ASSIGNMENT 4

Karen Jo

WMST250

Assignment Four: Learning Analysis

The story of this course, Women, Art and Culture involves the individual’s assumptions and perspectives that evolve and gradually change to become more accepting and open to new and different ideas. The story begins with a broad opening of art and the association it has with women. One of the first things that I was exposed to were the museums, which were not new to me at the time, but the concept for which I was searching for was the key changing factor. I have been to the museums before and have seen the exhibits, especially at the Hirshorn Museum and the National Gallery of Art. What was so different this time was going into these museums and observing the artwork with the question in mind, how does this relate to women? Everything I looked at, I tried asking myself this question, and I was surprised to find that I observed many things that I would not have, if I was not questioning myself. Many times, it was subtle, seeing how women were portrayed or how the museum was set up. Especially in the National Museum of Women and the Arts, it was a surprising discovery to face the assumptions I had about women and to have my perceptions change. While walking through the museum, I felt that I was naïve in my thinking about women and even about art. I was shocked to see the Paula Rego exhibit, and the artwork is something that I will never forget in my entire life. The artistic depiction in women basically discredited the predisposed notion of women and their role in history.

The act of writing down my assumptions made me come face to face with what I originally perceived, and it was a good exercise into realizing how women and arts is more of an intricate topic than what many assumed. Afterwards, we did a reflection in class and we were asked to point out how this assignment was ours and what we liked about it and what we did not. Looking back, I see how reflecting back upon our work was an essential part of learning and gaining experience in the topic. I wrote to myself, “The point of reflecting back on our own work is to look back and learn about ourselves and how we think of our own work; instead of just waiting to hear what other people think. It makes the writer think about their writings from an outside view.” The freewrites that we did and the notes in class gave us an opportunity to reflect and then discuss our opinions with other people who experienced the same thing but came out with different feelings.

Our first discussion in class involved how we perceived ourselves as a subject in history. For me, it was a good chance to look back upon my personal life and see where I fit into. After looking back at the entire course, I fully understand how this exercise fits into my learning of women and the arts, because it matched with our assignment three and how we fit into different categories. In our world, everything about us, our different entities, combine to create the person we are and the person we become in history. At the beginning, looking at myself in history, I saw how I identified myself through my culture and race. I found that as a second generation Asian American, I was privileged in some ways to have all the advantages by being born in America, but also being disadvantaged by being a minority. Little did I know that our course would come back to this identification of ourselves, by looking deeper into the different marked and unmarked categories that make up each person. While in discussion, I heard how other people identify themselves in history and many times it involved what events they participate in, or where they come from. It was enlightening to hear the reflection of others who are so different from me and yet to have come together and share in our discussion class.

The next section of the story that we moved into was looking at billboards, murals, and shadows. These types of expressions are everywhere and I see them every day, but I never recognized them as pieces of art. In class, we looked at certain billboards that spoke out to the vast public by stating blatant idea. During one class time, we looked at women in the city, which was a public art exhibition throughout the streets of Los Angeles, and looking at the types of artwork that came out of it was exciting and fascinating. It was memorable to me to see the video of where it was all different colored papers, and on each of the papers there was an inflammatory essay written to it, making this exhibition not only a piece of visual artwork, but making it a message to the general public. I was surprised to learn that this is considered to be art, because I have never seen something like this before; it was not artwork that was placed in a museum and states as “being artwork.” The shadow notion was inspiring to me, and changed the way I looked at art and how it could evoke emotions while telling a story. The shadows came from an international event that commemorates the anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. It showed me a different side of artwork, and how by making these shadows, it represents a strong emotional event that occurred in our history and at the same time it was sending out messages that our world should prevent future atrocities from happening again.

