Prop Master at Charleston's Gibbes Museum of Art
Susan Harbage Page, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill
Juan Logan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Juan Logan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Exhibit Sections:
Introduction | Prop Allocations or Accents for Gracious Living | Famous Last Names | Sexually Ambiguous | Background Material | Welcome Home | Expressions of Affection | Recommended Resources
Sexually Ambiguous, 2009
Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan
Paintings, frames, photographs
Paintings, frames, photographs
For Sexually Ambiguous, Page and Logan selected large portraits and
miniatures from the collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art to illuminate
race and gender relations. They chose the portraits based upon the appearance
of the
individuals
rather than for the identity of those pictured. These portraits suggest
a social caste as a whole. The miniatures include paintings of men, women,
and
landscapes that were digitally altered to reimagine their contents and
draw attention to their function as a mode of self-presentation.
 |
Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan, Sexually
Ambiguous, Charleston, South Carolina, 2009. Photo: Rick Rhodes. |
Alterations vary. In some
cases they are used to question social codes that prevent display of
non-normative sexuality. Responding to the rouge on a man's face or his
carefully
curled hair, for instance, Page may have added jewelry or further cosmetic touches
to a portrait. Other miniatures gently poke fun at the repertory of poses typically
used in portraits. One shows a brown and white rabbit peeking from a woman's
bodice, while in another a man in Napoleonic-era clothing bears a rabbit on one
shoulder as another rabbit leans over the frame as if to escape its limits.
|
 |
Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan, Portrait from Sexually
Ambiguous, Charleston, South Carolina, 2009. Photo:
Rick Rhodes. |
 |
In other miniatures, images
of slaves are overlaid on pastoral views of plantations or on cityscapes:
reminders of the unacknowledged presence of the
almost 2,500,000 slaves who lived and labored in the U.S. South. These works
reinscribe the presence of these slaves, so often omitted from representation.
More controversially,
topsy-turvy figures join the inverted torsos of planters and slaves, to suggest
the necessity of the slave to the planter. Elsewhere, men and women have been
painted in blackface, to reference minstrel shows that so disparaged
African American
culture. Women are also implicated. Elegantly dressed and coiffed, they may hold
a leather whip or an iron slave collar. Or, in the case of one of Logan's alternations,
they expose a toothy, savage grin, derived from caricatures of African Americans.
Page and Logan placed Caucasian and African American hair together in some of
the
miniatures, referencing how these objects were treasured as keepsakes of a beloved
other. The adding of hair from African Americans suggests the absence
of blacks from the category of the treasured or even of the acknowledged. |
Susan Harbage Page and Juan Logan, Portrait from Sexually
Ambiguous, Charleston, South Carolina, 2009. Photo: Susan Harbage
Page. |
By arranging the overall grouping of paintings and miniatures to go beyond the limits of the picture rail, the artists transgress to criticize museum conventions. These conventions include those dictating who may or may not be pictured within such a cultural institution, so long dominated by a privileged few.
Exhibit Sections:
Introduction | Prop Allocations or Accents for Gracious Living | Famous Last Names | Sexually Ambiguous | Background Material | Welcome Home | Expressions of Affection | Recommended Resources
