TITUS KAPHAR CAN ART AMEND HISTORY; TED TALK SUMMARY

Titus Kaphar is an artist who brought his kids to an art museum. Before they had entered the building, one of his kids noticed something about the sculpture that was outside of it. The curious child proceeded to ask his father, Kaphar, about the sculpture saying, “How come he gets to ride and they have to walk”(1:12). The sculpture was of Teddy Roosevelt riding a horse and two children not or the white race walking along side the horse. Kaphar, in the Ted talk, proceeded to tell his story, saying that he didn’t have an answer for his child.  His son was realizing that it wasn’t fair. Kaphar new this, but didn’t know how to take it. “That doesn’t look fair, why is this thing that is so not fair, sitting outside such an amazing institution”(1:36).  Kaphar wanted to change things.

Kaphar had taken collage courses when he was younger, one of them being art history, after enjoying it due to his liking of visual learning, he took more art classes. The last art history class that Kaphar took was a survey art class that tried to push too many topics into a short amount of time. Because of this, the professor wanted to skip a subject that, of course, was the subject Kaphar was most excited for. “We’re going to skip this chapter today”(5:39).  Kaphar was very passionate about this and made multiple attempts to have the professor go over it, including going to the dean.  In the end, he had to just teach and learn about it on his own time.

Kaphar continued to be very passionate about this subject. In the Ted Talk, he spoke a lot about it. Paintings everywhere, ones that he visited in museums to teach himself how to paint were all paintings that put black people away. These paining made black people seem less important than the paper they are getting painted on. “There are more written about dogs in our history than there is about this other character”(9:10). Kaphar really wanted to do something about this. But he didn’t want to erase history or make people think it’s about ratification, because it is not. “Shift your gaze slightly, just momentarily”(10:13). Kaphar in his art that is in a way fixing the originally art, has paintd over the other characters in the painting, all except for the black boy. But he has put oil in the paint so that the other originally more drawn out characters are not completely covered. Kaphar wants to show that the black boy is just as important. In all art, black people are just as important to all other characters.

RHYS  SOUTHAN IS ART A WASTE OF TIME; SUMMARY

Rhy Southan is an artist, a writer. He wrote an essay that started by explaining how he views art and how he enjoys it. Also in the beginning he shares that he heard about this group, a growing activism movement called Effective Altruism. He meets up with two of them on a train and turns out that the two group members, later known as EA’s, are going to attened a group meeting in East Devon fro a cottage retreat. The idea of a cottage and woodsy setting for this writer to complete his screenplay sounded excellent. Southan joined them. While on this retreat, not only writing got done, but so did a lot of learning about the Effective Altruism movement. Bonding with the group members they started telling Southen that there are other more important things to worry about in this world other that art and writing. The EA’s explained that their movement was about aiding in ending poverty. Being a part of their movement meant putting as much as you can, including money wise especially into helping people in poverty. “A baseline donation of 10 percent of your income to effective charities”(p433). All of this seemed almost absurd to Southan, it made him question if art was actually important in helping the world or not? And maybe if it even mattered.  The EA’s continued to let Southan know that art does’t help the world, “Effective Altruism would sometimes say that the thing you most enjoy isn’t the most moral thing to do.”(p438).  Southan doubts about art helping the world where not helped when later he found out that his finished screenplay was turned down. All of this in addition to his screenplay failure made Southan, again, second guess himself and continue to think, are the EA’s right? Are their ideas valid? Southan later talks about how the EA’s have almost a concept that if you don’t have a high paying job, then you are very replaceable. So art would not be a great job to them, continuing the idea that it is not important. Southan talks about a story that he heard from a programmer for the UK -based ethical careers website 80,000 hours, Ozzie Gooen told him about. In the story describes a spoofed super hero that cared about art making rather than helping people in need. Those people still felt good because what they were doing was better than nothing. This hero was called “Net Positive Man”. Southen sees Gooen’s views but does not agree with them because this hero was making fun at those people who chose art instead. “If what you want to do is make the world better, the impact of paying to treat many people with curable diseases might seem a little humdrum compared with the revolution in human consciousness that will surly come when you publish your novel. But if donating to charity feels a bit generic, the lives it saves are not.”(p450) Southan then on the same page uses the quote, “If accepting the shallow-pond analogy, everyone is morally horrific. Even Peter Singer himself. Everyone can be doing more than they currently are.” Southen concludes with this saying not doing art instead matters just as much as it does’t matter. Anyone can always do more, so might as well do what you want to do.