"Photography at the Heart of Darkness" Nicholas Mieerzoff

One of the surprising things I'm finding with this course is how much a lot of the behavior exhibited by the colonists still exists today as pointed out at the end of this article. It really is of much distress to me , because growing up as a white women in Canada I lived in a bubble in which I saw everyone as equal and didn't know how much of a problem racism deeply rooted in colonialism was. Reading this article I couldn't help but thinking about how modern artists like Robert Mapplethorpe still see the African body as a source of excitement and mystery and set to document it as such.

By photographing black man nude Mapplethorpe's work is reminiscent of the taxonomic photographs of the early 1900's. He also really plays up racial stereotypes that exists in our society such as the black male being more muscular and having a larger penis than that of other races. He highlights what may been seen as the visual signs of difference. He marks his subjects just as Lang marked his with racial difference that is placed mostly onto the body .

I think like Lang he documents something that is more like a dream than reality. Lang talked about colonial mimicry making the people of the Congo happier, but in reality we have no real idea about how they fault about others taking their land. Mapplethorpe puts the African Male body as a sexual dream something that we all want , when in reality we don't. I think that both works can be seen as a form of subjectification.

"The White Peril and l'Art Negre: Picasso , Primitivism and Anticolonialism" Patricia Leighten

What was interesting to me about this piece was that it showed a new way of thinking , it doesn't criticize anything but instead focuses on an event that really was proactive . Being a fan of Picasso and having seen a lot of his work it was really interesting to learn what may have been behind the paintings.

It gives me a lot more respect for Picasso and other modernist painters that they were aware of the colonial exploitation that brought the African art to Europe and thus used primitivism as a way to contest and contrast the use of Africa in much of pre WW! French art. And although some people saw the Modernists work as being exploitative they really were trying to use primitivism as an act of social criticism and as a search for a new art.

It reminds me of the Canadian artist Brain Jungen who uses running shoes to create masks that mimic those of Native Canadians. I think that like Picasso he doesn't do this to exploit those from who the mask come from but instead to create a social commentary and conversation with the viewer. Looking at these piece I begin to question why the west over took the Natives land ... was it so we could buy $200 dollar Nike shoes ? I think it also shows how much we live in a consumerist society where as generations before us depended on the land and themselves for a lot more.

I think it both cases , Picasso and Jurgen , it brings a whole different set of people and hopefully these people realize and appreciate the originals that the work is based on and where they came from.