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How Communities Make Art: Crash Course Art History #10
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Duration: | 11:06 |
Uploaded: | 2024-06-27 |
Last sync: | 2024-11-28 07:15 |
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MLA Full: | "How Communities Make Art: Crash Course Art History #10." YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 27 June 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXjxN3t_BNY. |
MLA Inline: | (CrashCourse, 2024) |
APA Full: | CrashCourse. (2024, June 27). How Communities Make Art: Crash Course Art History #10 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=KXjxN3t_BNY |
APA Inline: | (CrashCourse, 2024) |
Chicago Full: |
CrashCourse, "How Communities Make Art: Crash Course Art History #10.", June 27, 2024, YouTube, 11:06, https://youtube.com/watch?v=KXjxN3t_BNY. |
Art is often understood as a solitary act of personal expression. But art is also the basis for community from Alaska to Mali — and from gay rights advocates to Frida Kahlo appreciators. In this episode we’ll learn how community is created through art.
Note: While Yayoi Kusama is an incredibly influential artist, she has a complicated legacy. Writer and PhD candidate Dexter Thomas has called attention to anti-Black racism in her published writing, including her 2002 autobiography “Infinity Net.” We encourage you to view Crash Course Art History Episode 5 to hear our discussion about artists with problematic histories and join the conversation.
Introduction: Obliteration Room 00:00
The Great Mosque of Djenné 01:20
The Gelede 03:48
The Chief Johnson Pole 04:58
The Origins of Pride Flags 06:30
The Umbrella Art of Hong Kong 08:18
Review & Credits 09:45
Image Descriptions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ETiCxe4GrVzFii7dBhF42oHx1EUCCh5y12wbtUjsH8A/edit
Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GW2NKzhpMNMmRyAFJVhFJG9cSfUOMRL-QrcWuHcWcIA/edit?usp=sharing
***
Support us for $5/month on Patreon to keep Crash Course free for everyone forever! https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse
Or support us directly: https://complexly.com/support
Join our Crash Course email list to get the latest news and highlights: https://mailchi.mp/crashcourse/email
Get our special Crash Course Educators newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iBgMhY
Thanks to the following patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever:
Forrest Langseth, Emily Beazley, Neeloy Gomes, oranjeez, Rie Ohta, Jack Hart, UwU, Leah H., David Fanska, Andrew Woods, Stephen Akuffo, Ken Davidian, Toni Miles, AmyL, Steve Segreto, Kyle & Katherine Callahan, Laurel Stevens, Krystle Young, Burt Humburg, Perry Joyce, Scott Harrison, Alan Bridgeman, Mark & Susan Billian, Breanna Bosso, Matt Curls, Jennifer Killen, Jon Allen, Sarah & Nathan Catchings, Bernardo Garza, team dorsey, Trevin Beattie, Indija-ka Siriwardena, Jason Rostoker, Siobhán, Ken Penttinen, Barrett Nuzum, Nathan Taylor, Les Aker, William McGraw, Rizwan Kassim, Vaso , ClareG, Alex Hackman, Constance Urist, kelsey warren, Katie Dean, Stephen McCandless, Wai Jack Sin, Ian Dundore, Caleb Weeks
__
Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thecrashcourse/
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/YouTubeCrashCourse
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/TheCrashCourse
CC Kids: http://www.youtube.com/crashcoursekids
Note: While Yayoi Kusama is an incredibly influential artist, she has a complicated legacy. Writer and PhD candidate Dexter Thomas has called attention to anti-Black racism in her published writing, including her 2002 autobiography “Infinity Net.” We encourage you to view Crash Course Art History Episode 5 to hear our discussion about artists with problematic histories and join the conversation.
