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Race and Constructions of Otherness in Visual Culture: The Art of Adrian Piper and Coco Fusco

Elizabeth Mengesha, '06 self-designed poster (2005)

Elizabeth Mengesha, '06
Independent Study Fall 2005

In Fall of 2005, I worked with Professor McGee on an independent study that examined race and constructions of otherness in visual culture. Although, I am a Comparative Politics major, I've worked on other art history research projects through the Mellon fellowship. In this independent study, I initially focused on contemporary American visual art exploring race politics, cultural identity, and various constructions of otherness. After a few weeks of general research on this subject, I focused my study on the art work of Adrian Piper and Coco Fusco. Piper, a former Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College, is a conceptual and performance artist who incorporates her background in philosophy and her interest in race politics into her artwork. Fusco, a Professor of Art at Columbia University addresses transnational issues of identity, cultural exchange and race politics through performance and video art. In short, my independent study compared the ways that both artists addressed issues of race politics and otherness through visual and performance art.

Coco Fusco, a.k.a. Mrs. George Gilbert (2004) and
Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Paula Heredia, The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey (1993)

The format of my independent study consisted of weekly one to two hour long meetings with Professor McGee. During these meetings we discussed my completed readings and assignments for the following week. In addition to examining the work of Fusco and Piper, I also read extensively on conceptual art and performance art. As a final synthesis of all my research, I prepared a twenty page paper comparing the works of Piper and Fusco. In conclusion to my project, I presented my final paper, accompanied by art slides, in a public lecture titled "Performing Otherness: Mythic Beings, Amerindians and Other Constructs." My independent study was a very rewarding project. As my project mentor, Professor McGee provided strong academic guidance while encouraging my intellectual freedom and growth.

Ancient Costa Rican and Mexican Jades

In the spring of 2004, seven students in Art History 130: Introduction to the Art of Ancient Mexico and Peru undertook original research into the Bowdoin College Museum of Arts collection of ancient Costa Rican and Mexican jades. Given by Mr. John B. Chandler '37 and Mrs. Chandler in the 1970s, the collection had not yet been studied in light of the newest ethnographic and archaeological research in the field. The students, Ivy Blackmore '07, Colin Doyle '06, Francesca DuBrock '07, Andrew Morrison'06, Lili Mugnier '07, Graham Patterson '06, and Anthony Regis '07, each selected a stone artifact to examine. They chose Costa Rican works: anthropomorphic axe god pendants, a bird-masked celt (axe) pendant, a jadeite bead with prone human figure, a bird pendant, and a long tubular bead that had been used as a base from which to suspend other ornaments; and one Mexican mask pendant.

Their research explored the imagery and symbolism of precious greenstones, such as jade and jadeite. The deep green color and tool-like shape of the miniature axes linked them to agricultural activity. Perhaps the combined human-bird effigies referred to agricultural or fertility deities who would be called upon to assure a successful harvest. The bird mask was probably meant to evoke the harpy eagle, an impressive, yet reclusive raptor of the high forest canopy. The pure avian pendant, in contrast, most likely reflects the compact shape of a kingfisher. With such high-status pendants, members of a family or community group could mark their shared identity by wearing the same symbolic form.

Susan Buhr '04:

Susan Buhr, a Classics major, completed a semester-long independent study project in Art History on The Grand Tour. The Grand Tour was, in short, a visit to Europe undertaken by the wealthy young men of eighteenth century England intended as the capstone to their Classical education. The study was advised by Professor Susan Wegner, and parts involved the aid of Jennifer Edwards, Curator of Visual Resources.

The Independent Study was designed as a series of three projects dividing the semester. The first part was devoted to the preparation of a lecture, entitled "Not Your Average Pub Crawl: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century." The lecture focused on a visual representation, through slides, of the route travelers took through Italy and important sites seen by tourists, with particular attention paid to the parallels between The Grand Tour and modern concepts of "study-abroad" and tourism. The second project was more conventional, a research paper on the topic of Classical education at the university level in eighteenth century England. Finally, the last part of the semester was spent assembling a detailed annotated bibliography on the collection and museum of Sir John Soane, a Neoclassical architect of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century London.

Susan intends to expand the research paper portion of this project into an honors project in Classics, with emphasis on the life and work of Richard Bentley during his tenureship as Master of Trinity College at Cambridge, and his influence on the importance of Classical scholarship

Jennifer Ogborne '02:

Jennifer Ogborne, an art history and archaeology interdisciplinary major, with a double major in history and a minor in anthropology '02, undertook a year-long independent study project on the imagery of 18th-century gravestones in the Burying Yard of York, Maine. In the course of her research and the writing of her final paper, Jennifer worked with professors in history and art history.

She photographed, described and analyzed the York grave stones, which had never before been studied as a group. Her original research on the most frequently used motifs: the death's head, the winged cherub head, and the urn and willow, revealed York's debt to Boston as a style-setter in the changing tastes in grave stone decoration. Through meticulous visual analysis of script styles and distinct carving styles shown in details of wings or heads, Jennifer succeeded in identifying the individual stone carvers or workshops that had carved the York stones.

Jennifer will continue her archaeological studies at the graduated school of the College of William and Mary in the fall of 2002.

Gravestone of Deacon Abraham Preeble
Carved by Nathaniel Emmes.Burying Yard, York, Maine.
Photograph by Jennifer Ogborne

Sandra Pomerantz '00:

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art houses a little-known, mysterious print now given the title of "Portrait Bust of a Young Woman." Impressions of this print are rare. Only a few others are known in Paris a33 and Berlin. Scholars have claimed that this print is a portrait of and/or was created by the young Marie de'Medici. With the generous help of the Surdna Foundation Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Sandra Pomerantz and Susan Wegner, Associate Professor of Art History were able to investigate the origins and genesis of this 16th-century woodblock print. Throughout the full-time summer research project, they examined the life of Marie de'Medici,prints made during the time of the Italian Renaissance, and the specific costume, iconography, and composition of the print. Marie de'Medici, an Italian princess, later Queen of France, would have been fourteen years old in 1587, the date inscribed on the print. Her name is also part of the print itself. Many scholars have asserted that Marie could not have done the print herself, but Pomerantz's research led her to believe that Marie's authorship was quite possible, but that the assumption that the piece was a self-portrait was wrong. The costume, positioning, and configuration of the figure was not something typical of a late-sixteenth century Italian princess, nor were they similar to any self-portrait format of the time. Pomerantz concluded that the format was in line with the popular tradition of transferring images on portrait medals into the two-dimensional, easily reproducible medium of prints.

While the central focus of the project was to trace a small part of women's contribution to the arts, the path of the research widened to include many questions about late Renaissance Italian culture, costume, and education.