The Art Works
Title: Nan one month after being battered
Artist: Nan Goldin
Medium: Photograph on paper
Date: 1984
Nan Goldin (born 1953) is a photographer who uses her own life and experience as the source material for her work. The images she exhibits are often informal pictures of the time she spends with friends. This work is particularly personal as it records her own appearance after having been beaten up by a boyfriend – she has a black eye, and her face is still puffy and swollen. The honesty of her work is sometimes shocking, as we see things we might normally not want to think about. By learning about her experience perhaps it will encourage us to be more honest about our own lives, and to confront issues we might not normally talk about.
Title: From Tarzan to Rambo: English Born ‘Native’ Considers her Relationship to the Constructed/Self Image and her Roots in Reconstruction
Artist: Sonia Boyce
Medium: Photograph and mixed media
Date: 1987
As a black woman growing up in England Sonia Boyce (born 1962) explores the relationship between two cultures: that of England where she grew up and that of the Caribbean where her parents were born. Although a ‘native’ of England, she might still be seen as an outsider, and her work is concerned with this overlap.
Her own image is important here, and it was built up from photobooth pictures of the artist. To this she has added other types of images: cartoon representations of golliwogs (these days considered a racist stereotype), line drawings of ‘natives’ from a comic, as well as fabric patterns and leaves. The small collage this created was then photographed and printed in a large format, so that the faces are slightly bigger than life size. Using pencil and paint the photograph was modified. The faces on the bottom left were made to look like drawings, while those on the right were coloured. A picture of Tarzan was painted on the left-hand side in pink, and partially covered again with white paint.
The wide format of the work is intended to imitate a cinema screen. Boyce is specifically concerned here not just with the inadequacy of stereotypes in general but also with the lack of a black female presence within the film industry. Much of our image of the world comes from the cinema, and the stories that films tell affect the way we behave or think about people in real life. Boyce has commented on the fact that both Tarzan and Rambo are strong, white men who find themselves in an alien environment but manage to come out on top, as if it is their whiteness that allows them to succeed. The ‘natives’ in these films are either enemies, or stupid, and are certainly seen as ‘primitive’. Her varied expressions imitate those of the cartoon representations she shows us, and illustrate the difference between stereotype and reality. The different techniques used – photography, cartoon, painting and drawing, colour and black and white – show us that there is more than one way of seeing someone, and imply that there is more to people than stereotypes suggest.
Given that this work was made in 1987 it is interesting to remember that it was not until 2002 that a black woman (Halle Berry) first won an Oscar as Best Actress.
Title: Self-portrait with Knickers
Artist: Sarah Lucas
Medium: Inkjet print on paper
Date: 1994
Sarah Lucas (born 1962) uses herself to create an ironic comment on attitudes towards women. Her appearance is tough and her attitude threatening. However, this image is undermined by the washing line behind her – a string of knickers hanging in the bushes. But she doesn’t tell us what to think: is she saying that even tough girls have to do the washing, or that appearances can be deceptive?
Title: Self-portrait with Fried Eggs
Artist: Sarah Lucas
Medium: Inkjet print on paper
Date: 1996
In this photograph the artist, Sarah Lucas (born 1962) is slumped in an armchair in her studio, her legs wide apart. She looks at the camera apparently unaware of the two fried eggs on her t-shirt, which we are left to wonder and stare at. Is this a cheap visual pun, or is she commenting on the way in which some men look at women as sexual objects rather than thinking of them as people by making us stare in the same way?
The echoes of World War II continued throughout the 20th century, from the immediate suffering seen in the work of Jean Fautrier, through the existentialist angst of Alberto Giacometti to the haunting memories evoked by Hannah Collins.
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