The TED Talk I chose to talk about was Titus Kaphar’s talk on how art can amend history. Kaphar mainly discusses how, in most classical paintings and sculptures, black people were often painted in the background, being behind the primary focus of the white characters. I think that Kaphar’s method of putting black characters more into the foreground is a great way to show the bias in the older paintings. Seeing the original paintings compared with his re-paints really highlights how much more visual focus was put on the white characters than the black characters, almost as if they were an afterthought. He mentions in his talk that he can find extensive information on the type of lace that is in a dress of a white character, but can’t find anything on a black background character. I don’t think this is necessarily a fault of the people writing about the piece; the black character was treated as insignificant to the painter, and so was treated as insignificant to art historians.
Despite the power that art has to convey this message, there are some disadvantages to painting as a medium when it comes to discussing this topic. While Kaphar said explicitly in his TED Talk that he didn’t want his message to be of erasure, without the context for the pieces of art, some people might misinterpret it that way. People who hadn’t noticed the emphasis on white characters in classical paintings would probably be confused by his repaintings of those classical pieces. However, his paintings are still powerful works of art, and will hopefully start a dialogue on black erasure in classical art.
I agree with your statements that you made throughout your freewrite. I did not listen to this TED TALK but I remember the bits of it throughout the class when we listened to parts of each one. I also agree with your statement about that by the old paintings having the black characters in the background, and than being able to see the new paintings helps to show how much more the focus of the white characters in the painting was. I agree as well how some might misinterpret when Kaphar talks about how he didn’t want his message to be of erasure. Like you said, if people did not have the background and understand the reasoning for the new paintings that were made thy may not understand where he is coming from.
I really enjoyed reading your free write. I thought you made some great points and really brought to light the main theme in Kaphar’s TED talk. I actually considered doing this one as well because I find it so interesting that he really brings the black characters to light in these painting where they were just portrayed as an afterthought. There is a real strength and power to his art in a way that it doesn’t erase or forget what happened but remind us of our wrongdoings and show us how to grow from that. I believe that because he has such a strong personal connection to these paintings, he is able to really bring his thoughts and aspects to raise awareness in others which is so amazing. I really do agree that the only limit is the fact that his work may be misinterpreted as trying to erase the white people out and just leaving the black people, but he really does a good job of explaining his reasoning for that. He says how he doesn’t want to erase so he uses a faded type of paint that still blurs, but doesn’t fully erase.