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Ok...Ok...I know this is going to be very unpopular considering the audience, and also that this is ONE man's opinion, however, he brings up some decent points to be considered. Specifically the Jewish-American sports writer asks the reader to, "Imagine before a South African soccer game, a white person in black face, dressed like Mandela, running out to midfield to psyche up the crowd." Kinda turns your stomach, right? But the Seminole tribe profits from and has agreed to this arrangement, so that makes it okay doesn't it? Well, as the article points out, "The agreement is with the Florida Seminole Tribal Council and not the Seminole Nation. The majority of Seminoles don’t even live in Florida." So this is where it gets sticky. When we are questioning appropriation vs. appreciation, who is the utmost voice who can represent the culture potentially being appropriated and give the ultimate approval? And as we know, it is actually Chief Osceola and Renegade who are the specific mascots for FSU, not the nation as a whole. So is it okay to be called the FSU Seminoles because the tribal council owns profitable, luxury casinos that FSU helps to fund because they sell FSU merchandise? A sort of mutually beneficial financial arrangement where everyone wins? I hate to say it, but probably not. Would I miss seeing the most BADASS display of college football mascots to ever take the field prior to every game? Yes. But, is it time for FSU to end what is perhaps a poorly constructed financial arrangement where the actual Seminole people in Oklahoma are not financially gaining from it? Unfortunately for us, probably so, because even though there are rigorous requirements for the scholarshipped student representing Osceola, my contention is that the White fraternity brothers wearing Indigenous headdresses are a whole other thing. Thank goodness this practice was stopped at FSU in the athletic arenas in 2016.

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It's easy to oppose the name of the Washington Redskins and call for owner Dan Snyder to change his beloved bigoted brand. After all, it's a dictionary-defined slur bestowed on the NFL franchise by their arch-segregationist, minstrel-loving founder. When you have Native American organizations, leading sportswriters, Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress and even the president say the time has come to change the name, it is not exactly difficult to get on board.

But what about the Florida State Seminoles, whose football team on Monday night won the Vizio/Dow Chemical/Blackwater/Vivid Video BCS National Championship Game? The NCAA, since 2005, has had formal restrictions against naming teams after Native American tribes, and yet there were the Seminole faithful: thousands of overwhelmingly Caucasian fans with feathers in their hair, doing the Tomahawk chop and whooping war chants on national television. Their passions were stirred into a frenzy by a white person, face smeared with war paint, dressed as the legendary chief Osceola riding out on a horse. As Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated gushed, "Chief Osceola plants the flaming spear in the Rose Bowl. Awesome." (Osceola was adopted after the school quietly retired their previous Native American mascot " Sammy Seminole.")

I have been to dozens of Redskins game and have never seen anything close to this kind of mass interactive minstrelsy. Yet there are no protests against this spectacle, no angry editorials and no politicians jumping on the issue. Why is that? Because as any Florida State fanatic will shout at you, the university has "a formal agreement with Seminole Nation" and that makes everything all right. Fans treat this much-touted agreement like they have a "racism amnesty card" in their back pocket. The approval of the Seminole Nation, they will tell you makes it all A-okay. Actually it doesn't. It doesn't first and foremost because the existence of this "agreement with the Seminole Nation" is a myth.

The agreement is with the Florida Seminole Tribal Council and not the Seminole Nation. The majority of Seminoles don't even live in Florida. They live in Oklahoma, one of the fruits of the Seminole Wars, the Indian Removal Act and The Trail of Tears. These Oklahoma Seminoles-who, remember, are the majority-oppose the name. On October 26, 2013, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma's governing body passed a resolution that read in part, "The Seminole Nation condemns the use of all American Indian sports team mascots in the public school system, by college and university level and by professional teams."

As for the Florida Seminole Tribal Council, it is the owner of a series of luxury casino hotels throughout the state where the Seminole "brand" is prominently on display. The Tribal Council also bought the Hard Rock Cafe for $965 million in cash in 2006, which thanks to the Seminoles' "first-nation status" now also offers gambling in its Florida locales. Hard Rock corporate called this "the perfect marriage of two kindred spirits." Seminole Nation Hard Rock Hotel and Casino T-shirts are available for purchase.

For the wealthy and powerful Florida Seminole tribal leaders, the cultural elevation of the football program is a part of their extremely lucrative gaming operation. Defending the school's use of the name is about defending its brand. That is why the chairman of the Florida Seminole Tribe of Florida, James Billie, said, "Anybody come here into Florida trying to tell us to change the name, they better go someplace else, because we're not changing the name."

Some might say that this is fine with them. After all, given the incalculable wealth stolen from Native American tribes over the centuries, what is wrong with them getting some of it back? That would be fine, except for the stubborn fact that gambling wealth flows into very few hands. The majority of Native Americans languish in dire poverty, with reservation poverty listed at 50 percent in the last census.

Another argument for the Florida State Seminoles' keeping their name is that it actually educates people and keeps the history from being eradicated. This is self-serving codswallop, like saying a Muhammad Ali mousepad teaches people about his resistance to the war in Vietnam. Branding and cultural appropriation is not history. It's anti-history. Take school mascot Chief Osceola as an example. If people in the stands and at home actually knew who Osceola was, the ritual of his riding a horse and throwing a spear before games would be an outrage, and not just because the Seminoles, who lived and fought in swampy everglades, tended not to ride horses. Chief Osceola was a great resistance fighter and leader of the Second Seminole War in Florida.

As written in the terrific book 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals who Changes US History, "Osceola became an international symbol of the Seminole Nation's refusal to surrender. He was a renowned public speaker and a fierce fighter who was also an opponent of the US slave system. One of his two wives was a woman of African descent and it was not uncommon for escaped slaves to become a part of Seminole Nation. Osceola's army frustrated the entire US Government, five separate Army generals, at a cost to the US Treasury of more than 20 million dollars.... On October 21, 1837, Osceola met with US government officials to discuss a peace treaty. When he arrived, he was captured and imprisoned. Osceola's respect was so widespread that this maneuver was widely condemned and viewed as a dishonorable way to bring down the great warrior."

