Measuring, Measuring addresses the history of racial stereotypes and standards of beauty in Euro-American culture. For at least several centuries, aspiring artists in Europe and then America were trained to render the human form according to ideal body proportions established in ancient classical Greek sculpture. In Measuring, Measuring, Amos sets three figures side by side—on the far right, a classical Greek sculpture, in the center, a colonial-era photograph of a partially-dressed African woman, and on the far left, a 19th-century European sculpture of a woman’s body, whose face is missing, and whose hands hold a paintbrush and a magic wand. Amos’s work raises many questions about race, gender, colonialism, and the privileges of cultural hegemony.
- Titles Measuring, Measuring (Proper)
- Artist Emma Amos, American, born Atlanta, Georgia 1938 - died 2020, Bedford, New Hampshire
- Medium Acrylic on linen canvas, Kente fragment, batiked hand swatches, African strip woven borders, and laser-transfer photographs
- Dimensions 84 x 70 in. (213.4 x 177.8 cm)
- Credit Line Museum purchase with funds provided by the Collectors Circle for Contemporary Art and the Traditional Arts Acquisition Fund, 2003.35, image Art © Emma Amos/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
- Work Type painting
- Classification Paintings
- Signature In red paint, lower left: Amos 1995 [date is in the bottom center of the canvas]
- Provenance Emma Amos, artist [b. 1938]; purchase August 2003 by Birmingham Museum of Art