The entire question in these exercises and looking at these types of arts was to ask the question, What counts as Art? Are paintings and sculptures only considered art if they are placed in a museum by respected individuals? Looking back on the course, I remember having an important conversation with my discussion class about what is considered art and who determines it. Is it the money that makes certain pieces considered worthy of being called art? Does that make free pieces in the public not worthy of being called art? While thinking about it in class, I realized that our societies perception of art is somewhat skewed in the fact that when we go to museums and look at different pieces, these pieces were specifically chosen by someone who either donated it to the museum because they had an extensive amount of money. For example, even in the National Museum of Women and the Arts, many of the artworks were put into the museum because one wealthy women chose to put the pieces she liked into the museum to let others enjoy them also.

This also went along with the reading in Freeland, in But is it Art? because it talked of how most museums acquired their pieces of art and how money had a big impact in it. Freeland makes a point when saying that people with money have their own specific taste than people without money, and therefore, their sponsorship in art creates a different type of art display than it would be for those with less money, belonging to a different socio-economic level. I felt a connection with this when we did our chapter three assignment, because it also connected with how our unmarked or marked category of being in a certain economic level changes the way we see power and oppression in our lives. The power and oppression connects to the topic of art, because it changes how we perceive certain aspects of art and the opportunity to see a variety of art. When looking at a view from a broader sense, we see how art is an intricate part of our countries heritage and history. Freeland again talked about how museums defined classes in certain countries and how it demonstrated sophistication for countries. In my life, this view is very prevalent to me because I can easily identify with this type of thinking. In the Asian culture, artwork and music demonstrates a certain level of sophistication in the past centuries, especially in the Song era where peace allowed the country to develop artistically and prosper. Even in America, there is a strong emphasis on education in music and art because it demonstrates that our country has culture and has history to remember. In order to make art such a big part of our culture, massive amounts of money needs to be funded into these museums and educational programs. Freeland discusses how the money has changed from being given by private philanthropist to corporations. This is a very important observation, because it changes the scheme of what types of artwork is placed out for the public and what type of message is trying to be sent.

While looking at billboards’, murals and shadows in class, our discussion class was also doing assignment two which involved all of us working together and coming up with the definition of feminism. Working collectively, we came up with the final definition of feminism and an event that would advocate feminism. Specifically, we came up with various artist and speakers who would be willing to speak out against domestic violence for those who unable to. Looking back at my individual account of the group project, I discovered how working in a group brings the strength s of different people together and allows us to come up with better ideas than if we did it individually. Everyone in the group worked together and contributed to some aspect of the project, and therefore, I felt our concert event was a success, which if it was real, would be excited and noteworthy to attend.

The story continues to progress with an analysis in women studies, and our everyday lives seen with new eyes. Reading Kindred, by Octavia Butler, was an exciting and enjoyable read. Not only was it science fiction, it talked about a lot of different aspects involving slavery and power. In Kindred, the main character, Dana, continually goes back into the past and discovers that she has to keep saving this white boys life, named Rufus, who ends up to be a plantation owner during the times of slavery. As an African American woman, she faces discrimination not only in the fact that she has to be a slave because of her skin color, but she is a woman, subject to rape and abuse by men. The book demonstrated the oppressive power that the white men held, simply because they were white and because they had the power of being a man. Back in those days, slaves were treated as objects and property, not as human beings, and it revealed how little respect some people had for others simply because of the social construction of our society. For me, I did not personally connect with Dana in the sense of being the same race or of living in the same era, but I discovered that oppression and power exist in many different forms. The oppression and power that I experience is clearer in the matrix of domination that we discussed in class.

