LLCE PORTFOLIO Joseph Beuys

« Portfolio Intro As Joseph Beuys, a worldwide famous German artist said “Art is the only power to free humankind from all repression”.

Art can be defined as the expression or application of human creative skills and imagination, producing works that are intended to be appreciated first and foremost for their beauty or emotional power.

Of course, the definition of art is superficial has expanded far beyond that giving art a new function witch is denouncing oppression.

The theme frame “art and debate” focuses on how an artist can act as both a messenger to the world but also a resistant-like figure, questioning and criticizing the world in which they live.

In simpler words, art and protest are intertwined.

Therefore, for the presentation of my portfolio, we are going to wonder how does art contribute to denouncing the social injustices that concern black communities in the US and former colonies? In a first part, we will focus on the social discrimination surrounding African-Americans during the 1960s.

And in a second part, we will talk about colonisation of African countries by Europeans. Part 1 After the WW2, segregation tightened and racial oppression escalated across the United States.

Most states of the former Confederacy adopted Black Codes, laws modeled on former slave laws.

These laws were intended to limit the new freedom of emancipated African Americans by restricting their movement and by forcing them into a labor economy based on low wages and debt.

The majority of states and local communities passed “Jim Crow” laws that mandated “separate but equal” status for African Americans.

In theory, it was to create “separate but equal” treatment, but in practice Jim Crow Laws condemned black citizens to inferior treatment and facilities.

For example, black people attended separated schools and churches, use public bathrooms marked “for coloured only”, eat in a separate section of a restaurant, sit in the rear of a bus.

This created The civil rights movement, a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign in the 50s and 60s to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the US.

Many artists participated in this movement in order to have fair treatment for all. Harper Lee denounced these racial discrimination in her book to kill a mockingbird witch was published in 1960.

In this extract we see Atticus, the lawyer making his closing argument, who defends Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl even though he is innocent.

In this speech, he points out that Mayella has accused Tom of rape because the truth, that she was attracted to a Black man, puts her in a difficult situation.

He says that by being attracted to Tom, Mayella has broken the unspoken codes of the society in which she lives.

He goes on to say that while some Black people may well be violent and untrustworthy, the same is true of white people and is a condition of humanity rather than race.

Atticus believes that all men are created equal. In addition, Martin Luther King’s speech engages themes of freedom, justice, and the future.

He acknowledges the past and present as a way of alluding to the promise of the future.

His determination that no one rest until all people are truly equal comes through in his calls for justice and freedom.

His soaring rhetoric demanding racial justice and an integrated society became a mantra for the black community and is as familiar to subsequent generations of Americans as the US Declaration of Independence.

His words proved to be a touchstone for understanding the social and political upheaval of the time and gave the nation a vocabulary to express what was happening. Part 1 After these two documents, we can say that speeches are a form of art used in order to denounce social injustices used in both documents in order to convince others.

Atticus uses social injustices to expose the truth behind Tom Robinson’s case, while in Martin Luther King uses the past in order to hope for a better future.

But this is only one aspect that the black community.... »