A critical analysis on Nina Simone and Jean-Michel Basquiat using the Postcolonialism Model PDF

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SAE Institute London SAE 502: Analytical Essay A critical analysis on Nina Simone and Jean-Michel Basquiat using the Postcolonialism Model Student Details Name: Andrew Sansom Student Number: 17576 Course Code: ADHE0514 Assignment Code: AE (ES) Date: 6th August 2015 Word Count: 3838 Word Count incl q...

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SAE Institute London SAE 502: Analytical Essay

A critical analysis on Nina Simone and Jean-Michel Basquiat using the Postcolonialism Model

Student Details Name: Andrew Sansom Student Number: 17576 Course Code: ADHE0514 Assignment Code: AE (ES) Date: 6th August 2015 Word Count: 3838 Word Count incl quotes: 5007  

 

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Module Leader/Lecturer: Gillian McIver I hereby declare that I wrote this essay on my own and without the use of any other than the cited sources and tools and all explanations that I copied directly on their sense are marked as such, as well as that the essay has not yet been handed in neither this nor in equal form at any other official commission.

Signature…………………. Date……………………… Place……………………...  

 

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Table Of Contents

Front Page

(i)

Declaration

(ii)

Table of Contents

(iii)

Introduction

(4)

Postcolonialism

(5)

Nina Simone (Eunice Kathleen Waymon)

(6)

Jean-Michel Basquiat

(8)

Comparing Nina Simone with Jean Michel Basquiat

(10)

Mississippi Goddam (1963)

(11)

The Irony of Negro Policeman (1981)

(12)

Comparison -Rage

(13)

-Censorship

(14)

-Racial Stereotype and Identity – The Black Performer

(14)

Conclusion

(15)

Bibliography

(17)

Appendix

(19)

 

 

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Introduction Have you ever felt that the moment you said the word ‘I’, that ‘I’ was someone else, not you? That in some obscure way, you were not the subject of your own sentence? Do you ever feel that whenever you speak, you have already spoken for? Or that when others speaking, that you are only ever going to be the object of their speech? Do you sense that those speaking would never think of trying to find out how things seem to you, from where you are? That you live in a world of others, a world that exists for others? (Young, RJC,

2003,

POSTCOLONIALISM

A

Very

Short

Introduction, p.1)

The United States of America bore witness to many social, political and economic changes during the twentieth century. The country was at war numerous times, (World War One, World War Two, Vietnam, The Cold War…) the stock markets crashed causing the Great Depression, and racism was still rife in the post slavery era. Gradual changes in social equality began to emerge as a result of disempowered groups of people fighting for their say in particular African Americans. This led to new thinking and a Civil Rights movement, which ultimately began a long and ongoing process of seeking justice for people of colour within the United States. Using Post Colonialism as my model of analysis, this essay will critically compare the musician, singer and songwriter Nina Simone, and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. I have chosen these artists as I am a fan of both the music Nina Simone produced and am intrigued by many of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works and wanted to learn more about their history and struggles. This essay will consider the lives of the two artists, focussing on the periods in which they grew up, and also looking at the struggles they faced being two black artists in twentieth century America. This essay will look at the similarities and differences between them including their backgrounds and the eras they lived in. It will compare an artistic work by each of the artists and consider how their mistreatment owing to their skin colour may have contributed to their artistic output and  

 