Osceola was nothing less than the American Mandela, but a Nelson Mandela who did not survive Robben Island. Imagine before a South African soccer game, a white person in black face, dressed like Mandela, running out to midfield to psyche up the crowd. Not even Rick Reilly would say that this was somehow educating people about African resistance to apartheid. No one is getting educated about Osceola or the Seminole Wars. Instead their heroic resistance has been translated for football purposes to being "tough." This "respect" for their toughness not only reduces a rich and varied Seminole culture to a savage culture of war, it is also an unspoken way to to praise our own ability to engineer their conquest.

The last argument, which is perhaps the most common, is, "Changing the name of the Redskins the Seminoles... where does the politically correct madness end? Do we stop using 'Giants' because it offends tall people? Or 'Cowboys' because it offends cowboys?" This kind of witticism is actually profoundly insulting because there was this thing called "history" that happened, and in this "history" giants were not subject to mass displacement and genocide. Once 100 percent of this country, Native Americans are now 0.9 percent, and we play sports on their graves. Their rituals and dress are our own commercialized entertainment. We turn our eyes to the field and away from the way institutionalized racism continues to define the lives of the overwhelming majority to Native Americans who do not own a stake in the Hard Rock Cafe. That gets us to the final problem with Seminole nation and all Native American mascoting. It makes us more ignorant about our own collective history. I'm not sure we can afford it.

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The Florida State Seminoles: The Champions of Racist Mascots

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It's easy to oppose the name of the Washington Redskins and call for owner Dan Snyder to change his beloved bigoted brand. After all, it's a dictionary-defined slur bestowed on the NFL franchise by their arch-segregationist, minstrel-loving founder.

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As mentioned in my week three Padlet, I wanted to investigate the complex relationship that Elvis had with bringing black music to white ears. While there is much gray area in this debate, it is my opinion that Elvis had done his research, exhibited a great amount of respect and recognition for black music of the past and of the time, and also had donated money to the NAACP and other civil rights organizations. This is at the core of how we can appreciate other cultures without appropriating. What this article specifically addressed is how Elvis was actually viewed by many Black Americans as a “vehicle for better race relations.” This reminded me of Wayne Au discussing how we can go beyond neoliberal multiculturalism by raising consciousness with the platforms that we may have, just as Elvis did due to his racial status. Elvis was known for speaking out during his entire life about paying homage to his Memphis roots and appreciation of Black music which he never claimed to be his own. Additionally, he was close friends his whole life with BB King, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thornton, and Little Richard. His mainstream, musical presence was embraced during a time of segregation by even Black audiences who were enlivened by the “prospects for widespread, meaningful and enduring changes in the pattern of US race relations."

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After Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, the African American newspaper, the Chicago Defender explained that: "When Elvis Presley breathed his last breath and the press hailed him as the 'King of Rock,' Ol' Man River cried out, 'Naw he ain't! My friend Chuck Berry is the King of Rock. Presley was merely a Prince who profited from the royal talent of a sovereign ruler vested with tremendous creativity. Had Berry been white, he could have rightly taken [Presley's] throne and worn his crown well.'"

By contrast, James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul", declared: "I wasn't just a fan, I was his brother." Brown - born dirt-poor in Barnwell, South Carolina, on the other side of the segregated south's racial divide from Presley, who was born dirt-poor in Tupelo, Mississippi - was reputedly the only entertainer granted private time with Elvis's body. "Elvis and I are the only true American originals," Brown insisted. "There'll never be another like that soul brother."

Four decades after his death, how can we reconcile these two apparently contradictory black responses to Elvis? The conventional wisdom casts Elvis as one in a long line of craven white exploiters of black musical culture for whom African Americans had nothing but contempt. In 1989, this orthodoxy was summed up in Public Enemy's rap anthem Fight the Power:

Elvis was a hero to most,
But he never meant shit to me ...
Straight up racist that sucker was,
Simple and plain.

Giving credit

But the truth is far from "simple and plain". Elvis's relationship with and reputation among African Americans was complex, particularly in the mid-1950s when he burst onto the national scene as part of a biracial rock-and-roll phenomenon that erupted just as the campaign against racial segregation in the American south began to gather real momentum.

At that time, the black press proudly pointed out the critical influence of black blues, rhythm-and-blues and gospel music on Presley's style - not to chastise him for cultural appropriation, but to applaud his impeccable taste at a time when black music was routinely denied mainstream radio and television airtime and often denigrated as immoral and barbaric.

"Presley makes no secret of his respect for the negroes, nor of their influence on his singing. Furthermore, he does not shun them, either in public or private," reported the now-defunct Tan magazine.

Presley himself was humble about his relationship with black music and musicians:

A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like coloured people. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that.

With good cause, Tan was careful to point out the disparity between Presley's annual income of more than US$2m and Domino's annual earnings of US$700,000 earnings. Perhaps disingenuously, however, it did not belabour the racial coordinates of that disparity. Instead, it stressed Presley's forthright championing of black musicians as part of a narrative that saw many positives in growing young white interest in African American-based musical styles.

Thank God for Elvis

While there has never been any necessary or simple correlation between white love of black music and racially progressive politics, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many black commentators, musicians and fans viewed the emergence of a biracial market for rock-and-roll music performed by black and white singers as a portent of, maybe even a vehicle for, better race relations.

Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that black attitudes towards Elvis were far from uniformly hostile. "I thank God for Elvis Presley. I thank the Lord for sending Elvis to open that door so I could walk down the road, you understand?" commented his contemporary Little Richard in 1970. One of the many black rock-and-rollers who suffered financially from the cover phenomenon - in which white artists took anodyne copies of black songs into the pop charts - Richard appreciated that the whole rock-and-roll phenomenon, with Elvis as its epicentre, had opened up new opportunities for black artists and songwriters to reach a young white audience.

