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Preview image of work. chromogenic print on paper,  Video Drawings: Tennis 37182

2018.7

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Video Drawings: Tennis

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Artist

Howardena Pindell (Philadelphia, PA, 4/14/1943 - )

Title

Video Drawings: Tennis

Creation Date

1975

Century

mid-20th century

Dimensions

8 x 10 in. (20.32 x 25.4 cm)

Classification

Photographs

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

chromogenic print on paper

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2018.7

Artist Howardena Pindell began experimenting with video technologies, turning to television and acetate in her studio. This experimentation also marked a transition in her practice, moving from abstraction to more personal and political works. Video Drawings, a series she returned to over two decades, showcased television programming ranging from sports to political speeches. Pindell superimposed drawn vectors, numbers, and dots on these TV scenes, photographing them at slow speeds to blur the video image. The presence of small ink circles in this work suggests the motion of the tennis ball, but also appropriates the dots she recalls encountering as a child in Southern restaurants on plates reserved for Black customers. The subject of tennis was hardly a neutral choice, representing at the time a physical and symbolic site where gender norms and racial stereotypes were contested by tennis stars like Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, and Arthur Ashe.