Blog Post #2

            For my second blog project, I decided to change my focus from the Portrait of the Duchess of Portsmouth to focus on the decorative art of blackamoor. Blackamoor is the term used to describe pictorial representations of Africans in paintings, sculptures, jewelry and other forms of decorative art.  The piece in particular I chose to focus on was  the Mantle Clock created by Jean Baptiste Andre Furet in France in 1784.

            I chose to focus on this piece for a couple of reasons. For one, it was visually intriguing and I wanted to find out more about why someone would create a piece like this in this time period. I also was taken aback by the sheer detail the artist was able to put into this piece. The gold/bronze leaf is so intricate and the marble is very high quality and beautiful.

            In my research, I found out the clock belonged to Baron J.L. Léopold Double in his home until it was sold in 1881. However, there was not a lot of information available about how and why this was created. So I started to research more about blackamoor in general.

            Blackamoor was so popular in this time because dark-skinned people were thought of as exotic and it showed that the owner was worldly and well traveled.  And most examples, of blackamoor show a black male covered in jewels and gold and most examples have a turban covering their head. Most of the examples are of servants holding something like a tray or fruit, presumably for a master or owner. These servants were also in very difficult positions to hold that showed off the muscle tone these servants would have from man hours of labor.

            I was surprised to see that so many examples of blackamoor were done by German artists. One example of this is the Moor with Emerald Clusters by Grunes Gewolbe in 1724. I was surprisd their were so many German artists because I was  so focused on England and French artists because they take up the scope of our class. However, it makes sense that signs of wealth and status would be similar no matter where in Europe the artist was located.

            Also, in my research there was a large number of articles about how offensive certain pieces of blackamoor were and how upset the contemporary populations are about these pieces. It seems that because of how offensive these pieces were many different sculptures and paintings were destroyed. Also, many of the original names of pieces contained offensive words within the title and were changed in order to make it more palatable to the audiences.

            Lastly, I found a few articles that showed how there was a lot more discrimination occurring in England at this time than was previously thought. For example, Immigrants were expelled, there were policies that penalized the Jews and pieces of blackamoor were abundant in wealthy families homes. One article argued that the use of blackamoor helped construct the racism in England, which than carried further to France and beyond.

            I found the names of some of these pieces and the poses they were in very unsettling. And I also didn’t like how common these were. They seem to be in poor taste in my contemporary opinion.

Blog Post 2

Blog Post 2

For my last blog post I wrote about the painting Duchess of Portsmouth by Pierre Mignard.  My post asked questions pertaining to the African child leaning up against the Duchess.  I wanted to learn more about her significance and the role she played pertaining to status for the Duchess. While studying this I looked at other painting of Africans in European portraiture, particularly French portraiture.  In doing so I furthered my question to be why did women of wealth choose to be painted in the company of slaves?

These artworks display slaves as objects of luxury.  They are meant to show off the wealth and position of their owners and their presence in the painting makes it all the more valuable (Tuan).  “Africans dark skin, exotic appearance, accent and their scarcity, particularly in France, likely all made them desirable attendants; their status symbols, highlighting the wealth, beauty, desirability and power of their white owners.” (Palmer 243)  This can be seen in the painting by Jean-Marc Nattier of Mademoiselle de Clermont, Princess of the Blood, as a Sultana, Served by some Slaves painted in 1730.  Mademoiselle de Clermont sits with a pool of water at her feet, surround by various African attendants who gaze at her while she confronts the viewer.  An image like this would attract no questions because it was simply what was expected. 