Introduction: Obliteration Room 00:00
The Great Mosque of Djenné 01:20
The Gelede 03:48
The Chief Johnson Pole 04:58
The Origins of Pride Flags 06:30
The Umbrella Art of Hong Kong 08:18
Review & Credits 09:45
Image Descriptions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ETiCxe4GrVzFii7dBhF42oHx1EUCCh5y12wbtUjsH8A/edit
Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GW2NKzhpMNMmRyAFJVhFJG9cSfUOMRL-QrcWuHcWcIA/edit?usp=sharing
***
Support us for $5/month on Patreon to keep Crash Course free for everyone forever! https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse
Or support us directly: https://complexly.com/support
Join our Crash Course email list to get the latest news and highlights: https://mailchi.mp/crashcourse/email
Get our special Crash Course Educators newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iBgMhY
Thanks to the following patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever:
Forrest Langseth, Emily Beazley, Neeloy Gomes, oranjeez, Rie Ohta, Jack Hart, UwU, Leah H., David Fanska, Andrew Woods, Stephen Akuffo, Ken Davidian, Toni Miles, AmyL, Steve Segreto, Kyle & Katherine Callahan, Laurel Stevens, Krystle Young, Burt Humburg, Perry Joyce, Scott Harrison, Alan Bridgeman, Mark & Susan Billian, Breanna Bosso, Matt Curls, Jennifer Killen, Jon Allen, Sarah & Nathan Catchings, Bernardo Garza, team dorsey, Trevin Beattie, Indija-ka Siriwardena, Jason Rostoker, Siobhán, Ken Penttinen, Barrett Nuzum, Nathan Taylor, Les Aker, William McGraw, Rizwan Kassim, Vaso , ClareG, Alex Hackman, Constance Urist, kelsey warren, Katie Dean, Stephen McCandless, Wai Jack Sin, Ian Dundore, Caleb Weeks
__
Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thecrashcourse/
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/YouTubeCrashCourse
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/TheCrashCourse
CC Kids: http://www.youtube.com/crashcoursekids
When she was around ten years old, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama began experiencing intense hallucinations.
She described her vivid visions as “dense fields of dots”. To deal with them, she started drawing repetitive patterns as a kind of therapy.
She said that the artistic repetition helped her “obliterate” the noises in her head. Today, Kusama is one of the world’s most successful living artists. She still creates works of repeating patterns, but now she invites the whole world in.
One of her most popular installations is called “Obliteration Room.” Visitors are given polka-dot stickers that they are invited to press to the walls, floor, and ceiling of a white room. Over the course of several weeks, thousands of people work together to cover the room in dots — collectively obliterating the stark white. Kusama’s work shows us how artists can turn private struggles into moments of connection and community.
Which points to something bigger about art. Although it’s often stereotyped as a brooding solo activity, art and community have been linked all along. Hi!
I'm Sarah Urist Green, and this is Crash Course Art History. Art has been a big group project ever since the first humans left ghostly impressions of their hands on cave walls. Interactive installations like Kusama’s are really just a contemporary take on an age-old theme.
And cultures around the world create art together in ways that strengthen their sense of belonging. Consider the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, the largest mud-built structure on Earth. Constructed and maintained by master masons, the mosque is a work of sacred architecture.
It’s both an artwork in itself and a functional place of worship for Muslims. The first mosque on this site was likely built in the 13th century, and though there have been a few versions since then, the current one has been standing for more than a hundred years. That's longer than Alaska has been a state.
Every year, the entire city of Djenné comes together to re-plaster the mosque’s exterior walls, to protect and rebuild it from the harsh conditions of the rainy season. The community event is known as the Crepissage de la Grand Mosquée—French for the Plastering of the Great Mosque. On the day of the event, residents of Djenné divide sections of the mosque by neighborhood and compete to see which team can cover their section in mud the fastest.
But the new layers of mud added by each resident aren’t just protecting the mosque for another season. They’re contributing to a generations-long act of community creation. There’s art not only in the architecture of the mosque — in its geometry and design — but also in the actual craft of mixing and plastering mud to maintain it.
While the basic style has remained the same, its precise layout, size, and design have adapted over time. This is pretty different from traditional Euro-American views of art, which tend to present art as something fixed: permanent and unchanging. Someone painting over a Frida Kahlo would…not go well.
But the constant “re-creation” of the mosque shows us how an artwork can evolve. It doesn’t have to be static in order to be impactful, or in order to be art—and that’s something we’re starting to see in new, innovative installations. Festivals and ceremonies, performances and events, can provide opportunities for people to celebrate who they are as a community.
