Ernest Cole was a pioneering South African photographer who documented life under apartheid from 1958 to 1966. His photography captured everyday scenes that bore witness to the suffering of black South Africans, such as overcrowded trains and segregated parks. Inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Cole used candid photography and minimal captions to let the images speak for themselves. He was eventually forced into exile where he published his book "House of Bondage," and continued photographing until his untimely death just before Nelson Mandela's release from prison. Cole's images gave the world a window into the cruelty of apartheid and have enduring power in bearing witness to that era.
A slideshow connected to a lecture of Feminism & Art available at Art History Teaching Resources (http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/), written by Saisha Grayson-Knoth.
Norman Rockwell is beyond doubt the most popular painter of the United States of the 20C, not just in America but elsewhere as well. His popularity probably lies in his ability to tell a story, supported by a wealth of details for viewers to discover and his skill to capture moods and expressions. Often his painting is humorous too, the awkwardness of youth, the embarrassment of courting couples, pride in country, history and heritage, reverence, loyalty and compassion. He painted the American Dream. He also has the skills of accuracy and of observation, as the old masters did. Like the Durer, Titan and the Rubens, he is also very successful commercially. Like Michelangelo throughout all his professional career, awarded with many private and public commissions. Like the Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Holbien, he painted the rich and famous. Because of his longevity, he had painted the Boy Scout movement, the technological advances, social developments, the Civil Rights movement and wars of the 20C. Norman Rockwell was demonized by a generation of critics who not only saw him as an enemy of modern art, but of all art. He was an outside the art establishment. The most common criticism of his works is that he chose to depict only the good side of the American experience. This is not altogether true, his works on the Civil Movement, bear witness to that. At times he acted as a social campaigning artist. His used the ordinary American as his subject. He genuinely like people and painted them with benevolent affection. Today a mosaic of one of his painting (Golden Rule, 1961) is hung at the entrance to the Headquarter of the United Nations, in New York. A recognition of his dream of a peaceful world between all races. Using achievements and compare to those achievements made by the old masters, I come see why Norman Rockwell as the greatest American artist of the 20th Century. Centuries from today, his works will still be remembered while others have long been forgotten. This is part of a Powerpoint series on the American painters.
A slideshow connected to a lecture of Feminism & Art available at Art History Teaching Resources (http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/), written by Saisha Grayson-Knoth.
Norman Rockwell is beyond doubt the most popular painter of the United States of the 20C, not just in America but elsewhere as well. His popularity probably lies in his ability to tell a story, supported by a wealth of details for viewers to discover and his skill to capture moods and expressions. Often his painting is humorous too, the awkwardness of youth, the embarrassment of courting couples, pride in country, history and heritage, reverence, loyalty and compassion. He painted the American Dream. He also has the skills of accuracy and of observation, as the old masters did. Like the Durer, Titan and the Rubens, he is also very successful commercially. Like Michelangelo throughout all his professional career, awarded with many private and public commissions. Like the Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Holbien, he painted the rich and famous. Because of his longevity, he had painted the Boy Scout movement, the technological advances, social developments, the Civil Rights movement and wars of the 20C. Norman Rockwell was demonized by a generation of critics who not only saw him as an enemy of modern art, but of all art. He was an outside the art establishment. The most common criticism of his works is that he chose to depict only the good side of the American experience. This is not altogether true, his works on the Civil Movement, bear witness to that. At times he acted as a social campaigning artist. His used the ordinary American as his subject. He genuinely like people and painted them with benevolent affection. Today a mosaic of one of his painting (Golden Rule, 1961) is hung at the entrance to the Headquarter of the United Nations, in New York. A recognition of his dream of a peaceful world between all races. Using achievements and compare to those achievements made by the old masters, I come see why Norman Rockwell as the greatest American artist of the 20th Century. Centuries from today, his works will still be remembered while others have long been forgotten. This is part of a Powerpoint series on the American painters.
Essay 1 An artist, one who professes and practices an imag.docxtheodorelove43763
Essay 1
An artist, one who professes and practices an imaginative art. That is exactly what
Andy Warhol was born to do as he started experimenting with different materials and
mediums of art when he was a young boy. Everything leading up to his enormous
success as being one of the founding fathers of Pop Art and being one of the two
most famous artists in the late twentieth century. Warhol was so different it was what
made his work stand out from the rest, he was a true artist and that is what made
him who he is now known for. The art he produced was so prominent because he
based everything he did around his own identity and the culture at the time and hid
behind his work instead of shine in front of it.