For assignment three, we were to come up with a creative project and a paper analyzing art in our everyday lives and seeing where power and oppression lies within ourselves. This is the next part of the story, interconnected with our readings and how feminism is a part of our everyday lives. My social location is the social place in where I identify in different groups of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity and nation. Working with my partner, Helen Paik, allowed me to compare our different situations and identify how we both fit into similar categories and how we differ. Our creative project was a model of a tree, with the base being our strongest group that we identify with, and the branches leading off to the other marked or unmarked categories. The base was our race, and ethnicity which was being Asian, and it proved to both of us how we most strongly identify ourselves and where we found power. Being Asian is a marked category, and is the most notably difference we experience from the unmarked category of Caucasians. In my life, I discovered that I found power in being privileged in areas like my age, and class, along with being a US citizen. Placing myself in all these different groups and analyzing whether it is marked or unmarked help me to realize how I am made up and how power and oppression are balanced. For every single person, in some areas, they belong to a marked or unmarked category, and it influences others by creating a social construction. Where some are privileged, it causes others to be oppressed; for example, those who are unmarked for religion are Christian, and this gives them power by being the majority, but for others who belong to a different religion, they are in the unmarked category and are oppressed because their religion is looked down upon.

In class, my analysis of looking back upon the project and our teamwork, I found that I was proud of our collaboration and the ideas that we came up with. In our analysis in the big lecture, I wrote that “I learned that power is always associated with oppression and that the one side will be given power and the other side take power from due to our systems of power.” Doing this assignment helped me look at my own life and realize how feminism is a more broad idea that I initially thought. My first assumptions of feminism was very narrow, as demonstrated by my list of assumptions from the museum trips, but gradually reading more about women and seeing the fight for feminism made me realize how feminism is more than that. Feminism is many times misunderstood, and people feel alienated from the notion of feminism because they believe it is simply about women and their fights for rights. While the definition of feminism is “the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men,” it involves making everyone more equal.

The class was not only about feminism, but also how art is involved and the expressions and feelings that are evoked from these artworks. The Chicana Art, by Laura Perez, was very different to me, in terms of art, and I really liked how it connected to feminism. One of the art pieces that I remember the most is called Measurements of Time, made by Patricia Rodriguez. The color aspects and the space dimensions of time and sharp mechanical points made a deep impact on me and how I view art. It was a depiction of a clock with a crucifix in the background, with red and white colors. To me, I saw how functionality worked with such other ideas as religion and time, and faith. Also, there were other pieces of art that each had individual characteristics and were unique in their own ways. The description that went along with the pieces was insightful, and showed what the artist was thinking and why they made what they did.

As the story comes to a close, the topics of art and feminism become more intertwined and finally come together. Learning about all these various topics allowed me to see how art is so important in culture, and along with that, how feminism is in our everyday life. The way that art expresses the ideas of feminism is not only creative, but insightful for those who are unaccustomed to the topic of feminism. The fight of feminism is always alive, and sometime political activism will only begin when we take the time and effort to fight for a cause we want. In the books we read like Fight Like a Girl and Feminism is for Everybody, I learned that it takes a voice and an action to make a difference. Fight like girl described how to change our current society and make equal opportunities for women. I really liked how in Feminism is for Everybody, there were side notes along the pages that gave interesting definitions of different insights for the reader.

As for myself, I am a part of the course because I have grown in my understanding of feminism and have evolved in my analysis of art. In the class, I contributed my ideas to the discussions and tried to benefit from what others said. I like how our discussion class was very open, and everyone could voice their opinion about the same things. For my absences, I missed discussion once, due to sickness, but I was still involved in the readings and looked at the blog for the information I missed. For our entire group project for assignment two, I showed up for the meetings we had at the library and gave ideas for speakers and activities that could occur for the concert. In our assignment three, me and my partner both gave ideas and contributed to coming up with our joint creative project. For what worked for me in the class, I didn’t like the discussion about the readings as much as the discussion about certain topics. For example, we would read some stories like “The Rape of Mr. Smith” and this exercise helped me to understand the objections toward feminisms more clearly. I also really like the Tunnel of Oppression that we participated in because I learned so much and experienced an event so worthwhile seeing. If it was not for this class, I probably would not have seen it and experienced this educational event. The story of the course is one in which we begin naïve and come face to face with our initial assumptions. I realized how different my ideas have changed throughout the course and my knowledge of art and feminism has changed to become more aware of the current situations.