It was not only black musicians who appreciated Elvis. In 1956, Presley was introduced to 9,000 black Memphians at radio station WDIA's Goodwill Ball. The crowd, waiting to see B.B. King and Ray Charles, went wild when Elvis appeared and police had to rescue the singer from overenthusiastic black fans. On black-oriented radio stations, black DJs routinely programmed Presley and other white rock-and-rollers such as Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers alongside Bo Diddley, Little Richard, James Brown, Ruth Brown and Ray Charles because they knew their young black core audience liked those artists.

The late civil rights leader Julian Bond recalled singing an Elvis song at an ice-breaker event at Atlanta's prestigious black Morehouse College in 1957:

Three friends of mine and I sang 'Teddy Bear' ... and I remember thinking it not at all remarkable that we would sing this Elvis Presley song. So here's these four black young men singing, 'Just wanna be your Teddy Bear,' ... We just said, "This is OK ... this guy is alright.' I think my peers thought Elvis Presley, at least in that early stage, was OK.

Even more compelling is the sales evidence. In early 1956, Presley's breakthrough RCA single Heartbreak Hotel simultaneously topped the traditionally white pop and country music singles charts and the traditionally black rhythm and blues chart. Indeed, Presley had 24 Top 10 rhythm and blues hits between 1956 and November 1963, including four number ones.

To put this into a broader historical context, this was probably the most integrated popular music market in US recording history: 175 Top Ten rhythm and blues singles were cut by more than 120 different white artists while black artists regularly enjoyed pop chart hits. By November 1963, Billboard could no longer differentiate between white and black consumption and suspended its separate black singles chart.

Cultural appropriation?

This era of biracial musical creation and consumption has been largely erased from popular memory. It lies buried beneath simplistic parables of white expropriation and exploitation of black culture in which Elvis has become emblematic of centuries of uncompensated and unacknowledged white appropriation of black cultural ingenuity and labour.

There is enormous moral power to this perspective and, to be sure, plenty of evidence of just such exploitation and theft. Nonetheless, it still makes for unpersuasive history and fails to help us to understand the significance of Elvis and the whole biracial rock-and-roll phenomenon that intersected with the dawn of the modern civil rights movement.

Nat Williams, the dean of black announcers on WDIA, had immediately recognised this symbolic linkage. At the Goodwill Ball, Williams had pondered the enthusiasm of black audiences for Elvis, "when they hardly let out a squeak over B.B. King, a Memphis cullud boy". Williams speculated that this might "reflect a basic integration in attitude and aspiration," in the black community.

He was right. The piebald charts and radio playlists of the late 1950s and early 1960s, like black admiration for young Elvis, belonged to a particular moment of rising black activism and cautious optimism about the prospects for widespread, meaningful and enduring changes in the pattern of US race relations.

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Champion or copycat? Elvis Presley's ambiguous relationship with black America

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After Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, the African American newspaper, the Chicago Defender explained that: "When Elvis Presley breathed his last breath and the press hailed him as the 'King of Rock,' Ol' Man River cried out, 'Naw he ain't! My friend Chuck Berry is the King of Rock.

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After reading Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain, I wanted to find an age appropriate TedTalk that could be a part of my lesson on Cultural Appropriation. Teri Beasley, a middle-school aged student, discusses appropriation in a manner that I believe would appeal to students in the classroom and satisfies many of Hammond's recommendations within her book. For example, it teaches about this topic through engaging with an oral presentation and story format, reframes the positioning of student as teacher, and provides an ethos for the classroom by showing how affirmation and validation can be attained by watching and responding to this TedTalk which provides opportunities for personal connections since the use of vernacular and dress is discussed within the video. (Two topics that most middle and high school aged children are interested in.) Additionally, it ignites learning with a provocation. Specifically, I was shocked to learn early on in the video about the origins of cornrows and their cultural significance. They were actually "hairstyles that were used to plan escapes from plantations during slavery" without the slave owners realizing it. (Brilliant!!!) I am pretty certain that White females who wear African style braids have no knowledge of this whatsoever, but if they did, I would hope they would understand why this is so ethically insensitive. This is another example of why cultural education is so important.

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Cultural Appropriation in America | Teri Beasley | TEDxMoreauCatholicHS

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In this brief episode from PBS SoCal, comic Francesca Ramsey, Kill Screen founder Jamin Warren, and the 'Godfather of Streetwear' designer Alyasha Owerka-Moore dive into the differences between appreciation and appropriation. A quote that resonated with me is that, "Cultural appropriation is when someone steals your culture and knows nothing about it, kind of like Colonialism." There is also mention about the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians, which made me question the legacy and history of FSU's mascot, which I want to explore in next week's deep dive. Additionally, music is brought up and I thought about the musical style of Elvis, who is considered a classic Rock 'n' Roll American artist who brought black music to white ears during a segregated time in American history. I would like to also investigate his participation and role in appreciating vs. appropriating.

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What I Hear When You Say
What does it mean to appreciate vs. appropriate culture? Explore this question from three unique points of view: Comic Franchesca Ramsey, Kill Screen founder Jamin Warren and the "Godfather of Streetwear" designer Alyasha Owerka-Moore.

Aired: 03/15/17

Rating: NR

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

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What I Hear When You Say | Cultural Appropriation vs. Appreciation | Episode 5 | PBS

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What does it mean to appreciate vs. appropriate culture? Explore unique perspectives.

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In this very thorough and comprehensive debate, 3 non-White female art professionals discuss the difference between when art is representational or appropriating. They indicate how there is a lot of grey area in this debate and specifically state, "Representation is when you've really done your research and you're really showing the work with a lot of respect for what it is and really taking the time to understand what the culture or story is all about and it's not that clear all the time." They specifically debate Banksy's BLM piece, Russian animator Dina Velikovskaya's short film About A Mother, which appropriated Native American petroglyphs and African culture, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus, and Lotte Reiniger's animated project The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a Syrian story. Through these examples, they contend that the top issues which make the distinction of who can tell what story are admitting positionality, doing extensive research, not claiming a story as one's own if it is not, embracing specificity, and receiving permission from the source.

