Adolph Gottlieb
Taino Symbols
The Couple In The Cage
“according to the Guggenheim Museum website, if “Gottlieb discovered that a symbol had a recognizable meaning within either Western or tribal art, he immediately removed it from his painting vocabulary as part of his quest for a collective unconscious.” By the third or fourth week of class, I wanted to remove much of what we had learned from my own vocabulary.” pg. 24
There is a collective consciousness among artists with similar backgrounds. Artists with alike demographics share some beliefs and ideals. These artists may express their beliefs differently, but the foundation of who they are is the same. For example, I can tell which students attending NJCU are from Jersey City. People that grow up in Jersey City are authentic, blunt, and mind their business. People from Jersey City are very supportive and have a natural bullshit detector.
I have attended a lot of classes that I felt weren’t worth my time. I don’t enjoy classes when I can’t connect or relate to my professor. Most of the professors working at NJCU didn’t grow up in Jersey City, or an identical city.
“I, on the other hand, felt solidarity with the artists’ need to highlight the shameful history of the world's fair and how, more often than not, people of color are brought into art spaces to perform for white audiences.” pg. 25-26
Anytime a person of color shares something from their culture for the consumption of white people it’s at our expense. Rarely does it benefit people of color to share their culture with people that don’t understand appreciation/admiration. I am a full supporter of profiting off of your culture. In a society where everything is plastic and copied behavior, your culture is gold. Anything that is to profit off of a culture that isn’t yours should be shut down.
“Those are also the times when, even though I know I can get out of the cage, I can never quite escape.” pg. 28
People of color exist in a hamster wheel. It doesn’t matter how many times you educate someone, people will be mindful for a week then go back to being ignorant. Influencers place a lot of importance on gaining support from white people. People of color need to switch that search for acceptance, into accepting themselves. Real power is in building community with other people of color.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Perfect lovers) pg. 32
His lover was diagnosed with AIDS and dying.
Clocks must be set at the same time. If one falls out of sync they’re reinstalled and reset to the same time. The piece theoretically lasts forever.
In a letter Gonzalez-Torres writes,
Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, the time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of the time. Therefore, we give back credit where it is due: time. We are synchronized, now forever. I love you.
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