2018GoldmanEmily

Hello! My name is Emily Goldman and i am a fourth year World Arts and Cultures (WAC) major.  I grew up in Topanga Canyon, which is located in the Santa Monica Mountains.  Aside from growing up in an artist community, the arts have always been a significant part of my life.  Music, theatre, and film were a big part of my sister and I's upbringing because of our dads job, and I danced for many years.  I think we were integrated into visual art when we took regular trips to art galleries, shows, and exhibits, both near our home and out of the country.  Many of the adults where we grew up were visual artists as well.

In Linda Nochlin's, "Why have there been no great women artists?" the author explains how the faults within our institutions and education are causes of the white, wester, male, viewpoint being accepted as the "natural" point of view in an art history context.  She claims that it is a misconception that visual is a direct expression of someones isolated, emotional experience.  To me, this means that femininity within art, does not always mean that the institutional disadvantages women may experience are directly expressed.  In, "Conditions for producing Chicana art," the author explains how the change in values surrounding "the woman" in Chicano culture and new economic means allowed Chicana artists to come into their own by using art to help maintain their identity within an American environment.  I feel like Professor Lopez, is one of these visual artists who used her own positionality within her community to reinterpret the identity of a cultural icon like Virgen de Guadalupe.  She grew up with the figure as a religious symbol in her community, and saw the same figure vandalized in Los Angeles.  She eventually created La Virgen to re-tell "the popular colonized interpretation" of her story.  I think these pieces represent a unique feminine perspective within visual art.