A Jeanne Site
Art as a Way of Knowing
Jacob Lawrence's Firewood #55jeanne's Commentary on Statistics Discussion
A Jeanne Site
Art as a Way of Knowing
Jacob Lawrence's Firewood #55
jeanne's Commentary on Statistics Discussion
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: April 8, 2000
Faculty on the Site.
Hi Jeanne,
Prepared - I interpret the open doors of the shanty houses as a sign of an open community. Jacob Lawrence chose to paint his female subject in a bold, bright, red dress, and this symbolizes strength and passion. He could have painted her in green or lavender, but he chose red. Her hard work is evident by laundry on the clothes line, and a plough leaning against the house. However, the unstated claim that "the black woman is, and has been the back bone of Afro American Culture," is made clear by the women leaning over chopped fire wood... This is only my opinion.
Solid academic response, to note that this is "only my opinion." But opinion, and the feeling that is evoked by a painting is so caught up in the interdependent nature of art, that it matters. Art must evoke feeling. Great art often astounds us. I happened across a Claes Oldenburg work this morning, and just stared quietly at the screen "bouche bee," (mouth open). I'm still trying to find the painting, which I think was at The Art Institute of Chicago. But here's one of the drawings for it: Airflow. I'd rather drive cars than look at them. But that art work on the Chrysler Airflow is extraordinary. jeanne
Abstract expressionist art is a means of putting emotion down on the paper or canvas. Feeling that emotion, we are free to translate the art into the narratives that produce that emotion for us. In a way, it's a kind of theorizing: we try to share with each other joy, dreams, longing, sadness, and in doing so we translate our local narratives into these basic human emotions and ideas. The process lets us remove ourselves a little from our own stories, and recognize that we are not alone in what we feel. Perhaps we can learn to love and respect one another through the sharing of these feelings.
May you have lovely dreams of dancing. I've been there, too.
jeanne
Lisette
Lisette Garcia
This e-mail is regarding the Statistics discussion that we had on Thursday. The class had a good ethnic mix of Latinos, Blacks, and whites. The topic of the discussion had everyone enthralled, and many false assumptions were dispelled. For instance, Black students had hidden assumptions about Latinos. The Black students assumed that Latinos were able to co-habit in peace, working together for the greater good, and help each other prosper financially. All the while, the Latino students assumed that Blacks had a solidarity because of color recognition and common struggle.
Both assumptions were found to be incorrect, but what amazed me as an individual was that both groups had over looked the statistics. The statistics show that Black on Black crime is very high, so where is the solidarity? The statistics on Latino v. Latino crime are much the same.
This is a good example of why we need triangulation. Depending on our focus at a given time, we see evidence in different ways, and link it differently to theory and to our evaluations and conclusions. We began with personal feelings and generalized from those. Had we looked at the crime statistics we might have generalized differently. I think that's an important lesson, especially in statistics.
This is Gilda Ortiz, from stat class. The Jacob Lawrence discussion was intriguing. It was surpising that my interpretation of the open windows and doors was opposite of yours. Perhaps my experiences of not being readily accected in my own Mexican-American community because I don't speak Spanish, influenced my perception of Black folk interactions. It seemed to me that when Black folk come together there is an openness and warmth to newcomers. The open windows and doors in Firewood represented that open comardery of American Black folk.
This is the dilemma of using personal experience to make our judgments. Although our unique life-world experiences are valid for each of us, they neglect to take the perspective of the overview. The world still looks to each of us individually as though our experience is "normal" or "normative" or "average." The discussion on Firewood has hopefully brought us all to see more effectively the importance of recognizing all measurement as strongly affected by our unique perspective. That doesn't mean that our perspective doesn't count. Of course it does. It's real. And it matters. But we must balance it by an overview of where it fits into the broad range of perspectives that need to be considered.
jeanne
jeanne
Interesting observation, Patrina, particularly your perspective of the woman in the painting as looking at her own life. That is a particularly human quality, our ability to be self-reflexive, to watch ourselves, as it were. Jonathan Lear, in Love and It's Place in Nature, says: " . . .[T]he pursuit of meaning is not a means by which an individual comes to be: as though someday other means may be discovered or invented. An individual is among other things, constituted by the pursuit of the meanings by which he does or might live." (at pp. 21-22). Lear is an eminent philosopher and thinker. I think you have managed to say much the same thing very simply by your phrasing: " It's her life looking as if she's at the edge of it all trying to sustain." The woman in the painting may well be constituting her life, even as she struggles, by putting into her efforts the consciousness of self, by allowing that self to develop, by reflecting on who she is, where she is going, where we are going.
One of Gauguin's very famous paintings, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98) expresses that same idea.
Gauguin sketch of same painting
