mid term paper

New worlds/ New identities
By: Ben Greenlees
As the world becomes more and more globalized artists are able to play with the new identities of culture. New ideas about ethnics, gender, racial and national identities are always changing due to global interactions, flow of money , people and information. These things all have an effect on the way art is made as well. Art sometimes reflects the society is comes from and the political/ social things happening at the time of the artists creation of the piece. Since technology is such a rising industry and the internet is creating new pathways in which people can become connected. Globalization is and new identities are becoming more and more common to the point that we are almost looking at a new world.

Ways some artists are using globalization to build off one another in their artwork. This building has happened in the past like some say Picasso based some of his cubism ideas off of African masks but with the way the internet and television has hit the world ideas and topics move so fast now days. Art is become more and more hybrid. According to Noel Carroll in the chapter are we global now/yet? In the art of globalization: then and now “Furthermore, American television has been hospitable to Japanese shows, like pokemon, yu-gi-oh, hi hi puffy ami yumi sho, and the influence of japenese animation can be seen on the cartoon channels stateside. Japenese product is so familiar to Americans that a pokemon figure can be satirized in the toon Drawn Together on the cable channel comedy central. And the American company has recently launched an indigenous anime program.”(133) Americans are taking ideas and bouncing them back and forth between television cartoons and other productions of work, which in return shows that globalization is impeding at a much faster speed then before. Cartoons are not the only ones that this happens too American idol has mulitiple different versions for example there is an Indian idol and other American idol spin offs. Globalization has been good thing but it takes the individuality out of some things and become too bland and mixed.

One artist that plays with this idea of new identities is Kehinde Wiley, he plays with identities of people in his paintings is by placing African American urban men in poses and situations from classical paintings. Wiley’s paintings push the identities of young black urban American’s and place them in empowering stances that mimic those of classical paintings. By placing these urban African Americans dressed in street clothes he is addressing the image of the status of African American men in contemporary culture. The identities are changing in the world considering 100 years ago if you said the president would be black nobody would have ever believed you. Just by placing these African American street clothed you get a sense that things are changing little by little. The style of the painted figures is done in a traditional painting style with a background that is contemporary pattern almost fabric like for a back ground. According to his video interview that I found at the website http://current.com/items/76335342_kehinde-wiley.htm he asks men from the streets to come to his studio and pick out poses from art history books that he leaves out for them to look threw so he doesn’t even pick out the pose he allows the model to pick their favorite. He tends to lean towards painting the style of old society portraits because there is sense of power in those paintings because they were mostly wealthy white land owners. So by flipping the view to shed a different light on the subject of the giving pose of the portrait in an updated and a completely new identity, because it is one thing to see a wealthy land owner portrait but when you see a common every day guy from Brooklyn it gives off a different mood and identity. During the video some people referred to the black males in the paintings to almost be gangster like and thug like yet in the same way the pose they take places them almost away from that because of the classical way the stance of the character is taken.

The movements in painting have come a long way from classical renaissance, to modernism, and now the post modernism movement paintings have been around for ages. When most people think of art the first thing they think of is drawing and painting so by pushing the idea of globalization and new identity, painting styles have changed as well by picking up on techniques from around the world nothing is immune to globalization just some area of the world are less fortunate to globalize and acquire new information. For the most part the world painting has stayed the same but the combination of styles has changes and became more hybrid and slowly like everything else the world will become one and united. The world is slowly become a melting pot like America once was and hopefully the idea of boarders one day disappears.

The world is moving and we are constantly changing and combining and hybridizing the way things are done. Globalization brings everyone closer together and helps mankind move and better ourselves because being able to work together and creates a new identity one that is and hopefully that identity is a positive one in the future.