Art 21

Amanda S. Brown

Art 123

Week Three Paper

Art: 21 – Stories

I chose the “Stories” episode of Art 21 because when I view art, I like to be able to make sense of it. If the painting or statue or piece tells me a story, I feel as if I can relate more to it. The first artist, Kara Walker does this using what is called a circlerama. She uses black paper and glue to place scenes in a circular room. Her scenes mostly depict black men, women and children from times throughout history, but mostly concentrated in the time of slaves. I found this to be absolutely amazing and something I would love to see in person. She places scenes that seem to flow into each other throughout the room. The scenes don’t necessarily make complete sense. In one, there is a boy that looks to be shooting himself in the head, what comes out though looks like an ice cream cone that got thrown by the next scene, which is two girls hanging out with each other. The stories don’t “match”, but do flow very well together.

The simple use of lighting and cuts outs on black paper seems so simplistic, but when looked at closely, you can tell the artist takes a lot of time to make tiny little cuts in the paper. She also has to be meticulous in placing the cut outs on the plain white wall of the circular room. Ms. Walker also makes the viewer feel like they are part of her story by placing projectors in the room. The light splashes the viewer’s shadow on the wall, making them feel a part of her story. This may be why I enjoyed her pieces the most. She seemed sincere in wanting guests looking at her art to believe that they had a place in her story. The episode I watched was titled “Stories” and Kara Walker’s art definitely belongs in that category.

The next artist, Kiki Smith, made sculptures to tell her story. The first pieces discussed were of sculptures depicting witches from the Salem Witch trials. Her reasoning was that there are no statues to honor them. While watching,...