These portraits of the wealthy white Europeans with people of color exploded in increasing popularity.  When looking at these portraits it is women who dominate the genera of this portraiture.  This genre of portraiture is tied to beauty and power. The race of the salves was a social marker, and these portraits shaped the public perception and impression of these women (Palmer 244).  They created their own image and this was the one they selected. Hierarchy was also created in these portraits by placing an African servant in the image.  Their visible wealth and beauty clearly place them above their attendants created social hierarchy.  Although African servants can be found within various portraits the most common is in women’s portraiture.  Therefore this suggests there was a motive for women having themselves portrayed in this manner.  First off, portraying Africans in their portraiture became a primary social marker.  Given the limitations in how women could intervene in public conversation, portraits emerge as one genre in which elite women could shape public perception of them, while still staying within the restraints of gender roles (Palmer 244).           

For example commissioning art, especially portraits were well within the bounds of acceptable roles for women of high status.  By being patrons of the arts they were well versed in the power of having paintings mold the public’s impression of them.  This impression, which was formed by the public, was not only of the elite women but also of the African slaves in the portraits.  For example Mademoiselle de Clermont portrays herself in a position of power by having not only one, but multiple African servants surround, tend to her and gaze at her, while she pays no attention to them and only engages with the viewer. 

David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene, Neither Slave nor Free: The Freedman of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp. 134–71 

Yi-Fu Tuan, Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 137–8.

Jennifer L. Palmer, ‘The Princess Served by Slaves: Making Race Visible through Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century France’ Gender & History, Vol.26 No.2 August 2014, pp. 242–262.

      

            

In the JStor database I found a very interesting article by Chris Roulston called "The Female Couple in Art and Narrative." Roulston discusses how the relationship between Elizabeth and Dido is shown in Johann Zoffany’s Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle; and how it is compared to other paintings with similar themes as John Constable’s Ann and Mary Constable (1816). Portraying contrasting female figures was in vogue during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. If in Zoffany’s painting the disparity is between skin color and nationality; in Constable’s representation, the difference is created by depicting the older sister Ann as a masculine, imposing figure by placing her with male clothes and a determined posture (forward gaze and straight back). On the other hand, Mary is in a very ethereal, organza dress with a very apathetic look (big brown eyes, with lowered lids, and staring at the ground) and she is slumping down with an arched back. Constable’s painting, according to Roulston, creates a hinted sexuality that is also present in Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle.

                This allusion of sexual playfulness between young women was present throughout Western European culture as in Shakespeare’s plays as Twelfth Night (pub. 1623) and As You Like It (pub. 1623). Both plays experiment with youthful ladies cross-dressing who end up in happy marriages with male characters. According to Wahl, art “could depict homoerotic relations between young women without disrupting patriarchal authority…functioning almost as a rite of puberty that would “naturally” give way to heterosexual ‘maturity’ in marriage.” These representations always contain a mixture of innocence and eroticism. Therefore, this type of hinted sexuality was not only widespread, but accepted in society.

                There is a sexual undertone in portraying unmarried woman that are so different. Dido’s exoticism is predictably highlighted by representing her in a satin dress with an Indian turban and an ostrich feather while she carries tropical fruits. In contrast, her cousin is portrayed as a traditional British lady in a customary late 18^th century gown while reading a book. Dido is, therefore, less static and conventional than her cousin. This African/British young lady points to her own cheek, what Felicity Nussbaum argues is to contrast “to the white woman’s face”. Elizabeth tightly holds Dido’s arm, as if desiring to bring her closer as Dido looks at her audience with a half-smile, creating an enigmatic, dubious, and to some level, unreadable atmosphere. Even though Belle is portrayed in the background of the painting, she is the focus point.

                In British representations of young female pairs, there are two contrasting impulses: the first was to reinstate traditional ideas of domesticity and the second was to quietly subvert this concept. These paintings, as Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle, tended to highlight the qualities that would be considered ideal in a wife, but there was also “an implicit resistance to the hierarchical model of marital portraiture.” (649) Therefore, there is a sexual undertone in Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle as in many other portraits of young women in England in the 18^th and 19^th century.

Bibliography

Elizabeth Susan Wahl, Invisible Relationship: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999), p.10

Felicity A. Nussbaum, The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the    Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003), p. 63

Roulston, Chris. "Framing Sensibility: The Female Couple in Art and Narrative." JSTOR. Rice University, Summer 2006. Web. 18 Mar. 2015.