And often, these events help preserve not only a work of art, but a way of life. Take the Gelede, a community festival held by some groups of Yoruba people in West Africa. The festival features one-of-a-kind masks and headdresses that celebrate the creator goddess Iyà Nlà and the contributions women have made to Yoruba society.
They’re worn during a series of dances and chants that recreate tales of Yoruba history and mythology. Regardless of how male-dominated its surrounding power structures may be, Gelede regalia remains a tribute to the women of the Yoruba community. In this way, participants in the Gelede keep alive values that are important to them.
The Gelede is also an example of how art helps us see, experience, and understand who we are. Not just as individuals, but as members of wider communities. Art very often presents unifying symbols of our collective identities, like how this mask reflects the calm power of Yoruba female elders.
It's worth thinking about what artworks reflect your identities, whether you’re Yoruba, or a Disney Adult, cosplayer, or Swiftie. Another unifying symbol of collective identity is the Chief Johnson pole in the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, a totem pole originally carved in 1902, and replicated in 1989 by native artist Israel Shotridge. Totem poles are large, vertical sculptures typically carved from cedar trees by indigenous people along the Pacific Northwest Coast.
While visually stunning, totem poles themselves are only part of the tradition. To truly understand them, you also need to know the community’s oral history — its stories and traditions passed down through generations. The base of the Chief Johnson pole shows characters from a Tlingit myth: the trickster Raven and his wife, Fog Woman.
The large empty space is meant to emphasize the significance of the golden eagle at the top, representing a particular clan of the Tlingit tribe. And the story it references reminds viewers to be respectful of their spouses, family members, and land. The design is symmetrical, evoking a sense of harmony and balance, values held dear by the Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
And it’s only together–the pole along with the stories that go with it, that we can truly come to appreciate the art in its fullest sense. Now, identity is not a static thing, whether it’s yours or a community’s. It changes over time — and so do the symbols we create to represent it.
Let’s go to the drawing board… This is the Gay Pride flag. These days you can find it hanging in sports bars and restaurants, on stickers and t-shirts. It's pretty popular, but the flag itself is relatively new, as far as flags go.
It was created by artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. It was commissioned by a San Francisco politician named Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay elected official in the United States. Milk asked Baker to design a symbol to replace the pink triangle that the Nazis had used to identify LGBTQ people during World War II.
Though the pink triangle had been reclaimed by queer folks, Milk and Baker wanted something new. So Baker created the rainbow flag as a symbol of pride, inclusion, and acceptance. He gave each of the colors its own meaning.
But then, years later, in 2018, the non-binary American artist Daniel Quasar designed a new pride flag. It combines Baker’s original design with five additional colors: black and brown to represent people of color, as well as pink, light blue, and white to represent transgender and gender non-conforming people. The new colors form a triangle that points forward, representing social progress.
For the modern LGBTQ community, Quasar’s redesigned pride flag represents the importance of intersectionality, or the ways that race, class, and gender are connected to identity. And the flag continues to evolve. The different versions of the pride flag have become symbols of resistance and resilience, just as much as they’re symbols of identity.
And Baker’s original flag? You can now find it in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Shared symbols can help artists build communities–introducing new ideas, creating mutual understanding, and building agreements around actions to make change.
The internet, and social media in particular, have made this kind of collaborative meaning-making more shareable than ever. Artists and activists have used social media to spread messages to corners of the world they could have never reached without it. Let’s look at the 2014 Hong Kong protests as an example.
Known as the umbrella revolution, this was a series of demonstrations against police brutality that occurred during a peaceful protest against China’s national government. When artist Kacey Wong saw protesters using umbrellas to defend themselves against police, he was inspired to issue a call for art that made use of umbrellas — turning a simple, everyday object into an icon of resistance. Wong’s call was amplified by social media, and soon, umbrella-themed artwork was popping up not just in Hong Kong but all over the world.
