The Black Exotic: Tradition and Ethnography in Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Art

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dc.contributor.advisorHargrove, Juneen_US
dc.contributor.authorChilds, Adrienne Louiseen_US
dc.contributor.departmentArt History and Archaeologyen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2005-10-11T09:48:23Z
dc.date.available2005-10-11T09:48:23Z
dc.date.issued2005-08-29en_US
dc.description.abstractThis study of select works by Orientalist artists Jean-Léon Gérôme and Charles Cordier charts the trajectory of the idea of the black exotic and investigates the symbolism of black figures in Orientalist painting and sculpture. Representations of blacks in Orientalist art served a complex and nuanced function as nineteenth-century European artists fashioned the exotic. At the nexus of traditional tropes of blackness and the new science of ethnography, they were a critical tool used to construct an imagined Orient within the context of Orientalism--the phenomenal passion for the exotic in the nineteenth century. Blacks were multifaceted figures that evoked sexuality, servitude, degradation, and primitive culture while providing decorative beauty and the allure of difference. The trope of the exotic black is rooted in a tradition of representing Africans dating back to the Italian Renaissance. By the nineteenth century ethnographic approaches to race permeated Orientalist ideologies and affected a qualitative shift in how black figures operated in visual culture. Through a critical analysis of the relationship between exoticism and blackness, this study addresses the need for a more specialized interpretation of how attitudes towards race were encoded in nineteenth-century visual arts.en_US
dc.format.extent619931 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2831
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledArt Historyen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledHistory, Europeanen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledHistory, Blacken_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledOrientalismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledImage of the Blacken_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledExoticismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledEuropean Arten_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledSculptureen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledPaintingen_US
dc.titleThe Black Exotic: Tradition and Ethnography in Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Arten_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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