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style. Finally, this analysis will also consider the notion that the production of any art form is a direct result of the time in which the art was produced. Postcolonialism In order to understand better the theory of Postcolonialism it is simpler for us to look at Colonialism is in the first instance. ‘Colonialism is the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth’ (Collins English Dictionary, 2014). Once the Europeans had arrived in the Americas during the fifteenth century the nation became colonised. The indigenous population of Native Americans was brought very close to extinction. Towards the close of the nineteenth century the now ‘United States of America’ had been capturing and enslaving African men and women for over one hundred years and were using them to grow the economy, forcing them to work in cotton fields and other plantations. The abolition of slavery took place in 1886, but the mistreatment of the African people that now lived among the white power structure continued with deeply troubling issues such as racism, human and civil rights abuses and for many African Americans an ongoing crisis of their own culture and identity. In Postcolonial theory this problematisation of identity can be explained by the concept of ‘The Other’. This othering relates to the colonised, left without a sense of their own true culture, especially when subjected to the same abuses in the country they now struggle to call their own. In his online essay Post-colonialism Literature the Concept of self and the other in Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians: An Analytical Approach, Al-Saidi, AAH (2014) states ‘The Other by definition lacks identity, propriety, purity, literality…the one who does not belong to a group, does not speak a given language, does not have the same customs; he is the unfamiliar, uncanny, unauthorized, inappropriate, and the improper.’ To whites every black holds a potential knife behind the back, and to every black the white is concealing a whip. (René Ricard, 1981, Radiant Child, Artforum Magazine) The second quote conveys the distrust between the former slave owners and the enslaved and suggests a significant level of hostility between the two.

 

 

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In 1929 The Wall Street Stock Market Crashed, causing the Great Depression. In his online article, The Great Depression, A Short History of the Great Depression, Taylor N, (2008) ‘The Great Depression was a worldwide economic crisis that in the US was marked by wide spread unemployment’ Following this period of hardship, tensions were increasing as racial inequality and segregation laws were still in place. As Quartaert, J, (2006 p.116) states in her essay The Gendering of Human Rights in the International Systems of Law in the Twentieth Century ‘The twentieth century has been marked by an intensification of rights claims and struggles in the face of egregious rights violations and abuses’. During the 1960’s the Civil Rights movement gained momentum following a number of atrocities. Many black lives had been lost due to hate crimes and poverty caused by a white dominated society. Even after the desegregation laws were passed new other struggles remained. ‘Postcolonialism claims the right of all people on this earth to the same material and cultural well-being’ (Young, R, 2003 p.2), but since African Americans were still colonised, having been dislocated from Africa and controlled by a white power structure, their role as the Other continued. With this in mind we will now look at my chosen artists Nina Simone and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Nina Simone (Eunice Kathleen Waymon) ‘The High Priestess of Soul’ Nina Simone, was a pianist, singer, songwriter and civil rights activist. She was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, on Feb 21st 1933 and lived until 2003. In his book Nina Simone The Biography (2009) Brun-Lambert summarises Eunice as a black girl born into a deprived, spiritually devout family and asserts that she possessed an unparalleled gift. Eunice’s mother Mary Kate was a deeply religious Christian lady with an ethnic background described by Simone & Cleary (2003 p.2) as ‘a rich mixture, drawn from white slave-owners, black slaves and the Indian people who were destroyed to make way for the plantations and the railroad’. Less seems to be known about her father’s origins although Brun-Lambert (2009 p.4) refers to him as being also ‘the son of a slave’. Eunice grew up in Tryon, North Carolina Nina describes the living quarters between blacks and whites as being somewhat more integrated than was found in most other towns during that time. ‘For instance there wasn’t a black side  

 

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of town: It was more like a series of circles around the centre with blacks or whites living in these circles…. It was a checkerboard type of living, with areas that were totally white a few pockets of blacks’ (Simone, N & Cleary, S 2003 p.4) Little Eunice’s early childhood seems to have consisted of many happy memories. Her love of music was apparent from very early on, and in her own words ‘Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was a part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing’. (Simone, N & Cleary, S 2003 p.14). As Eunice’s musical talents grew a white lady Mrs Miller thought it would be shame for such a gift to go wasted and urged her parents to send Eunice for piano lessons. Due to the family’s financial situation Mrs Miller decided to pay for Eunice’s lessons and sent her off for tuition. During this period Eunice was introduced to classical pieces of Bach and became a huge fan. She recalls that that ‘Once I understood Bach’s music I never wanted to be anything other than a concert pianist....I became well known; white folks would point to me on the street and call me ‘Mrs Massinovitch’s little coloured girl. And so I was, although I didn’t like the way they said it’ (Simone, N & Cleary, S 2003, p.23 -24). By the age of twelve, Eunice was a proficient pianist. The next logical progression was to apply to study at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music with the aim of becoming the first ever, black concert pianist. Eunice received a letter of rejection from the University and it was this rejection that was to become a key turning point in her life. Simone, N & Cleary, S (2003 p.43-44) state ‘People who knew, said the reason I was turned down was because I was black….the wonderful thing about this type of discrimination is that you can never know for sure if it is true, because no one is going to turn around and admit to being a racist’. Although her initial ability had been encouraged, the opportunities facing Nina Simone as a woman of colour in the 1950s were still extremely limited. Following her university rejection, Eunice decided to teach music to students and in 1954 in order to increase her low income, she started work at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey under the alias Nina Simone, conceived in order to hide her identity from her mother who saw working in bars as ‘working in the fires of hell’ (Simone, N & Cleary, S 2003 p.49). During this time period, friction  