In the streets and on phone screens, umbrella art communicated and expressed support for the protesters. The art of the umbrella revolution inspired solidarity among people who longed for social and political change, and introduced others to the ideas at the heart of the protests. We’ll learn way more about the connections between art and activism in a future episode.
For now, I’ll leave you with these images of people dressed like Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Kahlo’s work still creates community today. In 2017, over a thousand people, dressed as the famous artist, gathered together decades after her death to celebrate what would have been her 110th birthday.
Like Kusama’s Obliteration Room, Kahlo’s art made her inner struggles public – difficulties that her audience could connect to and find solidarity in. Art is a remarkable tool for building communities, preserving traditions, and promoting change for generations. When we look past the myth of the suffering solo artist, we can see how humanity has used art to address and combat loneliness since we first set our hands on those ancient cave walls.
In our next episode, we’ll explore representations of the body in art. I’ll see you there. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and was made with the help of all these lovely people.
If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
She described her vivid visions as “dense fields of dots”. To deal with them, she started drawing repetitive patterns as a kind of therapy.
She said that the artistic repetition helped her “obliterate” the noises in her head. Today, Kusama is one of the world’s most successful living artists. She still creates works of repeating patterns, but now she invites the whole world in.
One of her most popular installations is called “Obliteration Room.” Visitors are given polka-dot stickers that they are invited to press to the walls, floor, and ceiling of a white room. Over the course of several weeks, thousands of people work together to cover the room in dots — collectively obliterating the stark white. Kusama’s work shows us how artists can turn private struggles into moments of connection and community.
Which points to something bigger about art. Although it’s often stereotyped as a brooding solo activity, art and community have been linked all along. Hi!
I'm Sarah Urist Green, and this is Crash Course Art History. Art has been a big group project ever since the first humans left ghostly impressions of their hands on cave walls. Interactive installations like Kusama’s are really just a contemporary take on an age-old theme.
And cultures around the world create art together in ways that strengthen their sense of belonging. Consider the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, the largest mud-built structure on Earth. Constructed and maintained by master masons, the mosque is a work of sacred architecture.
It’s both an artwork in itself and a functional place of worship for Muslims. The first mosque on this site was likely built in the 13th century, and though there have been a few versions since then, the current one has been standing for more than a hundred years. That's longer than Alaska has been a state.
Every year, the entire city of Djenné comes together to re-plaster the mosque’s exterior walls, to protect and rebuild it from the harsh conditions of the rainy season. The community event is known as the Crepissage de la Grand Mosquée—French for the Plastering of the Great Mosque. On the day of the event, residents of Djenné divide sections of the mosque by neighborhood and compete to see which team can cover their section in mud the fastest.
But the new layers of mud added by each resident aren’t just protecting the mosque for another season. They’re contributing to a generations-long act of community creation. There’s art not only in the architecture of the mosque — in its geometry and design — but also in the actual craft of mixing and plastering mud to maintain it.
While the basic style has remained the same, its precise layout, size, and design have adapted over time. This is pretty different from traditional Euro-American views of art, which tend to present art as something fixed: permanent and unchanging. Someone painting over a Frida Kahlo would…not go well.
But the constant “re-creation” of the mosque shows us how an artwork can evolve. It doesn’t have to be static in order to be impactful, or in order to be art—and that’s something we’re starting to see in new, innovative installations. Festivals and ceremonies, performances and events, can provide opportunities for people to celebrate who they are as a community.
And often, these events help preserve not only a work of art, but a way of life. Take the Gelede, a community festival held by some groups of Yoruba people in West Africa. The festival features one-of-a-kind masks and headdresses that celebrate the creator goddess Iyà Nlà and the contributions women have made to Yoruba society.
They’re worn during a series of dances and chants that recreate tales of Yoruba history and mythology. Regardless of how male-dominated its surrounding power structures may be, Gelede regalia remains a tribute to the women of the Yoruba community. In this way, participants in the Gelede keep alive values that are important to them.
The Gelede is also an example of how art helps us see, experience, and understand who we are. Not just as individuals, but as members of wider communities. Art very often presents unifying symbols of our collective identities, like how this mask reflects the calm power of Yoruba female elders.
