Author: Margaret DiGrande

I have an idea for my project but I am not sure exactly what I am going to do for the physical documentation part yet. My main idea is to stand outside of a main academic building during lunch hour and seek out participation from students passing by. I want them to engage with the work in their own individual ways. I’m thinking of painting a wooden board with a color-coded guide of circular “buttons” next to words that would categorize a typical student applying to college, including one for “none of the above”. The colors would indicate which word corresponds with which color. Then, I could ask them to paint colors of what they feel represents them in these scenarios. I plan to video record this performance piece as well as presenting the final board after the performance is over, providing two forms of documentation. The goal of this project is to showcase the pressure students feel to place themselves in these categories when filling out applications, while also placing myself in a live performance setting.

The article I was assigned, “Censorship, Not the Painting, Must Go” addresses artists that are highly criticized for cultural appropriation. The debate is centered around “how artists and curators of all backgrounds represent collective traumas and racial injustice”, which is a sensitive subject for many because the audiences who are viewing these works are so broad. However, there are various different views on this issue, some supporting the artists and others attacking the artists. For instance, the letter written by Hannah Black (a black-identified biracial artist) to Dana Schutz (a white American), the author of “Open Casket”, addresses this issue. In the letter, she expresses that this kind of exploitation should not be considered art and therefore should not be seen by the public. She argues that by recreating this image, the artist is portraying her support for this horrible execution of a young black boy, referring to it as “white insensitivity”, and that the work should be destroyed. On the other hand, the author of the article, who provides a teacher’s point of view, disagrees with this point of view, saying that the destruction of a work of art should never take place, regardless of certain opposing viewpoints. A counterargument that the author makes is that Black does not consider the fact that many black artists have also depicted black trauma, such as enslaved bodies, lynching, and imprisonment without facing any criticism for producing these works. Overall, the article addresses the stance of someone speaking out against these works and offers an opposing view, which allows us to comprehend both sides and formulate our own opinions on the issue.

1. To research chairs, I would usually go through the Lafayette College library “OneSearch”, specifically Artstor, to find information about any articles, paintings, drawings, or artifacts pertaining to chairs that I could get access to.
2. To narrow it down, I would choose either a certain medium or artist so that the number of results decreases. For example, a search like “clay sculpture chair” is more specific than “chair” but will still yield lots of results. That way, the resources that are coming up are still relevant but also reliable rather than searching for “chair art” google images.
3. The available resources are the online search tool through the library website, such as Jstor, Artstor, and others. In addition, there is information about the Williams Center galleries, the Grossman galleries, the Lass galleries, the special collections in the library.
4. Type in “chair” as the keyword in Artstor or another source through the library website.
5. The images could be distorted from the original or manipulated in some way, such as cropping, zooming, and others.
6. We look into other works of art during a similar time period and/or different works by the same artist and see what similar characteristics they share, which shows us that research must have gone into the work in order for these techniques to shine through in multiple works.