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Artists & Cultural Appropriation in Contemporary Art: When is it Offensive?

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This video addresses how artists can avoid cultural appropriation, and explores ownership of stories represented by visual artists. Topics covered include wh…

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I made this collage to illustrate how clearly Picasso culturally appropriated and plagiarized African art.

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During my internet search on Matisse, I came across this article by an Asian American woman who is a Professor at Rutgers, which discussed the motivations of Western artists who adopted elements of others’ culture into their own art.“The reason Western Modernist artists did not think twice about appropriating other culture’s images into their art was because of the primitive label they had given them, in response to Europeans’ belief in their superiority.” She goes on to discuss how this art is considered European even though exploitation has certainly occurred. Her remedy is that artists MUST pay respect to the origins of their art and should be obtaining permission so that there is at least agency for minority cultures.

When discussing Henri Matisse, she pointed out how Red Room was entirely inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, and that La Danse is a clear depiction of an African tribal ritual with clear stylistic elements and art techniques which were also done in Africa. It is her contention that, “The use of another culture’s art as inspiration or a guide for artists trying to break away from conventional European art would fall into,” the category of cultural appropriation.

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Advances in technology during the late nineteenth and into the twentieth century allowed people from European countries faster and more frequent trips to other areas of the world. The colonization of Africa, India, and other areas meant there was a lot of trade going on between them and Europe. This resulted in large-scale exposure to their cultures as well as their art styles, as many museums opened up to exhibit objects brought back from these places. Advances in ship technology allowed larger groups of people to go to these colonies and bring back more artifacts.

Of course, the reason for colonization of these places had more to do with the industrialization of Europe and a need for their resources than a desire to learn about their culture or art. Colonization meant taking over an area and changing their economy, religion, and social structure. Social Darwinism justified their actions as they considered these people lower in the evolutionary hierarchy and therefore more primitive than themselves.

Some Europeans were beginning to branch out their way of thinking, especially artists, and we're looking for something different to explore rather than copying the old masters as generations before had done. Their belief in themselves as the top of the food chain, as far as social Darwinism was concerned, meant they justified their actions in taking whatever they wanted from those they colonized or other countries they deemed "primitive".

Modernist artists wanted to create something different from what was generally accepted by the academia of the time, and primitive art was the way to go.

Why Steal from Other Cultures?

The Western world was changing, ideologies such as capitalism and communism were rising and falling, and artists were responding to the changes by expanding the definition of art. Why did artists turn to these other cultures for inspiration in their artwork?

During the early twentieth century, many of the perceived attributes of tribal cultures and pre-Christian religions were also on the minds of Europeans, such as uninhibited spontaneity and sexual expression. Was Primitivism a way to express discontent with expected European social behavior? Dissatisfied with the limits of European art, artists enjoyed a fresh view of the art of primitive cultures, finding a sincerity they had lost.

Simplifying the Native

However, the cultures that these Europeans idealized were not ones they knew a lot about. They developed a simplistic understanding, structured by the primitivist's desires, their lack of knowledge of other societies, and racism. Did artists also fall into this category, inspired by a simplistic view of native art?

Although Modernists used the motifs of colonialized indigenous peoples as inspiration for their break from European traditions, did they impose their meaning to the artwork they were affected by? To take a cross, the symbol of Christianity, and use it inappropriately or casually in a painting might offend some people of that faith. The reason Western Modernist artists did not think twice about appropriating other culture's images into their art was because of the primitive label they had given them, in response to Europeans' belief in their superiority.

What Made it Primitive Art?

Primitive stylistic traits, as defined by Europeans of that time, included simple outlines, symbolic signs, distorted figures, and repetitive patterns. Copying these things into their artwork didn't make their finished products African or Asian, but it did make them very different than traditional European art that was acceptable at that time.

Does the inclusion of other culture's motifs create an entirely new style or genre of art, or do we simply continue to call it European art because of the artist's nationality? Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is not completely African, but it isn't completely European either. Yet abstract art and cubism are accredited to Western evolution.

African masks, for instance, with their non-realistic and symbolic human or animal forms, had been using abstract shapes and forms before this time but did not achieve the status of changing history as cubism artists did after copying their style. Is this because Africa was not considered as evolved by the Westerners of the time? If Europe had invented the fork, only after seeing it used in one of their colonized countries, would it still be attributed to them? This is a part of cultural appropriation where not only does the dominant force adopt an element from a subordinate culture, but also receives credit for it.

Japanese Influence on European Art

During the Kaei era in Japan, foreign merchant ships began to visit the country, ending their national isolation, and exposing European artists to their style of art. Japanese woodblock prints were easy to reproduce and distribute and became a strong influence in modern art. Certain aesthetic properties were of particular interest to European artists such as the presentation of space, off-centered arrangements, vibrant colors, and light with no shadows.

As well, the subject of many of the prints included everyday life themes, which corresponded with the Realism movement of the late 1900s. This movement, as well as others after it, was inspired by the Japanese use of flat color in large areas of their prints, with limited graduation, which technique drew attention to the surface of their artwork. Realists used various techniques to promote pictorial constructions rather than illusionism in their paintings including rough brush strokes and textured canvas surfaces.

Henri Matisse's Red Room and Paul Gauguin's The Vision after the Sermon both contain large areas of flat red color. How much they were influenced by Japanese art? Again, Western artists saw things in these foreign prints that they liked and therefore began emulating them. Can the resulting art still be considered completely European, even though the artists were?

