generally unsmiling images, which Hammons described as having an agonized look. Hammons was also influenced by White’s portrayal of political and social overtones in his works. White therefore tried to follow a similar path as exhibited in his works, Black First, American Second and the Injustice Act, which referred to political injustices and civil liberty abuse. Hammonds also played a significant role in White’s post 1965 works. David Hammons was a more object-driven artist known for creating heavily coded art works usually made with the refuse of the everyday black experience A close analysis of White’s work beyond 1965 exhibited a particular change of tone from his previous works. Like Hammons, his works started to incorporate certain codes that needed to be deciphered for one to completely appreciate his work. This change of style definitely calls for another form of art analysis distinct from the one used earlier to analyze his works and once again, the use of semiotics comes to play. White previous works were utilized simplicity in the conveying of message. However, White after studying works by other artists including Hammons started to become drawn to the use of coded artistry. He found it a more attractive feature of art and he started to employ this new feature in his latter works. Apart from White, Hammonds, has listed famous white artists like Chris Burden and Bruce Nauman among his major influences. Like White, his works to a certain degree exhibits his commitment to black movements and civil rights struggles. Charles White influenced David Hammons to use artwork to speak beauty and humanity regarding African-Americans and their beauty. On his part, David Hammons confronted racial issues and cultural stereotypes that discriminate African-Americans in the United States in the 1960s on wards. He conveys his artistic to support the African-American community through wittily incisive body prints, scriptures, performances, and installations. His well-articulated artistic work propelled him to prominence placing him somewhere in between Dada and Arte Povera. David Hammons made art from cast-offs and refuse of stereotypical culture hindering the progress of African-Americans life. Most of this artistic skilled he learn from Charles White while others he inherited from him It is obvious that students will learn a few tricks from their masters and it was not different for the two. David Hammons used the artistic knowledge and skills he acquired from Charles White to further develop his artistic career. This is the main reason why his work and that of Charles White have some similarity. They both dealt with social issues that affected the African-community. Much credit however should be given to Charles White, for the knowledge and skills, and hence the influence his work had to David Hammons. What made David Hammons artwork more interesting to the audience is his artistic ability to incorporate both powerful aesthetic sentiment with political statements. David Hammons learnt that from Charles White that in order to be successful in the art career, there was great need to relate your work with activities that affected the society in real world. Therefore, David Hammons made a name by himself by touching aspects affected African-American community whose population was on the rise in the United States. As a result, he won many pundits for his creative thinking in regards to the segregated and discriminated African-American community. Many African-Americans viewed him as a rescuer who could influence the society to change its negative perception towards African-Americans. Charles Whites was deeply ingrained in reality, a characteristic that David Hammons acquired and continue to utilize for years. Maybe if David Hammons had opted to cover a fictitious social aspect, he would not have been famous the way he is. David Hammons took advantage of Charles White experience and knowledge in the art field to learn a few tricks that propelled him to greatness. Many people have tried their lack in art, but they have had unsuccessful career due to their choice on issues to tackle. Charles White wanted his dream of deliberating African-Americans to be true; hence, he used art to pass his message to the whole society. In addition, he wanted his mission to be achieved even after his death and that is why he influenced David Hammons to continue with mission of using art to ensure African-Americans future is bright.(Morgan 34) David Hammons use the artistic concepts he acquired from his teacher, Charles White to address cultural overtones that affected the African-American society in the United States in 1960s. In order to achieve greatness, David Hammons had to re-examine Charles White artistic work. Majority of the artist from the year 1960s either collaborated or reviewed work of other artists. On his part, David Hammons opted to re-examine the work of his former master since they shared they same ideas. In particular, he reviewed museum historical and mainstream gallery exhibitions of Charles White work. The work of David Hammons explored the African-American culture.. Much credit should be given to David Hammons work is due to his hard work. David Hammons elusive and charismatic life also played an integral role in his artwork. His influence was crucial to his success. The idea of tackling a social aspect that affects the society was superb. The artists great activism to many forms of racial prejudice were excellently featured in many of his creatively designed through his marvelous application of his acquired artistic skills which were perfectly combined with his immeasurable inborn artistic capabilities and talents. The multiple productions of his artistic works during the 1970’s led to the development of the popularly known spade series that its themes, messages, and uniqueness spread across the entire America. The entire careers of both David Hammons and Charles White are seen to inspire by content and taste. Almost every aspect of their artworks further supports this. Their entire artworks throughout their lives are seen to be characterized by the highest degree of creativity and professionalism. (Henderson 63). They were not just mere artworks or artworks aimed at just being pleasant to the eyes of the many viewers across the America, but they were solely pieces of artworks with a purpose. All forms of their art works had a massage to convey, a social issue to address or raise an eyebrow through criticizing unsocial behaviors in the society (Tobias 71). The best to describe the two artists is to say that they got actively involved in everything he did. They took a better thought of what to do before putting it down in its physical manifestation. This led to the successful development their many artwork projects that in true and actual sense conveyed messages of utmost importance to the general viewers. However, some significant differences are observable in the works of the two artists. From the many events in the life of David Hammons, it is evident that he had much and greater distaste to much of the formalist artworks and sculptures, by considering them to be devoid of any meaningful content. He advanced for artworks that aimed at improving the welfare of the general humanity through the eradication of all inhuman and in just behaviors’ in the society such ethnic and racial prejudices. One of his most memorable of his many social and public events and lyrical interventions in the cosmopolitan landscape is his major project that involved converting enormous telegraph poles into basketball hoops and embellishing them with nonfigurative patterns composed of bottle caps (David 27). Charles White however was quite receptive to other art forms from different artists. He was also willing to adapt his works or art styles to accommodate new features and ideas. The fact that he was willing to be influenced by a younger artist, no less his former student clearly expresses his adaptability and sensitivity. Conclusions In summary, Charles White and David Hammons were both exemplary artists in their own right. Their contribution to the genre of visual art cannot be undermined .It is however very important to appreciate the uniqueness of their individual art forms since no two artists can draw inspiration from the same source and differences are in most cases more than likely to be exhibited in their works. Work Cited Lerone Bennet. The Shaping of Black America; Illustrations by Charles White (these illustrations in relation to the text should be included in the paper), 2004 David Hammons: In the Hood (exhibition catalog), 2002 Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1969-1980 (exhibition catalog) Tobias Wofford. LA Object & David Hammons Body Prints (exhibition catalog) Pay special attention to the article, 2009 Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African American Artists: From 1972 to the present, 2011 Stacy L. Morgan. Rethinking Social Realism: African American Art and Literature, 1930 - 1953 (has a chapter dedicated to the early murals of Charles White), 2003 Constance M. Lewallen and Karen Moss, State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble, 2000 Stark-Spangled Banjos: Linguistic Doubleness in the Work of David Hammons, Harryette Mullen, and Al Hibbler by Paul Hoover, 2005 Meyer Schapiro. On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs, 2006 Douglas N. Morgan. Icon, Index, and Symbol in the Visual Arts, 2002 M.J. Hewitt. A Tribute to Charles White, 1998 John Oliver Killens. Charles White: The People's Artist, 2008 Joseph E. Young. Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, Timothy Washington, 2011 Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, Semiotics and Art History, 2005 Read More