Blog #3

The Ted Talk I decided to focus on is “How Can We Address Several Centuries of Racism in Art?”. This was a very powerful one for me because I have been very interested in history for a long time and hadn’t always thought of the other, less represented sides when looking at paintings from the era and what they chose to represent and not represent. The whole strengths and limits of arts is especially double edged in this case; you could make a beautiful painting that has a lot of power behind it, but it could historically marginalize others or just flat out show no recognition to certain people, generally those non-white. For what might be seen as just a show of history is really robbing certain people of their own historical flares and prides with the lack of representation in certain works, and I think it’s really cool on what Kaphar has been doing to kind of combat this.

3 Comments

  1. ebox

    I agree with your viewpoint that this TED Talk brought a new view about the paintings from the past and what the represented. I also agree about the double edged nature of the paintings. The famous ones are amazing paintings, but they are degrading toward a large group of people. This is why the author puts forth the idea of editing the artworks. I think there definitely are more drawbacks and positive aspects of this form of art. I think some people could interpret this as a new artist trying to copy the artwork of someone else while ignoring basic parts of it and could lead to accusation of copying. Also, it can remove an innocent message one of the pieces is conveying without even meaning to. Lastly, it could be reading too far into what a piece of art is conveying when in reality it is just a picture of something that actually happened in the past. Overall, I agree that Kaphar’s pieces of art are really cool and could one day be accepted.

  2. vbowler

    I thought your free write was very interesting. I appreciate how you picked a TED talk that really sparked your interest on more than just a purely, structured educational reason. I like the concept of a double edged sword because it addresses the forgotten characters in beautiful paintings that are depicted throughout history. In my opinion, I think it would be a good idea to go into more detail with the whole contrast of having such a powerful painting that hides certain people inside of them. While I listened to Kaphar’s TED talk, I mainly thought that the art we needed to amend were those statues and other artwork found around the world and country that have racist or evil figures in them. However, your point of view is an interesting interpretation that I want to hear more about.

  3. tziccardi1

    Nate, I liked your response, it was right to the point and I think you accurately described the meaning of the painting. This being said, If we’re going to do another version, I would go deeper into detail about the points made in the TED talk. Perhaps some personal experience or relation to modern day racism would add to it well. Just some tips! Its a good piece of writing regardless.

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