Traveling Beyond our Borders

We are all familiar with the allure of the exotic and mystical. As images of distant, tropical, and unfrequented locations flood our daily lives, the prospect of traveling tantalizes contemporary individuals. These pictures enter our reality through travel blogs, social media, and television series that allow viewers to envision themselves walking down the streets of Barcelona or relaxing on the sandy beaches in the Maldives. When I imagine the street markets of Morocco, I can almost spell the aroma of the fragment spices permeate the air and hear the cries of the merchants. As a society that has been exposed to visual imagery depicting worldly elements outside our own culture either though film, photographs, or personal research, a traveler will have a sense of how their destination will appear even if they have never previously visited the country. However, this was not always the case. People in the 19^th century did not have the luxury to conduct a quick Google search before their travels to inform themselves about their destination. In the past, people relied on paintings created by artist who had ventured out of their hometowns to the distant shores of the African continent and European colonies. These compositions became windows into the world beyond their own societies and attempted to broaden the average European’s cultural horizons. Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Snake Charmer (late 1860’s) presented as such an informative work of art that exhibited unknown cultural traditions to a 19^th century European audience (figure 1).

Figure 1

            Gérôme was notorious for being a meticulous painter, both with the movement of his brush and the depiction of his subject matter. In 1873, his studiousness earned him the reputations as a “scientific picture maker” by an American art critic. [1] This label reflects the trust that viewers placed upon Gérôme’s compositions because they believed his compositions depicted reality and the actual practices of his subjects. However, such paintings created by European artist inaccurately depict the “Orient” and their people because the painter was illustrating practices without complete cultural and societal knowledge. These images were not accurately representative of the culture but rather illustrated the fantasized “Western” version of the Orient. Thus, a European viewer is not beholding an image of the “Orient” when observing The Snake Charmer but rather Gérôme’s imaginary idea of the culture.

            It is also clear that The Snake Charmer holds political messages, which were subliminally projected unto viewers. Oriental paintings expressed Western superiority though their depictions of oriental individuals in a demoralizing manner that went against the European standard of acceptable social behavior. Gérôme’s painting depicts a group of men that are watching a young boy preforming with a large snake, which is warped around his nude figure. As the men gaze at the naked boy, a European viewer would consider this a scandalous and outrageous practice. A proper 19^th century Englishmen would never consider a performance of a boy cavorting with a snake as a form of entertainment. If they did find this prospect exciting or tantalizing, it would not be socially accepted to attend such a performance. Thus, Gérôme has depicted morally inferior individual because they attend and practice such vial and sinful traditions according to European standards.

Not only does Gérôme’s subjects present as lesser beings but the architectural environment of his scene also demonstrates Western superiority. The way the artist has painted the beautifully intricate tile wall, which is cracked and faded, gives off the notion of cultural neglect and comments “on the corruption of contemporary Islamic society.” [2] The ill-repaired tiles then become another indicators for Western supremacy, as the West would never “let their own cultural treasures sink into decay.” [3]

After researching The Snake Charmer and the characteristics of other paintings depicting the “Orient,” I am left with an unsettling feeling towards the genre. At first glance, I really liked Gérôme’s painting. The intricate details of the richly decorated tile wall, the realistic qualities of the figures, and the mystical atmosphere of their actions presents as aesthetic qualities that grabs my attention. After researching the painting, I have come to understand not to blindly accept these paintings as depicting the truth but rather the West’s idealized notion of the “Orient.” These images were utilized to solidify Western superiority and become images of fantasy and mystery rather than depictions of the true Orient and its inhabitance. Thus, these created unrealistic expectations for European travelers and falsely advertise the “Oriental” culture. 

[1] Nochlin 1989, 37.

[2] Ibid, 38.

[3] Ibid, 39.

Nochlin, Linda. "The Imaginary Orient." In The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society, 33-59. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.