vi.su.al.i.té: Seen or able to be seen by the eye; visible: a visual presentation; a design with a dramatic visual effect.
visualité is all about making things, people, places, works of art, visible. bringing new perspectives and viewpoints to the light. establishing new parameters for examining contemporary art and visual culture.
One of my favorite artists of all time, Prince, has released his new album Lotusflow3r exclusively with Target. It includes 3 separate discs, and I have provided an iMeem Playlist so that you can preview before you buy it!
So Keri Hilson's debut album "In A Perfect World" premieres today. Check it out, let me know what you think! Btw, I've also embedded her fiesty new video "Knock You Down" feat. Kanye West and Ne-Yo.
So I've been thinking a lot about the body, femininity, and black female sexuality...and the wheels in my head are constantly turning. Apparently, the black female body is on a lot of people's (and company's) minds, including Old Navy, and painter/photographer extraordinaire Mickalene Thomas.
While sitting at the dinner table, my partner and I were watching Family Guy's satire of Fox News (how ironic?), when the scene ended and a spanking new 30-second commercial from Old Navy appeared on the screen. In this particular episode entitled "Mid-Town Flash with the Supermodelquins", a dialogue between three multicultural female and anthropomorphized mannequins and their male counterparts goes a little something like this:
Black Male Mannequin: "Look Buddy! Doesn't mom look pretty in her new midtown gown!?" Son Mannequin: "You go, Mom!"
White Female Mannequin: "These Midtown gowns are so cute!" Latina Mannequin: "Especially if I had your legs!" [Looks over at a random pair of white female legs in a box in a corner]
White Female Mannequin: "There's an extra pair in the back room..." Latina Mannequin: "At $15 these dresses are gonna fly!"
[Live white little girl snatches the dress off of the black Mannequin, named Michelle] [WTF!!!??]
White Female Mannequin: [expresses shock] Dog barks. White Male Mannequin: "Sweet!"
Black Father to White Male Mannequin: "Hey man, keep your painted on eyes off my wife!" [puts hand up to White Male Mannequin's face]
White Male Mannequin: "I can't! Your fingers don't close." Michelle: [with prototypical black girl attitude] "Oh what! Like you've never seen plastic before!"
END SCENE.
As I sit here at the breakfast bar in my partner's kitchen, I'm at a complete loss for words. Okay...not really but seriously... I don't know what to say first. So below I've posted a picture of some of the comments that the commercial has garnered.
Has Michelle Obama's ubiquitous celebrity and visibility made advertisers and the industry, mostly dominated by white men, mad? What does it mean for an image or representation of a black woman, vis-a-vis a mannequin, to be normalized, or even, humorized, as a naked derivative of sexual pleasure and voyeurism with "attitude" a la mode?
The Youtube comments from the video speak volumes to the ways in which tidbits of popular culture and consumerism become conduits for propagating racialized and misogynistic fantasy within the American public imagination and consciousness. Yes, this commercial bares undertones of racializing stereotypes. Yes, it was probably intended to be lighthearted, contemporary, and humorous. And Yes, by participating in the dialogue that the Supermodelquins have started, I am reproducing the effects that this commercial garners.
However, as a black woman, I also understand that even though publicly, access to my own body and my own sexuality may be usurped from me and plastered all over TV and magazines and the internet, through every medium from Old Navy commercials to Smooth Magazine to Manet's Olympia, I determine when and where I enter. Which is why I admire such projects like those of artist Mickalene Thomas.
Her large scale photographs, prints, and paintings picturing black female subjects are the perfect segue way to engage in a dialogue about reclaiming and complicating so-called representations of black women, their bodies, and sexuality. Her first solo-exhibition, entitled Mickalene Thomas: She's Come UnDone! will debut at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City this Thursday, and will run until May 2, 2009.
Thomas's work is far from the panecea for distasteful and demode depictions of black women. In fact, it beckons us as viewers to ponder notions of celebrity, control, lust, exploitation, and emulation. Pieces like "Put something on it" remind us that there is no "right" or "wrong" representation of black women, but it is the way in which black female bodies are framed, in nuance, that reify the notion that well, presentation is everything.
R.I.P. to Kid Cudi's music career. From his A Kid Named Cudi Mixtape, "Day N Nite" To check out the MTV news coverage of his retirement from music, click here. Click here to access Kid Cudi's blog.
Okay, I can deal with Paris Fashion Week. I can even deal with the Metropolitan Opera's 125th Anniversary Gala. But if Kanye West and Amber Rose continue to infiltrate my most sacred place of refuge, le monde du l'art, I am going to give up my aspirations of becoming an art historian and apply for a job at American Apparel selling spandex disco pants. Image courtesy of Scene and Heard, ArtForum.com.
Top: Jeffrey Deitch, renowned international art dealer, and Amber Rose, former exotic dancer and video vixen. Bottom: Kanye West and artist Vanessa Beescroft.
Before I first encountered the work of painter Richard Mayhew, I never quite understood the notion that large-scale color field paintings operate as a form of landscape. Clearly, Mayhew incorporates the rhapsody and the elusiveness of abstraction while utilizing layered colors and light to recreate horizon lines and natural forms. You can check out more of Mayhew's work at G.R. N'Namdi Gallery in Chicago. Image: Richard Mayhew, Untitled, oil on canvas.
In this rendition of rapper Ludacris' album cover for "Theatre of the Mind," graphic designer Joe Buck is taking cues from OSPAAAL, the Organization of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. OSPAAAL has been active since the 1960s, housing one of the most sophisticated workshops for poster production in the world. Artist and late Black Panther Party Minister of Culture Emory Douglass once collaborated with OSPAAAL in efforts to speak out against the subjugation of people of color all over the world. Contemporary artists like Shepard Fairey and Joe Buck are drawing upon a legacy of image production that even today still resonates with society.