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by Japanese prints, as seen in his painting, At the Moulin Rouge. We can compare it to the woodblock print of Japanese artist, Yoshiiku. They both have similar spatial diagonals and strong line patterns, especially in the background. These motifs are what make this painting interesting and noteworthy. The half shown figures, the colors (especially the bright green on the woman's face), and the background, all could be inspired by Asian or other cultures' artwork. The woman with the green face reminds us of a mask, perhaps an African mask. Perhaps it was a reference to her social standing as compared to colonized indigenous people, in the hierarchy of social Darwinism. Other artists who also used Japanese aesthetics in their artwork include Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Degas.

The Art Nouveau artists liked the decorative quality of Japanese images, with artists such as Aubrey Beardsley incorporating their style into his artwork. His illustration, The Peacock Skirt, has the same graceful curving lines and delicate patterns as Japanese prints. Comparing his use of natural patterns and imagery to Japanese woodblock prints, with their strong line elements, could also have influenced his choice of focusing on line drawing.

Other Cultures That Were Stolen from Africa and Oceanic Colonies

Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, incorporated elements from other cultures. Some of the women's faces were based on African or Iberian sculpture, which may also have represented their status in society (women working in a brothel) as equal to the primitive colonized peoples, according to the social hierarchy of the times. Picasso collected African and Oceanic artifacts, like many people of that time. Did people's collections emphasize their feelings of ownership of the art and serve as permission to copy such motifs? Also, because of the anonymity (artists of Africa and the Oceanic did not always sign their pieces, and were not singled out by Westerners) of their artwork, and because it was labeled Folk Art, did European artists have an easier time rationalizing their plagiarism?

Henri Matisse was another artist influenced by African sculpture. He found that African art techniques of simplification increased emotion without always being realistic. This description could also be used for other modern art movements such as cubism and abstract art. Some of Matisse's works show simple structures and lines. La Danse, from 1909, with nude figures dancing, painted with little detail or attention to proportions, makes us think of a tribal ritual or dance. Was this painting in some way showing a celebration of nature? Was Matisse celebrating his new freedom in creating artwork that rejected the conventional models?

Artistic Movements That Were Influenced by Other Cultures

Other artistic movements affected by other culture's artwork were the German Expressionists, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists. All incorporated stylistic elements from the artifacts of Africa, Oceania, and the native peoples of the Americas.

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. The use of another culture's art as inspiration or a guide for artists trying to break away from conventional European art would fall into this category. The artifacts shipped to Europe after colonization could have been important religious or sacred items for the indigenous cultures. Western colonizers of that time did not respect such local traditions and generally attempted to convert their settlements to Christianity.

However, the term cultural appropriation does not seem completely correct in the aspect of art, since it suggests that their culture was stolen from them. Can a place's culture be stolen through sculptures and artifacts? Other actions on the part of Western colonizers crushed and replaced indigenous cultures, confirming that stolen artifacts alone do not doom cultural survival.

As well, European artists did not integrate the same meaning behind the stolen artifacts into their own culture (the religious or traditional beliefs or uses), rather the Modernists generally just used the motifs they liked. Perhaps exploitation would better fit the European's actions. They used the aesthetics of another culture to their advantage and ultimately received credit for it. However, the ideas and images of Modernists might not have been explored if not for the colonization of other countries, and the exportation of their art and artifacts.

Perhaps it is not wrong to borrow motifs and ideas from other cultures, as long as respect is paid to their origins and permission is obtained. We are inspired by everything and everyone around us, but we should be careful not to use our advantages to appropriate other people`s or culture`s ideas in a way that they would not approve of or without giving credit. These works were also used in a propaganda sense, as they showed Europe's dominion over their colonized areas. This wasn't a new idea, as art has been used as propaganda throughout history.

Hegel Goutier, Picasso and the African Masters, The Courier, 9 (December/January/February 2009): retrieved 12 April 2010.

Ian Chilvers. Primitivism, A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art. 1999. Encyclopedia.com, 18 April 2010

Henri Matisse, retrieved 14 April 2010. Kleiner, Fred, and Christin Mamiya. Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 12th ed. California: Wadsworth, 2005.

Primitive Art, Art and Popular Culture, 2010. The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia, 1 February 2010.

Primitivism, Art and Popular Culture, 2010. The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia, 4 February 2008
About the author: Diane H. Wong used to be a business coach. Besides, she is a writer at where she prefers to spend her spare time working out marketing strategies. In this case, she has an opportunity to share her experience with others and keep up with advancing technologies.

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Modern Art and Cultural Theft - Art Business News

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Advances in technology during the late nineteenth and into the twentieth century allowed people from European countries faster and more frequent trips to other areas of the world. The colonization of Africa, India, and other areas meant there was a lot of trade going on between them and Europe.

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In this documentary, I was saddened to learn about how Germany, while instituting Colonialism and Imperialism, stole vast collections of African art which it still maintains possession of even to this day. Germany doesn’t even have all of the art on display and is just storing it, but refuse to repatriate the art back to the people of Africa or to participate in any sort of restitution. Enotie Ogbebor, an African artist states in the documentary, “If our young people can’t see excellent representations made by their ancestors, what is going to inspire them?”

What is even more shocking is that Sotheby’s sold an African bronze sculpture, which was a piece of looted art, for almost 5 million dollars and none of that money was given to the African people. What is specifically disconcerting about this is that much of this art is not just items to look at or to represent a history, the artifacts have mystical, religious, and cultural significance to the African people. Museums must ask themselves about the ethics involved in displaying looted, sacred objects.

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In 1896, Edward Curtis embarked on his “life-defining project” entitled The North American Indian. Due to the elements within his photographs, which coincide with most of what our preconceived notions are about Native American culture, we assume his work was a credible representation of an Indigenous people. But while we almost blindly affirm the authenticity of the images, the truth is that Curtis was known to have staged all of his photos, the settings, the posturing of the subjects, the items included in the photographs and even the costuming, which was many times used on various tribes regardless of their own customary dress. As a result, we the viewers have been purposefully misled. (Additionally, the photographs never included the subject’s name as they had no agency whatsoever within this series.)

