Lydia Schmitt

A222

Professor Phoebe Wolfkill

13 April 2018

Tightrope Walker

Painter Emma Amos started her career at a time when there were few prevalent

female artists and even fewer successful female, black artists. The isolation she felt was

translated into her work creating such pieces as Tightrope (1994), which targeted the

patriarchal art scene. Amos uses symbolism within her piece to reference the

objectification of black women within Western art and display her many roles as a black

woman. Tightrope is a reflexive self-portrait in which Amos displays criticisms against

predominant male artist, Gauguin, and recontextualizes what it means to be a black,

female artist.

Amos reflects her thoughts, feelings, and experiences from her life into her

artwork. In order to better understand the full meaning behind her work, we must first

learn more about her history and background. Amos was born into a middle class family

in Atlanta, Georgia in 1938.1 While she attended black public schools in Atlanta2, she

later moved away to attend university at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.3 It

was here that she studied fine arts and textile weaving and received her BFA.4 Amos later

arrived in New York in 1961 to pursue her masters at NYU.5 Through the connections

Amos was able to make at NYU, she was asked to join an elite group of black artists

1
Billops, C.
2
Ibid.
3
Marter, J.
4
Ibid.
5
Farrington, L. Creating Their Own Image.
called Spiral.6 She was delighted to be asked to join such a prestigious group of artists,

but questioned her position within the group because she was the only female asked to

join. In an interview with bell hooks, Amos was asked why she might have been the only

female artist within the group and stated, “They wanted the token one, and they wanted a

young one who had no voice. If you think about who they could have chosen from then:

Faith Ringgold, and Vivian Browne […] So they went around and they chose a kid who

was twenty-five and posed no threat to them whatsoever.”7 At this point in time, Amos

had felt extremely isolated as her participation in Spiral was limited to observing the

groups’ discussions and she was not aware of many other female black artists.8 However,

her involvement in Spiral led to the creation of her multifaceted works. Spiral influenced

Amos’s consideration of race and representation and “her unique position with the group

also stimulated her sensitivity to the relationship between race, gender, age, and artistic

legitimacy.”9 As Amos continued to mature as an artist, it is not surprising that these

themes started to take center stage in her work.

Tightrope (1994) becomes an excellent example of Amos’s representation of what

it means to her to be a black female artist. Tightrope combines many of Amos’s talents:

painting, textile design, and printing processes.10 This piece was painted with acrylics on

a linen canvas stretching out at 82 x 58 inches.11 Amos works primarily within the

categories of abstract expressionism, which allowed for her to create images with

painterly marks but also with a certain degree of realism. The center of the canvas

6
Ibid.
7
Hooks, B.
8
Farrington, L. Creating Their Own Image.
9
Wolfskill, P.
10
Farrington, L. Creating Their Own Image.
11
Ibid.
features a life size depiction of Amos balancing on a tightrope high above a crowd. She

dawns a Wonder Woman suit, a black smock, and bright red boots making this piece into

a reflexive self-portrait. In one hand she holds paintbrushes and in the other a hanger with

a cropped image of Paul Gauguin’s Two Tahitian Women with Mangoes printed onto a

tee shirt. The tee shirt focuses on the breasts of Gauguin’s teenage bride.12 Throughout

the piece there is a repetition of an “X” symbol: the paintbrushes form an X in her hand

and there are painterly marks creating X’s all over the painting. Below Amos’s feet is a

net containing a multitude of disembodied eyes watching her every step. Additionally,

she paints a full crowd of people behind her watching her make her way across the tight

rope. Around the borders of the painting, Amos includes an image of Te Ha Amana, or

Mrs. Gauguin, in every corner. She continues the border with images derived from

African textile design, a common practice in much of Amos’s work.

