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Homework answers / question archive / SUBJECT - Art and Selected Populations Choose an artwork from the theme (Crisis and Trauma) I choose COVID-19
SUBJECT - Art and Selected Populations Choose an artwork from the theme (Crisis and Trauma) I choose COVID-19. Discuss how covid-19 it might portray resilience. Embed an image of your work. Choose any work of art you like to discuss your theme covid-19. It must include at least one research from sociological journal
Module III – Art and Selected Populations will cover a wide range of considerations for selected populations. We will not have time to go over all the groups. You will select the ONE of your choice to discuss. Examples of the special population topics include: the military, mental health, medicine, the disabled body, crisis and trauma, justice, children, the elderly, and the disadvantaged. Module III is a dense section. Special populations can be defined in numerous ways. It is not limited to the standard non-discrimination categories of race, religion (creed), gender, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status.
You will be asked to research one special population that is of interest to you. If you have another population you would like to propose, send me an INBOX message. Briefly (2 or 3 sentences) tell me what your proposal and I’ll consider it. In this lecture, we will consider art and specific populations. First, we’ll cover the most obvious, those with physical disabilities (e.g. Frida Kahlo). Then, we will look at military populations (communities, soldiers, veterans, families) and Latino farm worker children.
Our first reading (Spieldenner 2019) takes us back to Module I. We learned about Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) and her mural work with Diego Rivera. If you watched the movie Frida (not required) you learned she was in a terrible bus/trolley accident. Several people died and Kahlo was severely injured. Spieldenner offers an analysis of Kahlo’s introspective art based on her disabilities. During months of bedridden convalescence, Kahlo requested a mirror be installed above her bed in order. She reflected in the mirror and her first paintings were self-portraits from the bed.
Kahlo’s former home has been converted into a top tourist attraction. The Frida Kahlo Museum, Coyoacán, Mexico City. La Casa Azul (The Blue House) features many items that speak to Kahlo’s disability. In addition to her customized bed, the home includes the specialty undergarments that helped her manage her physical disabilities. Her physical disabilities would impinge on her time and energy for art. “This challenge of normative time is referred to as ‘crip time’ where disability presents challenges to normative time frames” (Spieldenner 2019:77).
Spieldenner’s work focuses on the art of Kahlo and how her physical limitations inspired in her art. Otto Dix (1891 – 1969) was a German painter and printmaker. His first-hand experience as a soldier and Prisoner of War (P.O.W.) of World War I inspired the social commentary of his art. Most of Dix’s art was lost. Nazi’s considered his work degenerate, and it was destroyed. War Cripples was one only of them. Why was it destroyed? What message did the reign not like that it was saying? Dix recreated the image again as a drypoint print (etching).
If you have taken the SOCI/MUSI Music in Society course, this theme of artists expressing their beliefs and attitudes regarding social constructs. Their music was a voice for a cadre of believers that were suppressed by the majority or ruling parties. Protest art, like protest music can have positive effects in society. If you have taken the SOCI/MUSI Music in Society course, this theme of artists expressing their beliefs and attitudes regarding social constructs will be familiar to you. We are considering the visual response as opposed the musical.
Dix’s portrayal of the war injuries indicates he recognized the tremendous personal sacrifice soldiers made to the war effort. Dix’s art is considered some of the most profound statements on the inhumanity of conflict. War Cripples portrays men returning from the horrors. Their uniforms reflect their service. They mingle on the city sidewalk, passing in front of a Schuhmacherei (English translation - shoe store). Dix’s irony is that 80,000 soldiers returning from war are amputees and are no longer in need of shoes as their legless figures pass the shop in a wheelchair (McGhee 2015).
Today, more than any other time in history, art for the military populations has been recognized as therapeutic as well as for sending a message of understanding. Service members, veterans, children and family members of service personnel, caregivers, and communities are all populations involved in military-based arts programs. “The arts have also become part of the protocol of military health care as health professionals integrate diverse disciplines—music, visual arts, creative writing—into the ongoing care of troops recovering from a range of physical and mental injuries" (Beete 2019).
