First, I would like to comment on Dipti Desai's lecture at UW-Milwaukee as part of the Artists Now! Lecture Series. Dipti's lecture was based on a book that her and two other women wrote: History as Art, Art as History: Contemporary Art and Social Studies Education. Within this pedagogical resource, they discuss the usage of art as a way to teach history and how to look at history through a visual lens.
In her lecture, Dipti highlighted art and history as subjective interpretations of culture and the past, and when looking at either, one must keep the creator/author in mind.
Dipti focused heavily on the role of the modern day artist. Here are a few of her comments:
- Contemporary Artists are interpreters of the past
- Many artists make art only after rigorous historical research
- Artists reframe our understanding of historical research and methods
One of the more interesting topics she brought up was photographs as primary historical documents. In my opinion, this is far from the truth. Even in the early 1900's, photography was being used as propaganda, especially during the war. Photographs were being framed and staged with a certain motive in mind, rather than strictly as historical document. Of course, this is not true to all photographs and photographers, but because it is true of some, how is one suppose to know which ones are real primary historical documents? Would this be a case of art as history or history as art?
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