Representations of the Black Body in Western Art PDF

Representations of the Black Body in Western Art The Origination of the Color Scale The racial opposition of Black and White derives from the color scale; the famous chiaroscuro, or light and dark polarity, is intimately associated with the religious dualism of Good and Evil; …central to the semi...

Representations of the Black Body in Western Art The Origination of the Color Scale The racial opposition of Black and White derives from the color scale; the famous chiaroscuro, or light and dark polarity, is intimately associated with the religious dualism of Good and Evil; …central to the semiotics of Western art becomes decoded as exclusionary in the political sense In 1837 the diplomat and historian Frederic Portal published what became an influential book on color symbolism in which he singles out black for its negative associations... For Portal it is a color ‘of error, of nothingness… black negotiation of light, it has been attributed to the author of all evil and falsity’... it was rescued from possible oblivion by Paillot de Montabert, one of the most influential writers on art practice of the period. In ancient Egypt black signified fecundity, related to the fertilizing silt of the Nile, and this connection with the soil has also been kept in black’s association with death and the grave. Alchemists associated black with prime matter and latent power. The very origin of blacks a pigment may be traced to the earth and its products… Continuation ‘Emotional Expressiveness’ in art took the form of skin coloration in the early history of Western Art, as well as of the grotesque and caricatured physiognomies that dehumanized various ethnic and social groups in the service of oppression. The place occupied by the color black in the imagination and the imagery of the western world between the fourth and fourteenth centuries testifies to the contradictions and anxieties of the early christian mindset. The idea that black is the color of satan and sin establishes the doctrinal fact that God is white and the harbinger of light. Light and whiteness dispel the terrors of midnight. Despite Saint Augustines warning against identifying color and physical appearance with spiritual realities, Blackness became an indispensable component of christian cosmology and eschatology: the sign of every antagonist of the church and of church doctrine, including the church itself before it was purified of heresies. Eventually the allegorical and anagogical interpretations were applied to specific ethnic groups, embracing the Ethiopian (generic for African) and the dark skinned Muslim who threatened the holy gates of Christendom. Thus in the Caucasian-dominated culture of the West, color symbolism served to reinforce the assumptions that whiteness connotes virtue and purity and blackness wickedness and impurity T Justification his paved the way for the objectification of black people for the stereotyping that shifted the connotative meanings to a denotative level and categorically fixed the “meaning” of Black skin David Brion Davis has observed that most Europeans probably received their “first subliminal impressions of Negroes in the local church or cathedral”, which helped to shape a mentality that justified enslavement of millions of Africans. Adoration of the Magi The pervasive appearance of the Black wise man in paintings of the Adoration of the Magi from the second half of the 15th century to the first half of the 16th century signifies an element of realism coinciding with the missionary expeditions to Africa and the beginnings of the slave trade The painting represents the Black ruler who comes of his own volition to the white man’s land and lays down his wealth and his power at the feet of the Christ child. His recognitions of the superiority of the Christian Religion is his ticket of admission to the august company from which he had been heretofore excluded. Magi becomes a symbol of black people being in a role of support, not the main character, which cements their role in the larger society of being excluded and subordinate. This justifies the circumstances of which they live in. Andrea Mantegna Adoration of the Magi, 1464 Eduoard Manet, 1863 - 1865 Olympia Manet’s “Olympia” The juxtaposition of the light skinned courtesan with the dark skinned servingmaid was picked up by Manet’s contemporaries as a pretext for pictorial oppositions of light and dark, and hardly anyone has questioned this proposition since. It is true that Manet, anxious to eliminate shadow from his painting space, hit upon an ingenious solution for achieving dramatic contrast without chiaroscuro by the interaction of the maid and the courtesan. But this in itself declares that black and white racial divisions has already been conventionalized in terms of the painters palette. Thus black and white, dark and light, were signifiers in a double sense – a dual signification still retained the phrase “people of color” Samuel Jennings, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences 1792 Carl Frederick Von Breda Instructing a Negro Prince 1789 Theodore Gericault, Raft of Medsua, 1819 Frank Leslie Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition 1876 Centennial Exposition A book cover documenting the history of of the US This was an emblem of white supremacy Refers to the actual status to Black people at the fair. They were underrepresented, their only representation being white business men presenting a plantation like concession piece. Frederick Douglass was blocked by the police from taking the stand Africa’s “darkness” is displayed by her sexual exposure Winslow Homer, Gulf Stream, 1899 Gulf Stream Depicts a helpless sailor drifting amid perilous circumstances near Key West Florida. The painter is American, which suggests his personal relationship to interacting with Blackness in the West Indies. The painter’s parents were merchants, which means he spent a lot of time in overseas trade, and wanted to highlight the unjust conditions of black people in his work. Depicts Black people’s victimization at the end of the 19th century Plessy v Ferguson: Separate but equal accommodations. Alain Locke, a Black cultural theorist and historian, established this work as a being influential in breaking the harmful stereotypes of Black Americans as the “cotton-patch and back porch tradition” and began the “artistic emancipation of the Negro subject in American Art”