A special population of the military has been the gay soldier. As we learned in Module I, the U.S. government sponsored arts-based projects. One beneficiary of the program was Paul Cadmus (1904 – 1999). His social realism art included military scenes. “The Fleet’s In! became Cadmus’s most controversial work, and his first run in with censorship” (Walburn 2017:5). His New Deal art was subjected to intense governmental scrutiny since the government funded the commission. Cadmus claimed the negative publicity aided his reputation as a painter. Other military art was “coded” and life as a gay soldier was not always evident to the straight observer. Cadmus is important as an artist as one who successfully managed to shift awareness between public (role as a soldier) and private (sexuality) lives through his portrayals of gays in the military. Cadmus and Stevenson were both featured in Twentieth-Century American Drawings (Cummings 1984) for placing covert context to the art. Cadmus utilized the American sailor and Stevenson’s 1983 Raul for Pompeii (Street of the Brothels) illustrated lounging young man, bare from the waist up. “If we removed the architecture of his trade (brothel), it would leave only a beach boy sunning himself on some unnamed beach of sand” (Cummings 1984:128). For the six-city tour of American drawings, Cadmus’ Gilding the Acrobats (1930) portrays male circus performers casually dressing in a circus tent. “Cadmus establishes a very intimate ambiance of flesh” (Cummings 1984:35).
Military populations are but one subset of special populations that benefit from the arts. Consider the impact of an arts-based project for Latino farm worker children (Lith, Quintero, Pizzutto, and Grzwacz (2018). The purpose of Vamos a la Escuelita Arte Terapia. The project was designed after identifying multiple mental health issues for migrant farm worker children. Accessing mental health resources are challenging due to a number of factors. There is stigma related to asking for help, lack of medical insurance, language barriers, and transportation problems to name a few. The epidemic of poor mental health for children is exacerbated by the structural construction of an “accumulation of public policy, public opinion, and social phenomenon” (Lith, et al 2018:214).
The art therapy project was designed for children, ages 2-7. However, creative solutions needed to be found to prevent the barriers as noted above. Strategies that work within the community and the school system show promise of success. Language barriers are circumvented by the use of art therapy “a non-verbal form of emotional expression” (Lith et. al 2018:214). The location of the arts program was a community building near where the farm worker families lived. The young children were able to walk to the program with adult supervision and then walked home after each weekly art play date. The leaders were bilingual, and the children received all instruction in both Spanish and English.
At the end of the program, it was determined that the six-week art therapy for the farm worker children resulted in five primary benefits. The children improved their fine and gross motor skills. They demonstrated increased creativity. They began to be able to create and tell stories to give their art meaning. Some artists prefer to label their artworks and even write monographs or give lectures on the meaning of their art. Others prefer not to label or identify their art, leaving it to the viewer to define the meaning for themselves.
Harold Stevenson approached disability in art as a message of beauty. Looking at disability in a new light, through the lens of the artists, encourages society to consider disability not as a deficit but as a part of the identity of the person (Watson N.d.). Inspiration for the figure artist arises from numerous sources: an old photograph, live model studio time, or the next-door neighbor. The God Pan (1963) was beautifully rendered by Stevenson whilst living in Paris France. Although his neighbor was born with an arm deformity, Stevenson painted the beauty and labeled it The God Pan. The title references the Greek god of the wild. Born “an ugly child” with goat like extremities, Pan lived in Arcadia of Greek mythology “the mountainous, wild, and rustic central region of Peloponnese. Here the god spent most of his days wandering the forests, playing haunting melodies on his pipes, chasing nymphs, and taking naps in secluded places during the heat of the noontide” (Greek N.d.). Stevenson transformed the arm (see Figure 4, lower left) as the goat hoof of the God Pan, giving it special powers and running strength.
