Museum Post

The top artwork is called Untitled, 1990 and was created by Gilbert Lewis (b. 1945). The artwork is an intimate piece that is exposing a man’s shirtless self in the side. The artist takes different pictures of people in different stages of their life which is actually nice. You get to see the growth that a person goes through and how there facial features and appearance starts to slowly change. Most of the people that Lewis takes pictures of are males as a way for them to express themselves. The people that he painted built a kind of trust with him and confided on him enough for them to speak on how they were feeling in life. In John Berger Ways of Seeing a line that stood to me the most was “To say this is not to deny the expressive or imaginative quality of art, treating it as mere documentary evidence; the more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist’s experience of the visible.” The artist Lewis uses his artwork to tell a story, express how the subject is feeling, and what they want others around them to see. Which is why when faces are being photographed there is a lot of vulnerability and emotion mostly behind the picture.

The bottom artwork is called Misty and Joey at Hornstrasse, Berlin, 1992 and was created by Nan Goldin. The photo shows a man dressed in drag and women in the background looking disgusted by what she is seeing. In the period that this was created, society was not so open with seeing people dressing like the opposite sex. I noticed that the image had the spotlight focused on the person that is dressed up. The object being photographed is wearing a black dress with sheer glitter shirt, blue wig, pearl gloves, and crystal jewelry. One passage from Joanne Finkelstein that connected to this is “She was completely dismissive of her sex organs and regarded her penis as ‘anaesthetized’.” Agnes was not letting the fact that she had different sexual organs change the way she felt in her own body. Just like the subject in the canvas is comfortable enough in her body to be dressed the way she is. The theme is identity and nonconformity, and, in this artwork, you can see how the subject is starting to finally find herself and is presenting herself to the world and the way they feel comfortable. It is a look into their life of partying, having a good time, discovering themselves, and making friendships. 

This artwork was created by Alec Soth’s 1969 and is called Lennu, Minneapolis 2002. The theme is identity and nonconfromity. A shirtless man in just a pair of briefs is seen sitting in what looks like a table. The table has spices, flower, house keys hung up, and seems like the background has family pictures. The subject being photographed seems to be living alone with his dog laying right besides his legs. This picture seems to capture the life of a single man that is living alone in the United States. The everyday life of a regular person, the picture is almost animated like it can be part of a movie the way that it was edited. In Finklestien “Manners compel us to think about situations and to imagine the other’s point of view.” Many people that look at this picture would be judging it before even giving it a second thought. But us as humans having manners makes us less judgmental to what we see in the picture. We go in dept with what is going on in the picture and try to figure out the meaning of it instead of just judging the shirtless man that we are looking at. Which is why it is important to have manners and act on them in our everyday life.

This painting is by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b.1940) and is called Salah, Cree and Shonhone What is an American? 2003. The artist is expressing her Native American heritage throughout this piece. A woman that is being portrayed is dressed in traditional clothing with cultural necklaces around her neck. One thing I noticed about this painting is that the ladies face is not being shown and is kind of cropped from the canvas. These patterns that look like tribal prints are behind the women. The piece looks like it was sketched with a pencil which I haven’t seen much pieces that look like this. The words what is an American is asking us what we think an Americans looks like which is pretty clever. When we think about what an American look like we always picture a white blonde person that has blue eyes and is dressed in clothing that is jeans and a shirt. While this canvas is showing us a person of obvious Native American heritage it wants us to think about what we the think someone from America is like. I noticed how everything is grey and the only colorful thing is the ribbon in her hand. The colors that are held out are red, white, and blue which happen to be the color of the American flag. The woman is claiming this is her right identity and no one can take it away from her. No matter how she looks or dresses it doesn’t matter because that does not make her any less than people portray Native Americans.

The first artwork is created by Konrad Cramer (1856-1963), it is called Portrait of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, ca. 1935. You can see a middle-aged Asian man, staring to the side with a half-smile on. It is labeled as artistic identity. The middle-aged man seems like he is thinking hard about something that is going on in his life. I like how the artistic captured an everyday person just staring into space and just looks so natural. In John Berger Ways of Seeing I found this one quote that related to this artwork which was “Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent.” Photographs are used to remember things that we want to have memories of and take with us as we grow old. We look back at pictures and remember the day we took that and start to reminisce what we did that day and all the memories that were gathered at that time. That is the beauty of taking pictures and when I first saw this artwork, I thought about how much pictures are my source of keeping my memories alive. I want to continue taking pictures and building up more memories as I am going on with my life. Photography is a way I express myself and how I feel, and I love taking pictures when I am outside.