The Bearden Project

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Clarissa Sloan MU 2313 Section 010 “Selections from the Bearden Project” 10 September, 2014 Galleries I & II of the Department of Art & Design At the “Selections from the Bearden Project” exhibit, students, who I am assuming studied Bearden, took his style and adapted it into their own works of art. From what I could gather the majority of Bearden’s works were collages with distinct African American focuses. Generally the students made their own collage-like art that focused on African American culture. One work was called Portrait of a Young Girl. It was an interesting piece where the artist, Eila Alba, took a photograph of her body and shrunk, crumbled up, or enlarged parts of her body to create the image of a small child in…show more content…
This was significant to me because his was the only work that claimed that. His artwork was a collage, like most of the other works in the gallery, but his contained photos exclusively of Caucasian men and women. By far, my favorite work out of the two galleries was called Hide and Seek. The artist, Kambui Olujimi, took several trophies and wrapped them in blue tissue paper so that the observer could not see the exact detail of the trophies but one could see an obscured form of them. Each artist in this exhibit created a work that spoke to them personally and was meant to send that message to the observer. In the work, Portrait of a Young Girl, Eila Alba made the message very personal by using photographs of her own body. When I first looked at the figure, I was a little nauseated. The fact that the artist decided to use photographs made the skin look more realistic. She also decided to use some yarn and place it on the top of the head in a couple of messy buns. The effect was, in all honesty, creepy. It stood out to me though, which is why I decided to include this piece. The artist took Bearden’s style of collage and adapted it to her own art. She herself was African American which adds to Bearden’s theme of African…show more content…
I am not debating that anything in that gallery was not art, but frankly, if I had all the money in the world and I was asked to pick any works of art, it would not be from the selections I found in the “Selections from the Beardon Project” exhibit. Portrait of a Young Girl, while eye capturing, is not a piece I could see being studied in the distant future. It was too much of an introspective piece, it meant something to the artist, but the observer could not really connect to it. The next piece, Photographs with and Audience (Miami) Collage, is, if possible, the least canonical piece of art in the exhibit. It was bulky and colorless, therefore not aesthetically pleasing. The artist used a concept that had been done many times before and will be done many times again. To be completely honest, the piece was boring. My personal favorite piece, Hide and Seek, though I am partial to it, I do not believe is canonical art either. The fact is, most modern art, which is what these pieces are, is not canonical. They are simply about being aesthetically pleasing and do not necessarily have to have a deeper meaning which is what I imagine art must have to be canonical. While Hide and Seek made me feel something, instead of buying the work, I would probably spend my money on some blue tissue paper and take some of my old trophies and create the same

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