19th century
abolition
African
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B01=Elyse Nelson
B01=Wendy S. Walters
Black
black figure
bust
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AB
Category=AFK
Category=AGC
Category=JBFA
Category=JBSL1
Category=JFFJ
Category=JFSL1
charles cordier
colonialism
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
edmonia lewis
emancipation
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
French art
kara walker
kehinde wiley
Language_English
louis-simon boizot
marble
PA=Available
portrait
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
race
representation
reproduction
Romanticism
Second Empire
softlaunch
transatlantic slavery
Product details
- ISBN 9781588397447
- Dimensions: 178 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 29 Mar 2022
- Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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A critical reexamination of Carpeaux’s bust Why Born Enslaved! and other nineteenth-century antislavery images—this book interrogates the treatment of the Black figure as a malleable political symbol and locus of exoticized beauty
This critical reexamination of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s iconic bust Why Born Enslaved! unpacks the sculpture’s complex and sometimes contradictory engagement with an antislavery discourse. Noted art historians and writers discuss how categories of racial difference grew in popularity in the nineteenth century alongside a crescendo in cultural production in France during the Second Empire. By focusing on Why Born Enslaved! and comparing it to works by Carpeaux’s contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as to objects by twenty-first-century artists Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley, this volume explores such key themes as the portrayal of Black enslavement and emancipation; the commodification of images of Black figures; the role of sculpture in generating the sympathies of its audiences; and the relevance of Carpeaux’s sculpture to legacies of empire. The book also provides a chronology of events central to the histories of transatlantic slavery, abolition, colonialism, and empire.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
(March 10, 2022–March 5, 2023)
This critical reexamination of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s iconic bust Why Born Enslaved! unpacks the sculpture’s complex and sometimes contradictory engagement with an antislavery discourse. Noted art historians and writers discuss how categories of racial difference grew in popularity in the nineteenth century alongside a crescendo in cultural production in France during the Second Empire. By focusing on Why Born Enslaved! and comparing it to works by Carpeaux’s contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as to objects by twenty-first-century artists Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley, this volume explores such key themes as the portrayal of Black enslavement and emancipation; the commodification of images of Black figures; the role of sculpture in generating the sympathies of its audiences; and the relevance of Carpeaux’s sculpture to legacies of empire. The book also provides a chronology of events central to the histories of transatlantic slavery, abolition, colonialism, and empire.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
Exhibition Schedule:
(March 10, 2022–March 5, 2023)
Elyse Nelson is assistant curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European sculpture in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Wendy S. Walters is concentration head in nonfiction and associate professor in the Writing Program of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, New York.
