A01=Adrienne L. Childs
Author_Adrienne L. Childs
Baroque period
Category=AGA
clocks
colonialism
consumption
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Europe
exoticism
furniture
light fixtures
luxury objects
porcelain
representation
romanticism
silver
slave labor
wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780300246094
- Dimensions: 203 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 29 Apr 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Exploring the role the decorative arts played in the representation of Black people in European visual and material culture
This revelatory look at European decorative arts addresses the long-ignored implications of the depiction of Black bodies on luxury objects from the Baroque period through the nineteenth century. Adrienne L. Childs traces the complex history of the vogue for representing the Black body as an ornamental motif throughout spaces of wealth and refinement. Objects such as furniture, porcelain, clocks, silver, light fixtures, and more conveyed the taste for exoticism and portrayed the laboring Black body in the guise of décor. These objects also express larger ideas about the concept of race, romantic notions of distant lands, the harsh realities of slave labor in the colonies, the presence of Black servants in wealthy European households, and the culture of luxury consumption.
Ornamental Blackness demonstrates how seemingly benign decorative objects can embody the complexities of race, slavery, and representation. Childs examines the tensions inherent in the system of codes in which the Black body can be enslaved, reviled, feared, subjugated, and assaulted on one hand and a symbol of opulence on the other. In this important volume she establishes a framework for understanding the racialized aesthetics of luxury.
This revelatory look at European decorative arts addresses the long-ignored implications of the depiction of Black bodies on luxury objects from the Baroque period through the nineteenth century. Adrienne L. Childs traces the complex history of the vogue for representing the Black body as an ornamental motif throughout spaces of wealth and refinement. Objects such as furniture, porcelain, clocks, silver, light fixtures, and more conveyed the taste for exoticism and portrayed the laboring Black body in the guise of décor. These objects also express larger ideas about the concept of race, romantic notions of distant lands, the harsh realities of slave labor in the colonies, the presence of Black servants in wealthy European households, and the culture of luxury consumption.
Ornamental Blackness demonstrates how seemingly benign decorative objects can embody the complexities of race, slavery, and representation. Childs examines the tensions inherent in the system of codes in which the Black body can be enslaved, reviled, feared, subjugated, and assaulted on one hand and a symbol of opulence on the other. In this important volume she establishes a framework for understanding the racialized aesthetics of luxury.
Adrienne L. Childs is an art historian and curator.