Pan’s homeland was not so far removed from Stevenson’s neighbor. Living in the city of Paris as a “poor starving artist,” Stevenson and two of his neighbors would frequently go to a friend’s country home. One-armed Pan was an excellent shot with a rifle. The trio ate game from the forest – deer, rabbit, and bird. Their beautiful neighbor was a god in their eyes, god of the forest.
Stevenson’s Pan God resides as part of the Yale University Art Gallery. Stevenson’s figure drawing is his found beauty in the object many find fault with. Too fat, too thin, too wrinkled, too unattractive. Stevenson presented the anatomy of human body parts. To enhance figure drawing, he magnified his studies onto large scale canvas. He gave us Fingers, Left Hand (1963). This piece illustrates the beauty of the fingertips of a hand. The Eye of Lightning Billy is a 6-panel, 10 x 15 feet eye. Stevenson’s figure drawing is mostly limited to specific body parts, including the Toes of Sal Mineo (1962) or the Smile of Alain DeLeon.
Beauty and disability are not merely in the eyes of the beholder, but in how socially constructed context they are presented. “Pan and Daphnis survives in at least eight complete marble replicas, as well as many fragmentary ones…” (Hermann 1975:87).
Figure 5. The God Pan teaches the blind boy to play the panpipe. A flute made of reeds from the marsh where the nymphs live. Pan and Apollo (2nd century, B.C. ©National Trust / Andrew Fetherston. http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/486318
Does having the artist title the work help you appreciate the work? What the explanation of the context? Stevenson’s neighbor had an arm deformity and Stevenson gave him the story of the God Pan from Greek Mythology. Does having a brief explanation of the painting help you appreciate it? Generally, museums will identify art works with a standard label format. Title of work (if any), artist name, nationality and years living, the medium and size of the work. Provenance can be included. “From the collection of…”. Today, the modern museum is reconsidering what labels they affix to artworks. They are moving away from what has been called “the priestly voice of absolute authority” (Greg 2010).
Part of this change in museum philosophy is the broadening audience base for museums. Often depicted as elitist organizations, museums now embrace diverse membership, offer free and reduced priced admissions and programs, and encourage broader audience participation. Museums also recognize the artists and the public want a voice in deciding what they like. Gregg (2010) informs us that museums have historically taken it upon themselves to make assumptions about what people know and what audiences should like. It is a lot of authority, often misplaced. Let the artists and viewer decide what they like.
Isn’t this true in relation to special populations? Institutions of authority made the “priestly voice of absolute authority” as to what happened to selected populations. Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder until 1973. Today, gay marriage is legal in the United States. The social construction of what constitutes a health disability has certainly changed over the decades.
Consider the 1883 writing of Angeline Fuller, The Venture. Fuller includes a chapter “Scenes in the History of the Deaf and Dumb” where she argues deafness should be naturalized. “Its associated disability is located not in deaf individuals themselves, but rather in the social conditions that sometimes make it difficult for them to communicate with others” (Sanchez 2013:134).
Look at the progress being made with children with mental disabilities. At the 1960 annual conference of the National Association of Social Workers, Dybwad’s lecture implored the institutional workers to consider the idea that institutionalizing retarded (sic) children was not always in the best interest. That years spent in institutions were "Lost Years." Society’s prejudice and judgements prevent recognizing the potential of persons with developmental disabilities (Dybwad 2019 [1960]). Persons with disabilities are increasingly being featured in advertising art. Children with Down’s Syndrome, people in a wheelchair. Seeing people in context with society helps us to realize the value of art and special populations. The social constructs of beliefs are interrupted when artists show us the special populations in a new perspective.
As you consider what special population to research this week, bear in mind the idea of what labels and interpretation does not only for a work of art but the populations it can represent. Look at the examples from our module Discussion topic. You will find the link for each art in your Discussion assignment. Consider artwork from the past, such as The Family that was painted during the flu epidemic or contemporary art from today. What art is being created today due to the COVID-19 crisis?
