Contextual analysis art piece PDF

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art essay explaining art pieces in deep detail...

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Porto 1 Jordan Porto Kate Horvat AR 100 November 21, 2021 Compare and Contrast: Contextual Analysis Bettye Saar is an American artist whose work consists of assemblages. She used a combination of everyday objects to reveal the reality of oppression on African-Americans as well as using items that are associated with the symbolism of oppression. Due to the fact that she is a woman of color, it is very significant to understand her feelings in her artworks. She spills her personal feelings towards the segregation of her race. The Black Arts Movement became a part of her life during the 1970s. In one of her assemblage works, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), she wanted to symbolize African-American icons from The Blacks Art Movement to fight for change. She created this assemblage by depicting a woman of color who works for a white family in the South in which she is armed with a rifle and a hand grenade. By using this symbol, she is symbolizing that she is a warrior not only against physical violence but also against derogatory stereotypes. During this time period, there were many derogatory stereotypes around people of color simply just because they have different color skin. Mark Dion used his art pieces to fight in environmental politics within art pieces. He created a piece by the name of The Marine Debris, in which he went on an expedition to the islands off the coast of Alaska. This is where the North Pacific Gyre pushes trash against the side of the island. He decided to take the trash and use it to show the beauty of nature by showing debris that has become a part of nature culture. This means that some of the trash is bound to have soften colors from the sun or saltwater, along with barnacles or other small organisms to grow on them. This shows that our pollutants have an effect on nature and why he wanted to use his artworks to show the damages yet the beauty there is in nature.

Porto 2 When looking at these two artists, they have a similar passion for letting their artworks speak to get political gain for both of their causes. Bettye Saar used her assemblage pieces to gain more attention on segregation during the Black Art Movement. She did this by highlighting African-American icons to show their importance and strength. Mark Dion used his assemblages to create more of a talk around environmental politics. He traveled to different ecosystems in which he would create an assemblage that highlights the problem in that ecosystem. They both have similar ways in which they create their assemblages based off their own personal feelings and beliefs. Even though they were both passionate about two completely different social problems, I think they had similar minds when piecing these items together.

Works Cited

Porto 3 “Betye Saar: Moma.” The Museum of Modern Art, www.moma.org/artists/5102.

Vu, Mimi. “Artful and Stunning Cabinets of Curiosities, Decoded.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/t-magazine/mark-dionsculpture-tanya-bonakdar.html....