Andrew Warhola was born a son of two immigrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with
a rare disease called Sydenham chorea. That disease forced him to have to be stuck
inside for most of his childhood alone which led him to finding his passion and drive
for art. He was a very unique artist as he was someone who focused on many
different medias of art such as film making, screen printing, painting, photography,
and much more. He couldn’t just settle for one specific type of art because while
stuck inside he had time to experiment with all types of materials which led him to
become the artist he is now known for. When his father passed away he left the
family just enough money for one of the three children to go to college. Warhol was
fourteen at the time and his other two brother were older, the family agreed that
Andrew would be the one to go for art as he loved it so much. Couple years later he
graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology with a degree in pictorial design
being the first of his family to graduate college. He immediately moved to New York
and started his life as Andy Warhol, a famous pop-artist and silk screener with his
first success, the Campbell Soup Cans.
Andy Warhol was a family man as you see through his childhood experience of
being stuck inside all day and also his mother moving to New York to be with him
just three years after he left. He was constantly working and pushing himself to take
care of his family and one of his most famous quotes is, “I want to be a machine.” He
was always interested in the idea of mass production as you see through his famous
works, Campbell’s Soup Cans, Brillo, and Triple Elivs. While stuck inside when
younger he was known for being obsessed with celebrities and would cut them out of
magazines and newspapers and make collages of them. He had this weird love and
obsession with fame in which he showed through his work in New York as he
painted people and also included them in his films Prince, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace
Kelly, and more. He was interested in the idea of fame rather than the people and
believed everyone could and would be famous as he stated many times, “In the
future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” (Nuwer 1). When having .
Glimpses into the history of street photography in South AfricaJanique Goff Madison
In 1937, Anne Fischer, a young Jewish refugee, fled Nazi persecution and travelled via Palestine, Italy, Greece and England to South Africa. There she established herself as a photographer.
In order to understand contemporary art in South Africa, the po.docxtarifarmarie
In order to understand contemporary art in South Africa, the political background of South Africa must first be understood. When Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black president in 1994, apartheid officially ended. Yet because apartheid controlled the lives of black people so extensively, the end of apartheid did not result in the end of oppression or racial segregation. Although racial segregation and oppression were no longer legal, the ideas, beliefs, and practices of apartheid had been so deeply ingrained in South Africans, both white and black, that Apartheid did not simply disappear with the pronouncement of its legal demise. This is why, even after the apartheid regime ended, South African artists continued to produce work which dealt with elements of the old system of government.
Even though apartheid had existed for centuries, South African artists have not always focused on apartheid and themes of oppression and injustice in their work. One of the earliest and most influential traditions in South African art is the rock art paintings and engravings by the Sans people. Rock art often depicted landscape and people and incorporated geometric elements, and this tradition is still influential in some contemporary art in South Africa.
Another tradition in South African art began during the colonial era with the arrival of the Dutch settlers in 1652. As the Dutch expanded their settlement in South Africa, they increasingly imposed Western culture on the native South Africans, which affected art traditions. Before long, art was seen as a method of recording daily happenings in South Africa for the colonial masters, claiming that their work depicted everyday life in South Africa.
With colonialism drawing to a close at the end of the 19th century, South African artists began making works of art that illustrated the true realities of life in South Africa. The two most influential artists at the time were Jan Volschenk (1853-1936) and Hugo Naude (1869-1941). Volschenk was a self-taught painter of landscapes, and his work is often described as primitive. Naude on the other hand left South Africa to study art in London. When he returned to South Africa, Naude intially intended to be a portrait painter, but found himself very drawn to the outdoors and painting landscapes. Volschenk and Naude were considered the first native South African professional painters.
Following in the footsteps of Volschenk and Naude, South African artists soon began to look to art as a way to communicate ideas and experiences. "The orientation of local paintings had begun to shift from perceptual description of the landscape to the mechanics of visual expression and the search for personally valid methods of communicating experiences." (accessed at http://www.panafricanartists.org/overcomingmaps3/south_african_art_en.htm) South African artists were now dedicated to modern art and they promoted the idea that art can be more than the romantic .
1. Ernest Cole
by
Sharon J. Hall
Though words symbolize communication and meaning, a photograph can tell a story
with the need for little or no words. Ernest Cole, a pioneer of his time, and one of the
most influential and important photographers in South Africa, gave up his family and
homeland, to let the world know what was happening in his country. His photography
captured stories of shame, defeat, neglect, death, life and beauty.
