Can Art Amend History? Titus Kaphar posed this question in his 2017 Ted Talk, alongside his loose co
Can Art Amend History? Titus Kaphar posed this question in his 2017 Ted Talk, alongside his loose copy of Family Group in a Landscape, by the renowned seventeenth-century Dutch portrait painter Frans Hals. In a dramatic finale, he picked up a large paint brush and proceeded to obliterate many of the figures in the painting with broad strokes of white paint, leaving a Black boy as the center of the composition. By shifting the spectator’s gaze to the boy, Kaphar brings into focus individuals who are often deliberately overlooked in the historical record, for reasons that include race, class, or gender. By doing so, he makes a case for the need to write new, more honest and inclusive histories. Check out the full talk, and see the resulting painting on view in One: Titus Kaphar through October 13. Frans Hals. Family Group in a Landscape, 1645 - 1648. Oil on canvas. © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid ⇨ Titus Kaphar (American, born 1976). Shifting the Gaze, 2017. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, William K. Jacobs Jr., Fund, 2017.34. © artist or artist’s estate -- source link
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