Can Aunt Jemima be Rehabilitated?

There is no question that earlier representations were racist and offensive. However she has provided the source for some famous art works during her rehabilitation. In 1963, Jeff Donaldson, later one of the founders of the AfriCOBRA art movement, revealed his confrontational interpretation in a battle – Aunt Jemima and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

This arguably is the first work where we have an empowered Aunt Jemima instead of an overweight mammy archetype.

In 1972 Betye Saar gave Aunt Jemima a rifle and a hand grenade in her famous assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima.

In 1998 Renée Cox had her become a super hero figure in her collage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.

In 2014 Kara Walker morphed the mammy stereotype into a powerful sphinx in her installation A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, at the defunct Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn.

There are no weapons or battles. The monumental size and historical meaning of a sphinx gives her power. The thumb of her left hand is in the figa sign which in some cultures is an obscene gesture and in many countries is a sign of refusal.

The Quaker Oats Company is still using the same image that was on the 1998 package in Renée Cox's collage. If Aunt Jemima is going to stay with us, she could use an updated image.

Restoring an old Photo

Eberly asked me if I would restore an old torn photograph of her grandfather testing the Grumman G-164 Ag Cat. The Ag Cat was the first agricultural aircraft designed and produced by a major U.S. company.

Poor Positioning of Lights in Art Museums

When permitted, I usually take a non flash photograph of each painting and the information signage. It is surprising the number of "hot spots" there are on irreplaceable works of art.

The in camera light meter, although it is a reflectance meter, can give an estimate of how much additional light is falling on a specific part of the painting. If there is an area  in the painting with same color, the readings will be more accurate. Zooming in for a reading with the camera set for single segment spot metering will give even more accuracy.  The painting on the left recorded  almost 4 times as much light on the upper part of the portrait within the portrait compared to the lower half. The portrait on the right has dark background in both the hot spot and properly illuminated background. The meter readings is 3 times as much light in the hot spot. A more accurate assessment would require an incident-light meter. Exhibition rooms with high ceilings make it easier to protect the upper part of large vertically oriented paintings. Most of the following examples are not as severe as the above two portraits.

 

                                  

                                       

Restoring a Faded Photo

My friend Eberly asked if I could restore a photo of her and her sister from 1961 that had faded over the years. There also were some creases in parts of the image. I wanted to make the bluebonnets look a rich blue but naturalistic.

There wasn't much color to work with. Levels was the main tool that I used.