The color of stone : sculpting the black female subject in nineteenth-century America / Charmaine A. Nelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nelson, Charmaine

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women, Black, in art.

Figure sculpture, American--19th century.

Figure sculpture, American.

Marble sculpture, American--19th century.

Marble sculpture, American.

Sculpture, Neoclassical--United States.

Sculpture, Neoclassical.

Race in art.

United States.

Physical Description:

xxxv, 234 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2007]

Summary:

Nineteenth-century neoclassical sculpture was a highly politicized international movement. Based in Rome, many expatriate American sculptors created works that represented black female subjects in compelling and problematic ways. Rejecting pigment as dangerous and sensual, adherence to white marble abandoned the racialization of the black body by skin color. In The Color of Stone, Charmaine A. Nelson brilliantly analyzes a key but often neglected aspect of neoclassical sculpture: color. Considering three major works-Hiram Powers's Greek Slave, William Wetmore Story's Cleopatra, and Edmonia Lewis's Death of Cleopatra-she explores the intersection of race, sex, and class to reveal the meanings each work holds in terms of colonial histories of visual representation as well as issues of artistic production, identity, and subjectivity. She also juxtaposes these sculptures with other types of art to scrutinize prevalent racial discourses and to examine how the black female subject was made visible in high art. By establishing the centrality of race within the discussion of neoclassical sculpture, Nelson provides a model for a black feminist art history that at once questions and destabilizes canonical texts.

Contents:

Introduction: Toward a Black Feminist Art History xi

Part I Artists, Environs, Aesthetics

1 Dismembering the Flock: Difference and the "Lady-Artists" 3

2 "Taste" and the Practices of Cultural Tourism: Vision, Proximity, and Commemoration 45

3 "So Pure and Celestial a Light": Sculpture, Marble, and Whiteness as a Privileged Racial Signifier 57

Part II From Slavery to Freedom

4 White Slaves and Black Masters: Appropriation and Disavowal in Hiram Powers's Greek Slave 75

5 The Color of Slavery: Degrees of Blackness and the Bodies of Female Slaves 113

Part III Two Cleopatras

6 Racing the Body: Reading Blackness in William Wetmore Story's Cleopatra 143

7 The Black Queen in the White Body: Edmonia Lewis and the Dead Queen 159

Conclusion: Neoclassicism and the Politics of Race 179.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816646500

0816646503

0816646511

9780816646517

OCLC:

79860597