 

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was increasing over black and white segregation laws. Brun-Lambert (2009, p.45) recalls a notorious case that helped to fuel the Civil Rights Movement, ‘Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, exhausted after a hard day’s work, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger’. Brun-Lambert (2009 p. 45) also states that ‘the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) was banned in Alabama…After a year of boycotts fronted by the pastor Martin Luther King and the NAACP, on the 21 December 1956 desegregation was declared on Montgomery City Lines’. By the mid 1960s Nina had turned creative energies towards The Civil Rights Movement. She started to write music in response to abuses and atrocities that had occurred and used them as political leverage. This essay will later look at one of these works in particular and compare it with an artwork painted by Jean MichelBasquiat. Jean Michel-Basquiat ‘The Radiant Child’ Jean Michel- Basquait was an artist and although this essay will be focussing specifically on his graffiti and painting, he was also a talented musician and producer. Basquait was born in 1960s Brooklyn, New York. His father was from ‘Portau-Prince, Haiti; his mother, Matilde Andradas, born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents’ (The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Unknown Date). Basquiat’s love and appreciation of art was realised at a young age and his exposure to culture was enabled by his mother. ‘The mother who spoke English, Spanish and French taught Basquait these languages and took him on trips to visit the city’s museums’ (Emmerling, L, 2011 p.11). By 1968 Basquait was drawing prolifically and started

to

make ‘cartoon-like drawings inspired

by Alfred

Hitchcock films,

automobiles, comic books, and the Alfred E. Newman character from Mad’. (The Estate of Jean Michel Basquiat) Although born into fairly middle class circumstances, Basquiat’s childhood was rife with problems. Emmerling. L (2011, p.11) states ‘At age seven, Basquiat became the victim of a traumatic accident. He was hit and run over by a car while playing in the street and rushed to a hospital. While he was convalescing his mother gave him ‘Grays’s Anatomy’, which would turn out to be an ‘important early influence;  

 

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anatomical images and references would become a central image of his work’ (Hoban. P, 1998 p.19). Basquiat’s mother suffered from severe mental illness and often harmed him and his father. Hoban, P (1998, p.20) states ‘Basquait shocked many people with various stories about the violence in his family….his mother had been committed after she tried to kill them all by driving the car off the road’. It is apparent that Basquait did not do very well at school, frequently failing classes, changing schools and eventually dropping out completely. He was also very disappointed with his work too. Emmerling, L (2011, p.11) states ‘he was himself not all satisfied whit his draftsmanship, as he reported in 1983 in an interview with Geldzahler. Looking at his schooling there may have been underlying reasons to his perceived underachievement’s.’ Racism was a problem. Cynthia Bogen Shechter, an art teacher of Basquiat’s is quoted by P. Hoban (1998, p.22) recalling ‘The school was in a completely white, Italian neighbourhood. There were only a few kids bussed in and it was really difficult for them’. Basquait ran away from home at the age of fifteen, reportedly after being stabbed by his father after he was caught smoking pot. Homeless for a time and sleeping in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village (The Estate of Jean Michel-Basquait Unknown Date) this would be where Basquiat first encountered the work of graffiti artists. By 1977 SAMO was born, ‘the pseudonym with which Basquiat signed his sprayings in SoHo’ (Emmerling, L, 2011 p.11) During this time much of his SAMO or ‘Same Old Shit’ (Emmerling, L, 2011 p.11), graffiti contained powerful lyrical content. One such piece, SAMO As an End 2 AMOS ’N’ ANDY 1984, shows his concern at how black culture had been negatively represented in the media. ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ was a radio show that started in the 1920’ and had white people playing black characters using an array of offensive stereotypes. Although this later became a television programme fronted by black people, the stereotypes could still be clearly seen. It is clear that Basquiat he had deep issues with people accepting his race, especially in the art world. He also struggled with the idea of working for others. In the documentary Jean Michel Basquiat – The Radiant Child (2010) His girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk recalls letting him move in with her. She understandably wanted help with the rent; she states ‘he went and worked with a friend that was an electrician…he came home and  

