WORLD OF ART EIGHTH EDITION CHAPTER 26 Power World of Art, Eighth Edition Henry M Sayre Copyright © 2016, 2013, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc or its affiliates All rights reserved Learning Objectives of Describe some of the means by which rulers have asserted their power in art Discuss some of the issues surrounding power as it affects women Define colonialism and outline some of the ways that artists have addressed it Learning Objectives of Explain how the museum wields power Introduction of • In 2009, British photographer Edmund Clark was given access to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for his project to explore three notions of "home." • Camp Five, Detainee's Cell shows the kind of cell that one of the released detainees (the focus of Clark's project) lived in Introduction of • The conditions of Camp Five reflect the mechanisms of power that Jeremy Bentham devised, in 1791, for his ideal prison, the Panopticon It was a circular building with a surveillance house at its center, allowing a single guard to observe all the inmates Introduction of • It is this condition of visibility and the power that it exercises that is the subject of this chapter Edmund Clark Camp Five, Detainee's Cell, from the series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out, Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Cuba 2009 Chromogenic color print ì 5' â Edmund Clark, courtesy of Flowers Gallery, London [Fig 26-1] Jeremy Bentham, A General Idea of a Penitentiary Panopticon, drawn by Willey Reveley 1791 From The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol IV (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838–43), pp 172–73 [Fig 26-2] Representing Rulers • Power is inherent in rule • Rulers have, as a result, consistently turned to art to portray themselves in as positive a light as possible Power and Might of • Rulers in every culture and age have used the visual arts to broadcast their power • In the ninth century BCE, the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II built a capital surrounded by nearly miles of walls Alabaster reliefs decorated many of the walls including a depiction of Ashurnasirpal II Killing Lions Lalla Essaydi, La Grande Odalisque, from the series Les Femmes du Maroc (The Women of Morocco) 2008 Photograph C-print Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York [Fig 26-18] The Power of the Museum of • Museums have great power to control not only what we see but how we see it The Aztec headdress is a treasure of extraordinary beauty and can be appreciated in purely aesthetic terms, as the museum presents it Feather headdress worn by Aztec priests representing deities 16th Century Feathers, gold appliqué, and fiber net, 45-5/8" × 5' 8-7/8" Weltmuseum, Vienna Bridgeman Images [Fig 26-19] The Power of the Museum of • Museums have great power to control not only what we see but how we see it But, the headdress's history, the tale of Cortés and his betrayal of Motecuhzoma, does not, but perhaps should, enter into the museum display The Power of the Museum of • Kerry James Marshall, in his works like Many Mansions, challenge the museum's sense of history by offering the viewer an alternative kind of space in the canvas itself, one not normally seen on the museum's walls Kerry James Marshall Many Mansions 1994 Acrylic and collage on unstretched canvas 9' 6" × 11' 3" Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York [Fig 26-20] The Power of the Museum of • Up until the 1990s, it was very difficult for women to enter the art world • In 1985, an anonymous group of women who called themselves the Guerrilla Girls began hanging posters in New York to draw attention to the problem The figure is a parody of Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres's Grande Odalisque The Power of the Museum of • In 1985, an anonymous group of women who called themselves the Guerrilla Girls began hanging posters in New York to draw attention to the problem Specifically called out were the sexist collecting practices of the Metropolitan Museum in New York Guerrilla Girls Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met Museum? 1989 Poster ©1989, 1995 by the Guerilla Girls, Inc [Fig 26-21] The Power of the Museum of • By the late 1990s, the situation had changed somewhat • More women were regularly exhibited in New York galleries and their work was given more major retrospectives • But, internationally especially, women continued to get short shrift The Critical Process Thinking about Power of • Jenny Holzer's creates text-based artworks • She is famous, particularly, for aphorisms that twist clichés into powerful and disturbing truths ("Truisms") The Critical Process Thinking about Power of • In Thorax, text scrolls by on multiple screens in purple–blue colors arranged in a tower that is an abstracted reproduction of the human thorax The text of this work comes from conflicting descriptions of an incident in which an Iraqi combatant was killed by American forces The power of the text is deliberately at odds with the beauty of the color Jenny Holzer Thorax 2008 Twelve double-sided, curved electronic LED signs with white diodes on front and red and blue diodes on back 8' 8-1/4" × 4' 10-5⁄16" × 37-1/8" Text: U.S government documents The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica Thinking Back of Describe some of the means by which rulers have asserted their power in art Discuss some of the issues surrounding power as it affects women Define colonialism and outline some of the ways that artists have addressed it Thinking Back of Explain how the museum wields power ... chose to assert his military might by burying an army of more than 6,000 ceramic infantrymen in pits surrounding his tomb Tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi 221–206 BCE Painted ceramic figures, life-size... Louis Mazzatenta/National Geographic [Fig 26- 4] Power and Might of • Nearly 1,800 years later, Napoleon Bonaparte created his official state art program with the same aim of asserting his power by. .. Château de la Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, France Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée des châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau)/Gérard Power and Might of • Jacques-Louis David established himself as