1. Methods:
a. Settler-colonial art history
i. Settler-colonialism was/is“works to identify the legacy of settlers and the
implications of the dynamic that structure settler colonialism” (damian
skinner p 133)
ii. Much more self-reflexive than post-colonial art history
iii. Primary object of settler-colonization is the land itself rather than the
surplus value that native labour added. Settler colonization sought to
eliminate the indigenous population. (Damian 135)
iv. Dispensability of indigenous people
b. Iconography
2. Iconography:
i. Here, the view gazes upon a scene set against a dense forest with a
clearing and a view onto mountains. On the left of the canvas is a white
male adorning a cowboy hat and boots. The hat and boots He is
otherwise naked, but it is implied that his nudity is not a choice judging by
how his jeans hug his ankles. Additionally, the white male figure has
clearly been attacked, made obvious from the 2 arrows going through his
ribcage and 1 arrow through his thigh. His arms and wrists are bound to
the tree, and his penis is erect. This imagery is reminiscent of Petro
Pugini’s Saint Sebastian (1495). In this painting, Saint Sebastian, a
Christian Saint and martyr was tied to a tree and shot at with arrows. Saint
Sebastian was wanted dead because of his deep-rooted commitment and
appreciation to and for Christianity. The same framework can be applied
to this oeuvre as an antithetical power dynamic between the white settler
to the left of the canvas and the indigenous human to the right of the
canvas. This white, cis-gender male is at the mercy of those who he
offends atoning for the sins of all white settlers, the white-washing of
culture and the appropriation of unceded lands.
Large format field camera (nothing stealth about these cameras)
ii. Photography to collective evidence and construct a colonial narrative.
Photo-colonialism celebrates the “vanishing races” and the authority given
to its representation. - Sherry Farell Racette, in Carol Payne and Andrea
Kunard (eds), The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada (Montreal
and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 79.
iii. The large format camera has been knocked over and axed at, supposedly
in the attack upon the white settler. It is important to acknowledge the
intentional destruction of the camera as an act of defiance from the native
individual, who refuses to be voyeuristically photographed as the
objectified, “othered” being while their identity is being deconstructed and
reconstructed photographically under the guise of ethnographic
photography. (skelly post-colonialism, slide 27)
iv. This painting challenges the settle-colonialist “dispensability of
indigenous people” (damian 135) as Monkman hands over all the power to
the indigenous subject, putting them in charge and forcing the European to
be their subject. In doing this, Monkman is reversing the gaze: painting the
European settler as the “othered” with an intense tone of mockery. The
native individual portrays their European settler in a shapeless manner,
leaving him as a mere dancing skeleton with a cowboy hat, boots, and an
erect penis rather than the resistant, fleshy man he really is. The
iconographical significance of the painting the white man’s erect penis on
a skeletal body is in the vein of humiliation. Indigenous communities with
deep-rooted traditions and beliefs were humiliated through ethnographic
photography which sought only to exploit and commodify their bodies and
their culture before European settlers wiped them from their land.
b. Queer art history
i. On the topic of bodies and identity, it is apparent that the individual to the
right of the canvas is not categorically male. The figure is adorned with a
pink and white headdress, pink cuffs, and a pink skirt which only covers a
very narrow part of their lower body. Lastly, they are sporting some very
high bright pink heels which are much like stripper heels. Because of the
oversaturation of pink within the painting, if adhering to gendered colour
binaries, it is easy to assume that the figure is female. Morphologically,
however, the figure is strong, muscular, and tall. Their limbs are long, and
visible between the figure’s legs are testicles. Michel Foucault, in
accordance with these morphological signs of sex and gender says:
“modern male homosexuals were imagined to have a ‘visible’ morphology
with an ‘indiscreet anatomy’, in which their sexual secrets ‘always gave
[themselves] away’. Foucault also claimed that “contemporaries were
constantly seeking to find ‘visible’ signs […] of modern male homosexual
behaviour. (Jason Edwards p 5). However, the indigenous figure is
explicitly painted as neither categorically female nor male. The “rules”
and lines of gender binaries are blurred and the figure neither adheres to
the portrayal of natives as animalistic and feral, nor weak and
(Jason Edwards p 5)
1) Write an essay about Louise Bourgeois’s Destruction of the Father (1974). In your
introduction, identify all of the methods that you will be employing in your essay in
order to support your thesis. Make your thesis statement as precise as possible. You can
discuss other artworks if you wish in order to support your argument(s).