Art Appreciation

Art Appreciation: Contemporary art and artists

Write 150-500 words (not including references) that cover the following:

Brief artist biography

Explain the artist's overall "theme" or interests.

Describe and evaluate one of the artist's works: title, material, size, year completed, subject matter, content, style.

Include an image of the artwork you are describing.

What is the possible meaning of the work? What is the artist trying to say?

Does the work of art reveal any contemporary (current) concerns or interests? How is this demonstrated?

From the PBS Art 21 web site is information about contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems. The site contains a brief biography of her, which is copied and pasted here for you:

Biography

Carrie Mae Weems was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1953. Weems earned a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (1981), and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego (1984), continuing her studies in the Graduate Program in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley (1984-87). With the pitch and timbre of an accomplished storyteller, Carrie Mae Weems uses colloquial forms-jokes, songs, rebukes-in photographic series that scrutinize subjectivity and expose pernicious stereotypes. Weems's vibrant explorations of photography, video, and verse breathe new life into traditional narrative forms-social documentary, tableaux, self-portrait, and oral history. Eliciting epic contexts from individually framed moments, Weems debunks racist and sexist labels, examines the relationship between power and aesthetics, and uses personal biography to articulate broader truths. Whether adapting or appropriating archival images, restaging famous news photographs, or creating altogether new scenes, she traces an indirect history of the depiction of African Americans for more than a century. She has received honorary degrees from Colgate University, New York (2007) and California College of the Arts, Oakland (2001)....