These following artists take a different spin to art and put their emotions, opinions and help to provoke thoughts in their audience's mind about the way they think and view the world around them.
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| Sherman. Untitled No. 92. 1981 |
Cindy Sherman(1954- current) is known for her “self” portraits. She dressed
herself up and transforms herself into someone totally different. I said put
the “self” in quotes because her portraits are not really of herself. She hides
her identity in all of her artwork. At first Sherman began her interest in art
with painting…however, she decided that paint has too many limitations for the
types of ideas and messages she wanted to convey. Her messages are different in
all of her photographs; however she does not view herself as a feminist artist
even though many of her photographs conveyed some feminist thoughts such as in
her 1981 Centerfolds which called attention to the stereotyping
of women in the media. What is unique about Sherman is that she takes on the
role of director, photographer, make-up artist, hair stylist, and model all at
once in producing her artwork. One of her most famous series she did was her Untitled
Film Stills where Sherman
stated that the series was “about the fakeness of role-playing as well as
contempt for the domineering ‘male’ audience who would mistakenly read the
images as sexy.”(“cindy Sherman, Britannica) Sherman
uses herself and her photos to bring about the point that what you see may not
be what is really there.
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| Sally Mann, 'Last Light', 1989, from the series 'Immediate Family' |
Sally Mann(born 1951)
was first introduced to photography by her father when he photographed her nude as a young girl. (“Sally Mann”,
Britannica) She began her own photography career in ’69 as a teenager and
continued to spend two years studying at Bennington college. In ’83 she started
photographing 12-year-old girls herself. Her portraits titled “Immediate
family” brought her a great deal of controversy because they were portraits of
her own three children nude and posed in various positions that were disturbing
to many viewers. However, it was said that her portraits of her children were
an “honest exploration of the complexities of childhood.” (“Sally Mann”,
Britannica) Her children were found in many of her photographs and many people
did not understand how Mann could put her children out there for the world to
see like that. However Mann stated, “many
of these pictures are intimate…but most are of ordinary things every mother has
seen. I take pictures when they are bloodied or sick or naked or angry.” With
these staged visual explorations, Mann captured some of the darker images of
childhood and raised some thought-provoking issues. (“Sally Mann”, Britannica) Although her portraits raised a lot of
controversy, it was known that they conveyed so much emotion behind them. She
turned ordinary things that any wife and mother could have seen into something
extraordinary and heartfelt for the whole world to see.
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| Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California |
Dorothea Lange (1895
– 1965) was and American documentary photographer who took photos during the
great depression. Her photos of unemployed farmers and their families were used
by the Farm Security Administration to help bring the conditions of the rural
people to the public’s attention. (“Dorothea Lange”, Britannica) Her works
showed the powerful emotions that were involved in the hardships of America.
She documented migrant workers, the mass evacuation of the Japanese Americans
to detention camps after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and after WWII she
created photo-essays such as Mormon Villages and The Irish Countryman. Her
works brought attention to the suffering of the citizens in our country and what
they were going through as a result. Her works were all about the “Human
Erosion” she was seeing.
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| Lalla Essaydi. Silence of Thought No. 2 |
Lalla Essaydi’s works challenge Muslim gender stereotypes through her
work. She combines Islamic calligraphy with representations of the female body
while focusing on the interconnection of faith, culture, and gender. Essaydi
tells her story, what she believes her life is all about, through her artwork.
She uses her artwork to “confront deeply entrenched historical notions about
femininity and womanhood through the images of the Muslim world.” (Cheers) She
is a multi-media artist, using painting, photography, film, or installations to
get her message across. Through her artwork, she hopes to bridge the way Muslim
women are viewed by both the eastern and western society. She wants to convey
that they are human beings with their own personality and opinions.
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| Red on White Body Tracks. |
Ana Mendieta is one artist that took a completely different form of
artwork than the other four artists. Her art was in nature, through performance
art. However, her artwork lives on through photographs which is why I decided
she belonged with these artists. “Throughout her work, Mendieta sets her body
down in nature and then records its simple presence on the planet.” (Gopnik) She
takes pictures lying naked on the ground, or videos floating naked in a creek,
and some of her other works leave her out of the picture, showing just her
silhouette traced in the sand or on rock. Gopnik states that boil down art, any
art, and its nothing but a “gesture that affirms human ego.” Some of the most
famous works have at heart a tag “ ‘Yo, I’m Michelangelo.’ ‘Picasso was
here!’”(Gopnik) With Mendieta’s artwork, its less specific than “Ana was here”
and more like, “I was here” or “Someone was here once”. Her message was
extremely evident in her Silueta series, her pieces aren’t about her as the
artist but rather a diminished ego, making her single bloody handprint have the
same effect on us as that handprint we see etched in a cave. It makes us marvel
and love the mere fact that it is there. Mendieta used nature and her own body
to show the beauty around us.
All these artists have a commonality with their artwork. They use their
art and their photographs to send messages to the world. They want to change
the world in their own unique way and add to the world with their messages. They all pour their hearts out and create pieces of art that tug at the viewers heart and create a stir, a thought, an emotion, and maybe even causes some actions to help improve what they are talking about in their art. They hope their artwork will provide some agency for people to act on their emotions. Changing the world one piece at a time.
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