To clarify further, Curtis would dress Native Americans in what he believed to be “traditional indigenous attire, bare-chested and wearing a headdress”. This type of exoticizing and othering, provided by Curtis, maintains a romanticized narrative of Native Americans and contributes to the conversation that artists have indeed culturally appropriated.

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Edward Curtis and "The North American Indian": An Exploration of Truth and Objectivity - Photography Ethics Centre

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Theodore Roosevelt remarked that Curtis' work was 'has far more than mere accuracy, because it is truthful.' But can truth be beyond accuracy? How far can we trust the objectivity of the photographer?

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Gauguin romanticized the Tahitian people and profited under the guise of documenting their society for the French government. However, as this article points out, there is a lot of controversy surrounding his art and the choices that he made in terms of subject matter. He perpetuated racial stereotypes which fed into the European notion of the sensual savage. (This made me think of the photographic series by Edward Curtis of Native Americans.) Additionally Gauguin, "drew attention to Modernism’s construction of the pre-modern 'other,' as well as to the unchallenged power and privilege of the white male artist to exploit and erase indigenous female identities in the name of art."

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Why Is the Art World Divided over Gauguin’s Legacy? | Artsy

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Paul Gauguin took three teenage brides and peddled deeply problematic racial and sexual fantasies of Tahiti, but some still focus on his artistic achievements.

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As Shonibare points out, “After Matisse showed Picasso African art for the first time ... it changed the history of modern art.” It makes you wonder how many artists beyond Picasso were appropriating and not appreciating cultural works from other artists. How much does Picasso owe to African art and additionally, how many artists were influenced in a tertiary manner. What is surprising in this article is that Shonibare exhibited the masks once owned by Picasso, not to shame him or accuse him of appropriation, but rather to demonstrate why Picasso was so fascinated by them.

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In 1998, in a hilarious work called Diary of a Victorian Dandy, Yinka Shonibare inserted himself, impeccably attired, into the sitting rooms, drawing rooms, billiards rooms and bedrooms of high society Victorian Britain, invariably causing a sensation in each of the perfectly mocked-up photographs. The work mimics William Hogarth's The Rake's Progress, but instead of ending up in Bedlam, like Hogarth's protagonist, Shonibare the Dandy triumphs over white society at everything from financial dealing to fine conversation. It all climaxes with him having a great time in a brothel with no apparent guilt or punishment. Well, it was the 1990s - and Shonibare was a bona fide Young British Artist. Also, he says with a laugh, "Hogarth was the first YBA."

Shonibare has played plenty of games with art and history since, including refitting a model of HMS Victory - that most British of all vessels, the flagship of the Battle of Trafalgar - with sails of (supposedly) African batik fabric and sticking it in a giant bottle. But now the British-Nigerian artist is turning his attention to the birth of modern art in Picasso's Paris. Not many artists come away from an encounter with Pablo looking good. A 2012 Tate exhibition about the Spaniard and modern British art left Henry Moore and Francis Bacon looking very small indeed. But Shonibare engages with the old Minotaur in a relaxed, funny yet profoundly insightful way.

"After Matisse showed Picasso African art for the first time," he says, "it changed the history of modern art." This is no hyperbole. It immediately led Picasso to repaint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the incendiary canvas he was working on in his ramshackle Montmartre studio, giving three of the five naked sex workers in it "African" masks that set them free from all previous western artistic values and rewrote the rule book about what an image can be.

More than a century on, Shonibare is returning to this seismic shift in his new exhibition, African Spirits of Modernism. Three statues at the beginning of the show, at the Stephen Friedman gallery in London, mix animal and human anatomies, as well as European and African traditions, revisiting that tumultuous moment in Paris in a dazzling way. An African mask, showing a human head with animal horns, floats on top of a decapitated Greco-Roman statue of a centaur. It's covered in the batik fabric patterns that Shonibare calls "my trademark". More African masks are appended to classical European statues of a sphinx and the goat-legged god Pan. All are replicas of masks Picasso owned.

Among many other things, Shonibare reveals the sheer scale of Picasso's collection of African masks. This is acutely apposite, at a time when museums are being hit with demands to return "cultural property" to wherever it originated. But Shonibare's aim is not to attack Picasso. "When I looked deeper, I saw Picasso was genuinely fascinated by the spiritual power of these objects - it wasn't just decoration. He went for sculptures that were frightening: half-animal, half-human."

So this is not a critique of cultural appropriation. "I'm not one of these people who challenge cultural appropriation in that way," he says. "Of course, I recognise power issues. I recognise that the dominant culture can misuse something." But Shonibare delights in the exchanges, crossovers and ironies that can ensue. He uses batik patterns because they suggest authentic African-ness, yet they were first sold in Africa by the Dutch in the 19th century and are actually derived from Indonesia.

He sees a parallel with the new show. "It is a celebration of the works of my ancestors," he says. "But there's also the irony that a contemporary African encounters this spirituality through the eyes of modernism, through the eyes of western art, because I'm distant from the works of my ancestors - they're not something I've used myself, in rituals or in initiation ceremonies as they did. The west created this hybrid monster which is myself."

There's no doubting the imperialist context of Picasso's African art encounter, however. France's colonies at the beginning of the 20th century included Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Niger, French Sudan, Senegal and elsewhere. Artefacts from these lands were displayed in Paris in the notoriously shabby galleries of the Musée du Trocadéro. Picasso, suggests Shonibare, was unique for his time, showing an intuition for the religious depth and ritual purpose of these objects whose anonymous makers he never met.

"I think what came after," says Shonibare, "became more like decoration or fashion. I don't believe other artists were looking with the same depth." With Picasso leading the way, modernist Paris went crazy for Africa - or rather a fantasy of Africa. "The French were very interested in these cultures," says the 58-year-old artist. "But then there is another side: the exoticisation, the fetishisation. It's a two-way thing, though."

Black artists, he points out, "mimic the stereotype. Josephine Baker does the banana dance, pretending she's from Haiti. But she's not from Haiti, she's American. Economically, it's actually profitable to be as exotic as possible."

