Post #4 Putting it all together: Oppression and borders

1530s Paris Bordone (Italian painter, 1500-1571) Portrait of a Man in Armor with Two Pages.

Throughout this blog project I have analyzed the picture above to get a sense of this idea of "borders" and how African and European cultures interact and how it affects portraiture. I first described the phenomena of including African's in portraits, then looked at the specifics and the logistics involved in such a portrait, and then took a step back and looked at how the motif of the black page came about.

In this post, I am going to be connecting this to the overall treatment of how these cultures interact and what my peers came up with throughout their blog posts. One that jumped out at me right away was that all the African and foreign components we were discussing so intently in these works had absolutely no background information. For example, I dedicated this entire project to the above painting, but I have found nothing except the most standard cursory information on the African child above. It becomes much more interesting when we look at this blog project as a whole and find that in the vast majority of these posts there is little information about these foreign components at all, and that their value as a whole in these artworks is not as individuals, but simply because of their origin. Or even worse, most of the time it isn't because of their culture or origin, but simply because of the color of their skin! One of my peers studied Blackamoor figures for example, these of course vary and are myriad in all types of furniture, sculpture, and art-form. By today's standard they are obscenely racist, because they are so extremely dark and portray caricature-esque features that were considered prevalent among Africans. None of these blackamoor figures are identifiable as a person, or most of the times even a specific African culture, they are simply blanketly identified as "African" with the most stereotypical features possible. Most of the time they are even portrayed as servants, or holding products, like sugar, that are traditionally harvested by slaves.  Many of my peers similarly studied how Africans were portrayed in various artworks, and we all came to the similar conclusion that their value was simply their race. most of the time because it was in fashion to have such things around because they were a status symbol. 

Essentially what all of our blogs have in common is that the interaction between these cultural borders was not "a give and take" relationship, more or less the African culture and people were being systematically exploited and this is prevalent in the art of the time. Even if, most of the time, the African's portrayed were not enslaved they were indentured in forms where they were completely subservient. The portrayal in these art-forms of Africans as uncivilized in subservient contributes to this idea of political and cultural hegemony that leads to these types of art-forms being not only deemed acceptable, but highly desired.  All of these artworks, in least in the form they were intended to be (Intention of commission, ownership etc.), can simply be described as culturally oppressive. 


What I think others should take away from our combined efforts is simple. I think we should view these artworks and see them as what they are- a product of cultural hegemony from a society when oppression was not only acceptable, but in fashion. These works of art should stand as a reminder of the systematic oppression of the past to help us not repeat similar mistakes in the future and to spread cultural awareness.