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Re: African Woman Art Series
sandi, gen, your reactions to Repin's Negress made me go look into the background of the painting.
Repin painted this portrait while he was living in Paris. The woman is very likely a model. Among artists at the time there was a fascination with Orientalism (Middle Eastern/North African culture ), and as well a fascination with blacks as subjects of paintings - probably because of all the emancipation talk around the world in those decades. Repin's painting combined these two interests.
Compare: Eugene Delacroix in 1834 painted The Women of Algiers in Their Apartment from sketches he made on a visit years earlier to Algiers. However, the black woman on the right was added, she was one of his Parisian models.
Back to Repin's Negress - What's interesting is the way Repin chose to depict her - as someone of some independence and means - her jewellery, her calm and relaxed, comfortable manner in her surroundings. other artists tended to "exotify", if i can coin a word, black women in a way that appeared to deny them their humanity. compare with this painting by another Russian, Vasily Polenov, also painted the same year, in Paris, this one is called Egyptian Girl:
i hate to look at this picture, because the woman is sitting essentially like a guard dog, despite her pharoahic headdress. gotta respect Repin, who apparently used this same model for a later portrait, and chose to sidestep the exotic allegory, a more respectful treatment, imo.
To some degree, i understand the fascination with blacks and black women was a way to mark oneself as an avant garde painter. the prevailing sentiment in the arts establishment, especially in France, was that blacks were less human than whites, and unworthy of serious artistic treatment.When Benoit unveiled the painting (below), the art establishment was outraged, because she dared to make a black woman the only subject of a painting - putting her on par with white subjects. I posted this portrait earlier in the thread. the model was herself a freed slave.
sandi, gen, your reactions to Repin's Negress made me go look into the background of the painting.
Repin painted this portrait while he was living in Paris. The woman is very likely a model. Among artists at the time there was a fascination with Orientalism (Middle Eastern/North African culture ), and as well a fascination with blacks as subjects of paintings - probably because of all the emancipation talk around the world in those decades. Repin's painting combined these two interests.
Compare: Eugene Delacroix in 1834 painted The Women of Algiers in Their Apartment from sketches he made on a visit years earlier to Algiers. However, the black woman on the right was added, she was one of his Parisian models.
Back to Repin's Negress - What's interesting is the way Repin chose to depict her - as someone of some independence and means - her jewellery, her calm and relaxed, comfortable manner in her surroundings. other artists tended to "exotify", if i can coin a word, black women in a way that appeared to deny them their humanity. compare with this painting by another Russian, Vasily Polenov, also painted the same year, in Paris, this one is called Egyptian Girl:
i hate to look at this picture, because the woman is sitting essentially like a guard dog, despite her pharoahic headdress. gotta respect Repin, who apparently used this same model for a later portrait, and chose to sidestep the exotic allegory, a more respectful treatment, imo.
To some degree, i understand the fascination with blacks and black women was a way to mark oneself as an avant garde painter. the prevailing sentiment in the arts establishment, especially in France, was that blacks were less human than whites, and unworthy of serious artistic treatment.When Benoit unveiled the painting (below), the art establishment was outraged, because she dared to make a black woman the only subject of a painting - putting her on par with white subjects. I posted this portrait earlier in the thread. the model was herself a freed slave.
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