With Tightrope, Amos has created a piece that speaks to multiple aspects of her

identity. Her use of fabrics is a conscious decision that helps land her a place within the

feminist art movement and its revival of “feminine” or traditional women’s art forms.13

Given her background in textiles, it only makes sense the Amos would continue to use

fabric as a constant in her mature artwork. “[…] Amos’s ability to obfuscate the high/low

art divide by consolidating the so-called ‘fine art’ of painting with the ‘artistry’ of textiles

became nothing short of alchemy and the fulcrum of her signature style.”14 However, her

commentary on feminist ideals does not stop at the mere use of fabrics within Tightrope.

Her decision to include Mrs. Gauguin’s breasts speaks to her distaste for the

12
Ibid.
13
Mater, J.
14
Farrington, L. Woman’s Art Journal.
objectification of black females within Western art.15 By borrowing the figure “from the

work of a celebrated European master to disembody it and render it strange,”16 Amos is

able to recontextualize the figure in her own terms and design. It is especially interesting

that Amos critics Gauguin’s work because she was at first drawn to it because of his

depictions of “beautiful brown women.”17 However, upon discovering that the artist was

famous for his misogyny and that Mrs. Gauguin was his teenage bride, Amos redirects

her attraction into critique. “In her painterly reassessment of Gauguin, Amos includes the

dark, young Mrs. Gauguin in an updated conversation about ethnic and gender

imperialism.”18 The inclusion of the tee shirt imprinted with “Mrs. Gauguin’s breasts”

acts as an alternative to Amos’s smock in order to keep the balance of her roles as

woman, artist, and black person.19 Tightrope is an attempt to recontextualize the inherent

notion of “otherness” in depictions of black women.20

In doing this, Amos is uprooting the “sanctity of the original works” while

bringing to light her own equal relationship to them.21 “In exhibiting her resistance to the

Western canon, she also illustrates its impact on her work.”22 Although critiquing

Gauguin’s work as well as aspects of his lifestyle, there is no denying that this piece

would not have been created without his work as influence. As a black woman artist,

Amos was not taken as seriously as her white and black male counterparts. She was

denied spots in New York galleries and ignored for teaching positions due to her

15
Farrington, L. Creating Their Own Image.
16
Wolfskill, P.
17
Farrington, L. Creating Their Own Image.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
21
Wolfskill, P.
22
Ibid.
background of growing up in the South.23 Tightrope reveals her precarious position as a

black female artist by reframing art produced by ‘masters’ in order to emulate and

challenge them.24 “She speaks to the dominant artistic culture by wearing its codes,

performing from within that space but also from her distinct perspective as an African

American woman who is frequently positioned outside of its boundaries.”25 Tightrope

challenges the position of the black female artist within Western art while also finding a

way to use competing imagery and voices that influenced Amos’s own work.26

Amos carries so much voice within her work, which has in turn resonated and

inspired many. Tightrope is an excellent example of Amos’s work as a whole. It contains

themes that deal with the relationships between race, gender, age, and artistic legitimacy

while also incorporating a variety of mediums in an expressionistic style. She

recontextualized a famous painting from a Western master in order to critique him and

Western art as a whole. By calling out the inadequacies of Western art and its

objectification of black women, Amos was able to continue to pave a path for future

women artists of all background and ethnicities.

23
Farrington, L. Creating Their Own Image.
24
Wolfskill, P.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
 Bibliography

Billops, C. (1995). Interview of Emma Amos. New York, NY: Hatch Billops Collection.

Farrington, L. (2005). Black Feminist Art, Creating Their Own Image (pp. 157-162).

New York City, New York: Oxford University Press.

Farrington, L. (2007). Emma Amos: Art as Legacy. Woman's Art Journal, 28(1), 3-11.

Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/stable/20358105

Hooks, B. (1995). Interview of Emma Amos by Bell Hooks. New York, NY: Hatch

Billops Collection.

Marter, J. (2016, October). Amos, Emma. Retrieved from

http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.

0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7002021445#

Wolfskill, P. (2016). Love and Theft in the art of Emma Amos. Archives of American Art

Journal, 55(2), 47-65. Retrieved from

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/689715
Tightrope (1994)
Emma Amos
Acrylic on linen canvas, African fabric collage, laser-transfer photographs
82 x 58”
[via Farrington, L. Creating Their Own Image.]