 

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started to cry and said ‘I can’t do this, I really want to help you with the rent, but I can’t be humiliated in this way, we went to this rich Park Avenue lady’s apartment and she was treating me like a slave’. In 1983, a graffiti artist called Michael Stewart on his way home from a club, decided to write on a subway wall. He was attacked and arrested by transport police; taken to hospital unconscious, he subsequently fell into a coma and died a few days later. Michael Stewart was black. The police officers were white and were later were ‘acquitted of all charges’ (Wilkerson, I 1985 New York Times, JURY ACQUITS ALL TRANSPORT OFFICERS IN 1983 DEATH OF MICHAEL STEWART). Stewart’s death in particular is known to have shocked Basquiat to his core. In the online article 'It Could Have Been Me': The 1983 Death Of A NYC Graffiti Artist, Erik Nielson (2013) reported that Basquiat was ‘deeply shaken’ by this event. In response, Basquiat created Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), ‘not only to commemorate the young man's death, but also to challenge the state-sanctioned brutality that men of color could face for pursuing their art in public spaces’ (Nielson, E 2013). Comparing Nina Simone with Jean Michel Basquiat When considering the lives of both artists it is not immediately apparent that there are striking similarities. They are both black yes, but not the same ethnic origin. They were born in different times although be it the same century, both produced cultural texts but using different mediums and were themselves from contrasting backgrounds and areas of the United States. However, both were affected by racial abuse and expressed themselves through their art forms capturing snapshots of and actively challenging the times they were produced. In Postcolonial theory Basquiat and Simone would both be considered as the Other, not belonging, somehow less than the colonising state and the colonisers themselves. This essay will now consider and compare Nina Simone’s Civil Rights song ‘Mississippi Goddam’ with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting ‘The Irony of Negro Policeman’. Mississippi Goddam (1963) (See Appendix A) On June 12th 1963, ‘In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, African  

 

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American civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith’ (No Author, No Date). Later that same year, on September 15th, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, when around 200 worshippers were inside. The church was often used as a meeting place for civil rights activists in the area, which included Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. As CNN reported, the blast killed ‘four African-American girls during church service’ (1963 Birmingham Church Bombing, 2014) In response to this horrific event, Nina Simone wrote a protest song. She stated ‘It was my first civil rights song, and it erupted out of me quicker than I could write it down’. (Simone, N & Cleary, S 2003 p.90) Interesting this seems to reference her earlier comments about her childhood and her innate connection to music. Her formal western European classical musical upbringing falls away and she reconnects with an instinctive sense of music and the need for expression. Simone goes on to say that it was at this exact moment that she knew she would commit her life to fighting for equality and freedom for black people. (Simone, N & Cleary, S 2003p.90) The lyrics in ‘Mississippi Goddam’ were very controversial due to the blasphemous content. In Matt Staggs online article Memoir in a Melody: The Outrage in Nina Simone’s ‘Mississippi Goddam’ (2013), he writes ‘Simone opens the song with the couplet "Alabama’s gotten me so upset, Tennessee’s made me lose my rest." Both states had been, and would be, major battlegrounds in the war for civil rights’. She continues with ‘Mississippi Goddam’. Due to the widely televised news coverage of these areas and the events that had taken place there, audiences immediately understood the lyrical content. In her online article, A Raised Voice, How Nina turned the ...