There is, however, another reason why Shonibare has chosen to investigate the modernist age now: he wonders whether today's art world is having a similar moment of exoticism. "You've got Black Lives Matter, people fighting for social justice. Then you have an explosion in the market of black art becoming really fashionable, but not with any distance or critical thought or trying to understand these things in a deeper way. Every young artist is trying to paint like Kerry James Marshall [an acclaimed painter of black American scenes], because that's where the market is. So is this genuine empowerment for artists of African origin? Is this going to last? Or is this another Harlem renaissance that's just going to be yesterday's fashion?"

Shonibare is not offering simple answers, just posing difficult questions. "If you look at the western art market, I think 2% is the work of black artists maybe - a tiny proportion. So there is no proper equilibrium yet. There's only fad and fashion, no serious depth to the collecting. Overpriced auctions of one or two artists don't solve the problem.

"Picasso was radical. I wish more contemporary artists would be brave enough to not follow the crowd. I have a lot of respect for Picasso. Disruption is something I value - and I identify that disruption in Picasso's work. We're so used to those works now, they've almost become like classical art. But can you imagine what they would have been like at the time?"

Surely, though, there's an injustice built into the legacy of the modernists? African creativity played a huge part in releasing the west from dead traditions and ushering in modernity with all its freedoms. What did the makers of those world-changing masks get in return? It's an idea Shonibare runs with: "Things haven't changed that much for people of African origin. You've had the whole kind of modernist temple, so-called high art, built on the back of the art of Africa. But that's never really confronted and acknowledged. Modernism is a very individualistic, self-centred type of culture."

So it shouldn't be acceptable to celebrate the genius of Picasso without fully acknowledging the genius of the cultures that inspired him: we are who we are partly because of the masks that are born again in Shonibare's magical show. As for African artistic masterpieces, now they've given so much to the west, does he think they should be returned? Do the Benin sculptures in the British Museum, looted in 1897, belong back in Nigeria?

"I think that it's a matter of respecting people and their heritage. The British Museum can have replicas of these objects: they don't have to be here. I think a symbolic gesture should be made. We can't carry on like the world has not changed. In Nigeria, they are building a museum and British people should be able to go there to understand those objects in the right context."

He's doing his bit to open up such encounters. "I'm building an artists' residency space in Lagos, Nigeria. Artists will be able to go for three months. The building is nearly finished. Then two hours from Lagos we have a 54-acre farm and we're practising sustainable agriculture. Artists will also be able to go to the farm to work."

He thinks statues of slavers, such as Bristol's monument to Edward Colston, should go if local communities want them to - or if not, then some historical context should be added. But he'd never make a "didactic" statue to replace such a work, as this would smack of "Soviet Russia". And for this artist of humour, sensuality and irony, art is so much more than a set of good intentions.

"I keep talking about aesthetics," he says, "because many people, when they talk about the work of black artists, focus on 'the message'. They're looking for a message." Instead, he prefers to layer his art with beautiful fabrics, fancy rococo wigs and rich references. "I enjoy all of that and deliberately go over the top with it. White artists don't have a monopoly on aesthetics."

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'Cultural appropriation is a two-way thing': Yinka Shonibare on Picasso, masks and the fashion for black artists

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Picasso was so enthralled by African art, he used it to start a revolution. But did it give rise to a fantasy of Africa that still endures? British-Nigerian artist Shonibare tells us why he's revisiting that seismic moment

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This again speaks to Picasso's appropriation of African art but Isabella Segalovich, a queer, Jewish author who writes about anti-authoritarian art history, points out that Picasso's entire style changed after being exposed to African sculptures and masks. Accordingly, much of his success as an artist was directly derived through cultural appropriation, although this is not commonly known. What is clearly not appreciation, is that Segalovich points out that later in life, Picasso denied any influence of African art within his work whatsoever.

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Replying to @michael.scholar More than just an “African Period,” African artists should take the credit for everything Picasso is celebrated for🌍 #picasso #pablopicasso #picassoart #african #africanart #colonization #artifacts #arthistory #arthistorian #culturalappropriation #culturalheritage #modernart #cubism #modernism #cubismart #folkart #indigenousart #abstractart #abstractpainting 

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@interstellar_isabellar
Replying to @michael.scholar More than just an “African Period,” African artists should take the credit for everything Picasso is celebrated for🌍 #picasso #pablopicasso #picassoart #african #africanart #colonization #artifacts #arthistory #arthistorian #culturalappropriation #culturalheritage #modernart #cubism #modernism #cubismart #folkart #indigenousart #abstractart #abstractpainting
♬ Vivaldi-Four Season-Summer-3 - 中国爱乐乐团

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Segalovich comments on the response to her last Tik Tok calling out Picasso's appropriation. She remindes us that we can and should appreciate the African art that inspired Picasso. She stresses appreciation here over appropriation which is lovely as it reminds us to use what we know about Picasso's art as a segway to its origins.

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Replying to @reth.sogan i mean DO be sad because picasso was a sh!tty colonizer, then get excited because theres a whole world of BETTER ART and artists to celebrate and respect and uplift instead!!! #picasso #pablopicasso #picassoart #african #africanart #colonization #artifacts #arthistory #arthistorian #culturalappropriation #culturalheritage #modernart #cubism #modernism #cubismart #folkart #indigenousart #abstractart #abstractpainting #greenscreen 

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@interstellar_isabellar
Replying to @reth.sogan i mean DO be sad because picasso was a sh!tty colonizer, then get excited because theres a whole world of BETTER ART and artists to celebrate and respect and uplift instead!!! #picasso #pablopicasso #picassoart #african #africanart #colonization #artifacts #arthistory #arthistorian #culturalappropriation #culturalheritage #modernart #cubism #modernism #cubismart #folkart #indigenousart #abstractart #abstractpainting #greenscreen
♬ Good News - Mac Miller

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While this TedTalk doesn't specifically speak to appropriation, Kaphar is a contemporary artist who seeks to dismantle historical depictions of exclusion and stresses how art can influence our thinking and understanding of the past. His techniques include various means to illustrate how we can amend our understanding of history without erasing it. In this video, he introduces you to one of his works and then visually dismantles it as a symbolic and powerful gesture regarding racial depictions in art. This is an important concept to keep in mind when discerning whether an artist is appropriating or appreciating the works of others as positionality and recognition of original works are key.

