Visual Analysis of a Worldbuilding Artwork by a Contemporary African American Artist
Assignment
Select a work of art by Sanford Biggers, Titus Kaphar, or Carrie Mae Weems using the online resources linked below. Conduct a close visual analysis of the artwork and consult relevant scholarly secondary sources about the artist’s practice and larger oeuvre. Construct an interpretive thesis about the meaning represented by the artwork and provide specific evidence from your close visual analysis and secondary sources in support of your argument. As you develop your ideas and claims, consider the following questions: How do the materiality, composition, and iconography of this artwork create meaning? If the artwork is part of a series, in what way does it relate to the project of the larger whole? Does the artwork remake an earlier object or reimagine a preexisting genre? If so, how and why? In what specific ways does the work of art engage with history and politics? How does the artwork negotiate with the representation and/or lived experiences of Black people? What way of seeing the world does this artwork create?
Your final paper will be 5–6 pages in length and will be worth 40% of your writing grade.
Learning Goals
- Make specific, complex, arguable claims
- Produce unified, cohesive body paragraphs that contain arguable topic sentences, well-selected and properly integrated evidence from visual objects and scholarly reference sources, and rhetorically effective introduction, conclusion, and transitions between ideas
- Adopt the appropriate stance, style, and genre conventions of visual and art historical analysis
- Begin to evaluate scholarly claims, identify scholarly conversations, and integrate secondary source material in writing
- Practice process-oriented writing and learn flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading drafts while also reflecting on the process of writing itself
Required Reading
Before you begin brainstorming for this assignment, make sure you have read the following:
Cooks, Bridget. “What’s Wrong with Museums? African American Artists Review Art History.” Humanities Core Handbook: Worldbuilding 2024-2025, Macmillan Hayden-McNeil, 2024, pp. 119–28.
Beauchamp, Tamara. “Visual Analysis and Close Looking.” Humanities Core Handbook: Worldbuilding 2024–2025, Macmillan Hayden-McNeil, 2024, pp. 129–40.
Primary Sources
Sanford Biggers
Sanford Biggers: Work (Note: If this site does not load in your browser, you can view the archived version on Internet Archive. Additional information about specific works can be found in the Checklist in Anderson and Betta’s Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch, pp. 167–9 [PDF])
Codeswitch exhibition website from the Rivers Institute
Titus Kaphar
Kaphar Studio: Work (Note: This site works best on desktop browsers and in a wide browser window.)
Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems: Bodies of Work
The Hampton Project at the Williams College Museum of Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art
Reference Resources, Scholarly Secondary Sources, and Exhibition Catalogues
UCI Libraries has compiled a guide to resources on African American Art and History specifically for this assignment. For more information on using library resources, review the Humanities Core Library Introduction Tutorial.
The following materials are available online or are on the Course Reserves list at UCI Langson Library for two hours at a time. To check out any material on Course Reserve, read the Reserves policy and then visit the Check Out desk at Langson Library.
View this secondary source list as a Zotero library
Andersson, Andrea, and Antonio Sergio Bessa. Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch. The Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2020. [PDF of excerpts available on Canvas]
Bernier, Celeste-Marie. Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965-2015. University of California Press, 2018. [On reserve at Langson Library N6538.N5 B475 2018]
Bey, Dawoud, and Carrie Mae Weems. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: in Dialogue. Delmonico, 2022. [On reserve at Langson Library TR645.G73 D39 2022]
Biggers, Sanford and Miki Garcia. Sanford Biggers: Moon Medicine. Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, 2010. [On reserve at Langson Library N6537.B5225 A4 2010]
Catlett, Elizabeth, et al. Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with Sanford Biggers, Carrie Mae Weems, et al. Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2010. [On reserve at Langson Library N6537.C38 A4 2010]
Cooks, Bridget R. Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum. University of Massachusetts Press, 2011. [On reserve at Langson Library N510.C67 2011]
Cooks, Bridget R. “Intricate Illusion.” Titus Kaphar: Classical Disruption. Friedman Benda, 2011, pp. 5-40. [PDF]
Cooks, Bridget R., and Sarah Watson, editors. The Black Index. Hunter College Art Galleries, 2021. [On reserve at Langson Library N8217.B535 B53 2021]
Delmez, Kathryn E. Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video. Frist Center for the Visual Arts, 2012. [On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W383 2012]
English, Darby, et al. Among Others: Blackness at MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art, 2019. [On reserve at Langson Library N8232.E55 2019]
Feldman, Zeena, editor. Art and the Politics of Visibility: Contesting the Global, Local and the in-Between. I.B. Tauris, 2017. [Online and on reserve at Langson Library NX180.S6 A78 2017]
Jacob, Mary Jane. Carrie Mae Weems. Fabric Workshop/Museum, 1994. [On reserve at Langson Library N6537.W344 A4 1994]
Kaphar, Titus. “A Fight for Remembrance.” The Georgia Review, vol. 69, no. 2, 2015, pp. 199–208. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44077632.
Kaphar, Titus, and Jason Stanley. “Titus Kaphar.” BOMB, no. 147, 2019, pp. 81–88. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26876294.
Lewis, Sarah Elizabeth, editor. Carrie Mae Weems. The MIT Press, 2020. [On reserve at Langson Library TR187.C375 2020]
Lewis, Sarah Elizabeth. “The Insistent Reveal: Louis Agassiz, Joseph T. Zealy, Carrie Mae Weems, and the Politics of Undress in the Photography of Racial Science.” To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes, edited by Ilisa Barbash, et al., Aperture, 2020, pp. 297-328 [PDF]
Millstein, Barbara Head. Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers. Brooklyn Museum of Art in association with Merrell, 2001. [On reserve at Langson Library TR645.N532 B7 2001]
Patterson, Vivian, et al. Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project. Aperture, 2000. [On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W54 2000]
Rothenberg, Ellen and Carrie Mae Weems. Telling Histories: Installations by Ellen Rothenberg and Carrie Mae Weems. University of Washington Press, 1999. [On reserve at Langson Library N6537.A6284 A4 1999]
Weems, Carrie Mae. And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People. Walter/McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, 1992. [On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W375 1992]
Weems, Carrie Mae. Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment. Savannah College of Art and Design, 2008. [On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W443 2008]
Weems, Carrie Mae, et al. Carrie Mae Weems: The Louisiana Project. Newcomb Art Gallery, 2004. [On reserve at Langson Library TR645.W54 W384 2004]
Weems, Carrie Mae. Then What? Photographs and Folklore. CEPA Gallery, 1990. [On reserve at Langson Library TR647.W415 1990]
