On Being Serious In The Art World Analysis

Similar to Naomi Beckwith, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye also has multiple identities pertaining to her occupation as an artist: she is both a female artist and an artist of colored race. She was born in London in 1977 with her parents being two nurses that came to Britain from Ghana (Cooke). She studied a foundation course at Central St Martins, and obtained her degree at Falmouth College of Art and her master degree at the the Royal Academy Schools (Wright). She did a variety of job to support her artistic life before she became famous. After she received different awards and distinctions such as Turner prize nomination and the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Art Prize 2012 (Wright), she was finally able to work as a full-time artist (Cooke). Her formal academic background makes her painting “rooted in traditional formal considerations such as line, color, and scale, and can be self-reflexive about the medium itself” (Jack Shainman Gallery). However, she is not only a skillful painter but also a prolific writer of fiction, poetry and essays (The Studio Museum in Harlem). This attributes to her works that …show more content…
In a way, it seems to me that Jazz in this exhibition is like the ready-made object in Duchamp’s show, because museum inherently poses this seriousness characteristics. However, there are also the differences between this exhibition and Duchamp’s ready-made art show. By turning a ready-made object in to an artwork within the institutional context (gallery or museum), Duchamp reveals and challenges the institutional power; on the contrary, this exhibition makes use of the institutional power (or the seriousness) to help visitors to perceive an ordinary music entertainment in a different way with rich historical