We are taught very early on to avoid stereotyping when making images of people because in image making stereotyping is associated with some of the most painful periods of human history. Because of my own awareness of family history and of how jews were portrayed during the nazi regime in Germany, I can clearly see that stereotyping is associated with removing individuality from people and treating them as if they have no individual human consciousness or feelings. This makes it so much easier to then take the next step, which is to treat people as if they are soulless objects, things that exist only to be done to. Stereotyping was a key element of the nazi process of trying to eliminate jews and others. So why put up a post on the portrait as stereotype?
The people that are visually stereotyped tend to be those that are 'invisible' or oppressed or simply belong to a set of people that can be categorised as 'other', or people not like me. In this category you do sometimes get stereotypes of powerful people, however the point about the stereotype is that these are faceless portraits, and its a lot easier to brand the disempowered with things we would like to not associate with. Stereotyping is a line that is easily crossed and one to be treated very carefully if you are going to go anywhere near it. When the powerful are stereotyped, somehow they seem less abject, we often see bankers stereotyped as suit wearers carrying large bags of money, or surrounded by symbols of wealth, yes their individuality is taken away but aspects of their power remain.
The pin striped suit stereotype can be enough to stand in for great wealth and privilege, but interestingly there are no human facial features being shown in these cartoons, unlike the recent image below of a jewish banker based on a cartoon by Ben Garrison. I thought that these images were done with and a thing of the past but I was wrong, and the evil money grabbing jew as a stereotype still exists and is part and parcel of some right wing rhetorics. Notice how different this image is to the ones of the bankers, the body posture suggests weakness, rather than the more statuesque deportment of the cat\men above. This post is hopefully a warning about how easily these things come back into play. Poor Ben Garrison has no control over what people can do with his images and the PhotoShopped version of his original reminds me of another evil circulating around the internet; doctored imagery. CGI can undermine our notions of what is true and what is fiction.
Ben Garrison's work above has been targeted by right wingers and they have even invented a fake right wing biography for him
The only time I have ever seen the stereotype used in such a way that it doesn't lead to dehumanisation is when it is deliberately used by those who have been stereotyped to raise awareness of the very stereotyping that they face.
School Report: Tam Joseph
Tam Joseph's 'School Report' reminds us of how male black youths are stereotyped by society, however his drawings have just enough of a personality to them to avoid that demeaning characteristic of features exaggeration that Oscar Arredondo points to when he demonstrates the insults inherent in images of stereotypical Indian figures. "Chief Wahoo," the bucktoothed mascot of the Cleveland baseball team is transformed by him into a series of stereotypes of people of other cultures or religions. As Arredondo points out, none of them would be tolerated in contemporary America, except the image of Wahoo himself. Sadly Arredondo has missed some of the work which is promoted by certain extreme groups. Perhaps he should have stated, "none of them ought to be tolerated in our contemporary society".
The 8 portraits above from Oscar Arredondo's exhibition, "A Mile in My Moccasins," are cruel, simplistic, anachronistic and vulgar, but as part of an awareness raising campaign about the fact that Native Americans do not deserve to be denigrated as cartoon mascots, it has worked and the Cleveland baseball team has now dropped its use of the old mascot. However I think the work is still problematic as not only does it remind us of how easily stereotypes can be developed, it also reminds us of how hard it is to then remove them from our mental image banks.
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Toyin Ojih Odutola has responded in a very different way to being stereotyped. She read that in 1910 a German archeologist on discovering anatomically correct bronze sculptures in Nigeria, decided that Greeks from Atlantis must have made them, as he couldn't get his head around the
fact that Benin bronzes could have an aesthetic superficially similar to certain European traditions. Africa and its many peoples was seen as a stereotype at the time and in many ways that stereotype still exists. She therefore in response to the German archeologist's crazy invention, decided to create her own world, one where black women are powerful. At one point in her life Odutola had moved to Alabama and it was when living there she had been forced to question why she had become to be seen as a black stereotype that was aberrant in some people's eyes, and because she enjoyed drawing she turned to this as a way of dealing with these problems of 'otherness'. She also makes portraits, but she states, they are composites of multiple people and she says she is very fortunate in "having really badass beautiful people" around her to draw, but her 'composites' go beyond the stereotype and become people; people that in the Barbican exhibition, were made by drawing on black paper.
Toyin Ojih Odutola: Lonely Chambers (T.O.), 2011, pen ink and marker drawing on paper
Hardeep Pandhal is another artist that has explored stereotyping; in particular people from the Indian sub-continent. In his work Sikh painting traditions meet the English graphic traditions of the Beano and Viz and as they do, a cartoon image of a Sikh emerges and is used by Pandhal to question how the points of entry into culture operate, especially for those born and bought up in England, but who also live within a sub-culture that still retains many of the cultural traditions of a previous time and place.
Hardeep Pandhal
Cartoonists deal with stereotypes on a daily basis, this allows them to achieve a direct communication with their audience, but this also comes with dangers. Some of these dangers are intellectually problematic in that any stereotype misdirects its audience and allows us to think that a situation or individual is simplistic or without human warmth, but some are mortally threatening, as to poke fun and to undermine by using a cartoon like image can cause deep offence. Cabu, Charb, Tignous and Wolinski all worked for Charlie Hebdo a satirical magazine that attacked many targets in the name of humour and who caused deep offence in the Muslim community by both the stereotypical portrayal of arabs and muslims as well as of course irreverently making cartoon images of God. The anger caused by their work of course led to their deaths. You might argue that these are not fine artists, but in France the dividing line between cartoonists and artists isn't as fixed as it is in England, all are seen as image makers.
Honoré Daumier was imprisoned for six months in 1832 for his depiction of King Louis Philippe as Gargantua and Daumier as an artist has at times been compared to Goya and although some would argue to the contrary, I see all these images as attempts to illuminate the human condition, some might be better than others, but surely that is the case with all art and if we always shy away from confronting political issues, we will never achieve that better world which I'm sure we would all like to help bring to fruition. The line between cartooning, stereotyping and politics can be a very difficult one to control, where does it demean or undermine the humanity of those portrayed and where does it illuminate a power imbalance or injustice? Just because it is a difficult path to follow doesn't however mean that as an area of work it should be avoided, just that I would urge caution and suggest that you test out any work made in this territory with a few other people before going public.
'Toyin Ojih Odutola: A Countervailing Theory' is at the Barbican Centre's Curve Gallery from August 11th until the 24th Jan 2021.
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