Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century

This excellent volume exemplifies the increasing sophistication of scholarship around issues of the representation of race, particularly in the nineteenth century. High art, popular art and popular performance involving Africans are analysed with due regard to the complexities of European racial attitudes in an age of commercialism and empire. David Bindman, Hutchins Center at Harvard University, USA and author of Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the Eighteenth Century It is exciting to see scholars continue to probe the question of how visual arts of the West reflect the reactions to the experiences of Africans in the diaspora. The manner in which Europeans viewed and represented blacks in art is tied to the larger questions of power, cultural and political domination and exchange, along with an ever evolving influential aesthetics of difference. This well written volume of enlightening essays is a major contribution to the literature on race and representation as it broadens our understanding of the extent to which the dynamics of race has colored the history of art in Europe in many ways. Even though this volume focuses on European art, there are important contributions to the history of art relating to African Americans who created art in Europe in the nineteenth century. The discussions of slavery, Orientalism, photography and modernism in this book bring fresh perspectives to the subject of blackness in Europe. This volume is a must read for all who wish to advance their knowledge of a much neglected subject in American and European art history. David C. Driskell, Distinguished University Professor of Art Emeritus, University of Maryland, College Park, USA 'Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century assembles studies on a wide range of subjects that, taken together, reveal not just the relevance of images ofblacks andblackness to studies of the nineteenth century, but con