It's worth thinking about what artworks reflect your identities, whether you’re Yoruba, or a Disney Adult, cosplayer, or Swiftie. Another unifying symbol of collective identity is the Chief Johnson pole in the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, a totem pole originally carved in 1902, and replicated in 1989 by native artist Israel Shotridge. Totem poles are large, vertical sculptures typically carved from cedar trees by indigenous people along the Pacific Northwest Coast.
While visually stunning, totem poles themselves are only part of the tradition. To truly understand them, you also need to know the community’s oral history — its stories and traditions passed down through generations. The base of the Chief Johnson pole shows characters from a Tlingit myth: the trickster Raven and his wife, Fog Woman.
The large empty space is meant to emphasize the significance of the golden eagle at the top, representing a particular clan of the Tlingit tribe. And the story it references reminds viewers to be respectful of their spouses, family members, and land. The design is symmetrical, evoking a sense of harmony and balance, values held dear by the Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
And it’s only together–the pole along with the stories that go with it, that we can truly come to appreciate the art in its fullest sense. Now, identity is not a static thing, whether it’s yours or a community’s. It changes over time — and so do the symbols we create to represent it.
Let’s go to the drawing board… This is the Gay Pride flag. These days you can find it hanging in sports bars and restaurants, on stickers and t-shirts. It's pretty popular, but the flag itself is relatively new, as far as flags go.
It was created by artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. It was commissioned by a San Francisco politician named Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay elected official in the United States. Milk asked Baker to design a symbol to replace the pink triangle that the Nazis had used to identify LGBTQ people during World War II.
Though the pink triangle had been reclaimed by queer folks, Milk and Baker wanted something new. So Baker created the rainbow flag as a symbol of pride, inclusion, and acceptance. He gave each of the colors its own meaning.
But then, years later, in 2018, the non-binary American artist Daniel Quasar designed a new pride flag. It combines Baker’s original design with five additional colors: black and brown to represent people of color, as well as pink, light blue, and white to represent transgender and gender non-conforming people. The new colors form a triangle that points forward, representing social progress.
For the modern LGBTQ community, Quasar’s redesigned pride flag represents the importance of intersectionality, or the ways that race, class, and gender are connected to identity. And the flag continues to evolve. The different versions of the pride flag have become symbols of resistance and resilience, just as much as they’re symbols of identity.
And Baker’s original flag? You can now find it in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Shared symbols can help artists build communities–introducing new ideas, creating mutual understanding, and building agreements around actions to make change.
The internet, and social media in particular, have made this kind of collaborative meaning-making more shareable than ever. Artists and activists have used social media to spread messages to corners of the world they could have never reached without it. Let’s look at the 2014 Hong Kong protests as an example.
Known as the umbrella revolution, this was a series of demonstrations against police brutality that occurred during a peaceful protest against China’s national government. When artist Kacey Wong saw protesters using umbrellas to defend themselves against police, he was inspired to issue a call for art that made use of umbrellas — turning a simple, everyday object into an icon of resistance. Wong’s call was amplified by social media, and soon, umbrella-themed artwork was popping up not just in Hong Kong but all over the world.
In the streets and on phone screens, umbrella art communicated and expressed support for the protesters. The art of the umbrella revolution inspired solidarity among people who longed for social and political change, and introduced others to the ideas at the heart of the protests. We’ll learn way more about the connections between art and activism in a future episode.
For now, I’ll leave you with these images of people dressed like Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Kahlo’s work still creates community today. In 2017, over a thousand people, dressed as the famous artist, gathered together decades after her death to celebrate what would have been her 110th birthday.
Like Kusama’s Obliteration Room, Kahlo’s art made her inner struggles public – difficulties that her audience could connect to and find solidarity in. Art is a remarkable tool for building communities, preserving traditions, and promoting change for generations. When we look past the myth of the suffering solo artist, we can see how humanity has used art to address and combat loneliness since we first set our hands on those ancient cave walls.
In our next episode, we’ll explore representations of the body in art. I’ll see you there. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and was made with the help of all these lovely people.
If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.