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I love the following quote from this article, it was "the context of colonial exploitation that brought African art into the domain of French culture, and made Picasso’s interaction with these masks possible". This shows how deeply historical factors affected not only an artist's desire to appropriate cultural art, but their ability to do so. Picasso's positionality is directly related to whether he was appreciating or appropriating.

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Cultural appropriation, once discussed in debates amongst academics, has moved into the mainstream media. Teen Vogue recently published an article on 'How to Avoid Cultural Appropriation at Coachella'. Australian model Shanina Shaik had obviously not read the piece, and shared a photo of her braided hairstyle on social media, which quickly came under fire, as followers accused her of 'appropriating black culture'. This crusade against cultural appropriation can also be found in the art world. Last year an exhibition in Canada was cancelled because of the artist's 'cultural genocide' of tribal art. So, let's take a look at cultural appropriation and art.
Cultural appropriation & aesthetics from antiquity onwards
Cultural appropriation is inextricably tied up with aesthetics and it is not a new phenomenon. If we take a look at art history, cultural appropriation has been going on for centuries, and many of the world's most celebrated art movements and objects are the result of it. Greek sculptures, and particularly their freestanding, life-size nudes, called 'kouros', clearly show the influence of Egyptian art. The Romans appropriated large amounts of Greek culture, and so on.

Fast-forward to the 20 th century and 'great' artists, including Picasso, Gauguin and Matisse, formed modernism out of appropriating other cultures' art, crafts and artefacts into their revolutionary practice. If you haven't seen Alfred Barr's famous flow-chart for modern art, it shows the notion of borrowing art forms from other artists and cultures played a defining role in creating modernism.
If cultural appropriation went some way to forming modernism in the arts, is it always a bad thing? I suggest we start by asking: what is cultural appropriation?

'This term is used to describe the taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group from another. It is in general used to describe Western appropriations of non‐Western or non‐white forms, and carries connotations of exploitation and dominance. The concept has come into literary and visual art criticism by analogy with the acquisition of artefacts (the Elgin marbles, Benin bronzes, Lakota war shirts, etc.) by Western museums' - The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature.

From this definition, it is clear that it is the connotations of power over minority cultures, which make it such a negative label, and not one to be taken lightly. What it infers is exploitation and racism.
Picasso, African art and appropriation
Let's return to Picasso and consider his masterpiece 'Les Demoiselles D'Avignon', which is famed for its incorporation of African masks. Picasso had seen African masks in several museums in Paris, and was intrigued by their formal and spiritual qualities. What complicates this matter is that it was the context of colonial exploitation that brought African art into the domain of French culture, and made Picasso's interaction with these masks possible. This fact raises the question: should we discuss this painting within the framework of cultural appropriation?

This painting is housed in New York's MOMA, and describing the work on their website the museum writes that Picasso was " inspired by Iberian sculpture and African masks". The Metropolitan Museum in New York, in their discussion of the picture, talk about how Picasso ' blended' African art into the image, and " recognised the spiritual aspect of the composition". There is no mention of the negative term 'cultural appropriation' here.
The language of appropriation
It is not just history but language which plays a crucial role in this debate. Where are the boundaries between appropriation and the more positive, and closely associated, labels assimilation and appreciation? And who decides upon this classification? That lies in the eye of the beholder: what for one person is assimilation, for another is appropriation. Art history, and museums, can frame a work within a particular way, and distinctions are demarcated in the language art historians choose.

Art historians, such as Edward W. Said, have strongly criticised cultural appropriation. Said's seminal book entitled 'Orientalism' has become one of the founding principles of post-colonial and critical race theory, defining Orientalism as 'the way that the West perceives of - and thereby defines - the East'. At the heart of his discussion is the link between cultural appropriation, exploitation and racism, and this is the implication whenever someone uses the increasingly popular label.

The growing conversation about cultural appropriation - now out in the open - is definitely a good thing. What we must not forget is that cultural appropriation has been going on since the dawn of (art) history. Moreover, cultural crossover and conversations have resulted in progress, in the arts and beyond. If we continue in this crusade against so termed cultural appropriation, the risk is that we segregate, censor and police the arts, which cannot be a good thing. This heavily loaded term should certainly be used with care.
Further reading
Want to read more on this controversial topic? I recommend the following books:
James Young, 'Cultural Appropriation and the Arts'.
This book sets out the positives and negatives of cultural appropriation in list form. Although it's a text book, it's not overly academic and a great starting point on the topic.
Edward Said, 'Orientalism'.
How do cultural appropriation and art history intersect? In this post-colonial classic, Edward Said discusses Orientalism, defined as the West's patronizing representations of and attitudes towards "The East" (Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East) through specific artworks, literature and history. It's beautifully argued, persuasive and conclusive.
James Clifford, 'The Predicament of Culture'.
In The Predicament of Culture, James Clifford looks at the West in its changing relations with other societies. He explores cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art. He shows how apparent authoritative accounts of other ways of life are often fictions, now actively contested in post-colonial contexts.
Ruth x

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Art History | Cultural appropriation & the art of the steal | Ruth Millington

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Cultural appropriation, once discussed in debates amongst academics, has moved into the mainstream media. Teen Vogue recently published an article on 'How to Avoid Cultural Appropriation at Coachella'. Australian model Shanina Shaik had obviously not read the piece, and shared a photo of her braided hairstyle on social media, which quickly came under fire, as followers accused her of 'appropriating black culture'.