Annotative Bibliography #7,8

I Am the Locus, Oil Crayon Drawing, Adrian Piper

Annotative Bibliography #7

Observation:

In this picture, I see a group of people. Most of the people are facing away from the photo, except for the one man, who appears to be the subject of the composition. The man facing toward the viewer is a light-skinned man, wearing all black. He has a thick head of hair, a thick mustache, and black large black sunglasses on. At the top of the crowd of people the words, "WITH MOIST, FLESHY PULSATING SURFACES . . ." appear in handwriting.

Inference:

This is a drawing by Adrian Piper that depicts her androgenous alter-ego "The Mythic Being" walking away from a crowd of people. The article, "Acting Like a Man," goes into an in-depth analysis of this character and Piper's specific experiment involving gender roles, sexual expression, and race issues. I believe that this picture brings all of these issues into play in a simple composition. By dressing as a man, Piper believed that she was truly freeing herself to experiment with ideas involving her own homosexual fantasies. She was able to further experience masculinity in a way that allowed the public to see her as part of the self she had been experiencing in her own mind. This drawing shows the isolation of the black man obviously, but as someone who has been able to research the specifics of Piper's work, you also get to see this isolation and its effect on homosexual or sexually expressive women. I especially see the sexual context in this image in the words at the top of the picture. The words "moist," "fleshy," and "pulsating" remind me of something I believe I would find in a sex scene in a romance novel. I personally cannot find a specific connection between the words and the content in the picture; however, these words do seem to fit in well with Piper's personal beliefs about a human being's right to express themselves sexually, and without shame. Overall, this photo deals a lot with isolation or moving against the crowd - even in the opposite direction. The purpose of Piper's work was to break down barriers and test the strength of social norms, because she, herself, felt as though she did not fit the label of "normal." 

Lorna Simpson

Observation:

In this photograph there are multiple frames (five on top and five on bottom), depicting the black of a young black girl's head. She is wearing a white cotton dress with her hair styled in a variety of ways. In the middle of the frames there are multiple descriptive words including; "Daring," "Sensible," "Severe," "Long and Silly," "Boyish," "Ageless," "Silly," "Magnetic," "Country Fresh," "Sweet." 

Inference:

Lorna Simpson was renowned for her use of cinematic elements in order to create a visually captivating photograph. She also seems to have a lot of photos that depict stereotypical physical features of black women in history. For example, the white cotton dress that the subject in this photograph is wearing is something that Simpson seems to use often in her work. This type of dress seems reminiscent of a servant girl or a slave. I was particularly interested in this photograph because of its blatant disregard for social distinctions involving physical beauty as created by society and white Americans. The idea of black being "beautiful" and the struggle between the choice of falling in line or standing out and being true to yourself. The article, "Marianne Lately - Lorna Simpson and the Cinema of Feminine Illusion," says something very interesting about this idea of black being unapologetically beautiful;

"A common misconception surrounding Simpson's work is that because her photographs and videos feature black women, or the physical aspects of black femaleness - braids and so on, as in her 1989 piece Memory Knots - that the characters represented are 'oppressed' or 'dominated' by the quotidian - that is, the white boys who define cinema. But Simpson's Mariannes replace those cinema bous as the center of our attention. Simpson's women reflect out into the world with their own language and power. Simpson's women are the love objects she places center frame because they are central to her, and her need to direct them."

I believe that this quote says a lot about the personal beliefs of Simpson. The fact that she is not allowing herself or her subject matter be personally victimized by the pressures of society to conform to a certain standard of beauty, and simply shows the beauty in the natural form of the black woman is incredibly thought provoking. The words in the photo depict a child-like appreciation for the beauty in the natural hair of a black woman - something that throughout history has been criticized for not living up to these ever-changing "standards."



Works Cited

Als, Hilton. "Marianne Lately - Lorna Simpson and the Cinema of Feminine Illusion." (n.d.): 143-47. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Oct. 2015.

Bowles, John P. "“Acting Like a Man”." Race, Gender, and Embodiment Adrian Piper (2011): 229-56. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Oct. 2015.