Ernest Cole, (1940 – 1990), was a celebrated photographer who, although born in
poverty in Eersterust in Pretoria, South Africa, had a heart wrenching story to tell the
world. Cole, wanted other countries to know what it was like to be black during the
period of Apartheid, a governmental system that denied its citizens of color of their basic
human and civic rights. He became passionate to tell his story of how he was one of
many, who lived through these laws of oppression. Ernest’s story is that of racial,
political, legal and economic segregation against non-whites in South Africa. In May,
1948, after the National Party had won the general election, Apartheid was implemented
into the governmental system in South Africa, but thankfully saw its end in 1990. Ernest
Cole lived his life to show the world what he saw and experienced of suffering, anguish
and loss, not just for himself, but for the suffrage of his people. He disappeared into exile
in 1966 and as a result, was able to get his work published in the United States in his first
book named “The House of Bondage” released (June, 1967).
2. Toward the end of his life whilst in exile, Cole’s life fell apart and lost was his
photography equipment and his sense of existence, he had become a mere shadow. He
ultimately died homeless at the age of 49 in 1990. Probably, the saddest part of his death,
was that he didn’t live to see Nelson Mandella, a celebrated South African anti Apartheid
activist’s release from jail a week after Cole died. It was reported that Cole’s sister later
flew back to South Africa with her brother’s ashes on her lap.
Ernest Cole, leaves behind a legacy in the form of his pictorial records, an account of
what it was like to be black in Apartheid South Africa. His work even now, opens our
eyes and gives us a window to some of the pain of oppression and anguish he and the
people of South Africa suffered at the hands of their government. Cole, through his
magnificent black and white portraits, gives us a sense of compassion for the countless
lives that were destroyed, broken and lost. Had it not been for his bravery and passion to
tell his story through his pictures, the public would not have otherwise seen and felt his
story as effectively, had we just read mere words.
Much of Cole’s black and white photography can still be viewed in galleries around
the world. Since his death, South Africa, has released Cole’s works to be viewed by his
own people. During the prime of his short career, his photography was banned from his
country, which drove him into exile in the United States. Some of his early photography,
still lies undiscovered in South Africa. .
4. Sources
Sources and photos courtesy of:
Eric Cole
africasacountry.comShare
gk@hasselbladfoundation.org, 0739-401 402
http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-cole
http://www.hasselbladfoundation.org/ernest-cole
5. Inspired by the photo-essays of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Cole documented
scenes of life under apartheid from 1958 to 1966. He captured everyday images, such as lines
of migrant mine workers waiting to be discharged from labor, a school child studying by
candlelight, parks and benches for "Europeans Only," young black men arrested and
handcuffed for entering cities without their passes, worshippers in their Sunday best, and
crowds crammed into claustrophobic commuter trains.
Together with Cole's own incisive and illuminating captions, these striking photographs bear
stark witness to a wide spectrum of experiences during the apartheid era.
"Ernest Cole Photographer" is the first major public presentation of Cole's work since the
publication of his book "House of Bondage" in 1967. A large majority of the images are shown
for the first time in the way Cole had originally intended —These images of apartheid are
astonishing not only for their content but also their formal beauty and narrative power.
uncropped and accompanied only by his minimal remarks. These images of apartheid are
astonishing not only for their content but also their formal beauty and narrative power.
Ernest Cole’s photography was intended to capture images of apartheid’s cruel bondage
and suffering throughout it’s era. Much of Cole’s photography style was inspired by
Henri Cartier-Bresson who was a master of his time of candid photography.
6. The cover of Ernest Cole’s book “House of Bondage” which was published in 1967.
The above picture is of Black South African men who were arrested and handcuffed for
entering cities without their passes.
a school child studying by candlelight, Scenes of life under the apartheid rule from 1958 to
1966. Cole’s photography was originally intended to be uncropped and accompanied only by
his minimal remarks. This style of photography is called photographic essays which was
originally adopted from the techniques of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who
greatly inspired Ernest Cole’s photography style and works throughout his life.
7. No room inside the train, because it was so packed, some people had to ride between cars as black South Africans were
not allowed to ride with the whites.
House of Bondage series
Source for pictures: arthrob
These images are from The House of Bondage series from Ernest Cole’s photographic essay accounts of what life was
like living in South Africa as a black person under the apartheid rule.
Ernest Cole’s photographic accounts, gives his audience a sense of deep compassion for the stories they tell. They instill
anguish, hurt and bring just a portion of the sadness and pain apartheid rule had inflicted. Yet, Cole’s images reflect
beauty art and yet more dramatization due to the aesthetics and clarity of his black and white photography.