From Spaniard and Black: Mulatto, 1763, Miguel Cabrera


This piece is one of a series of 16 casta paintings by Miguel Cabrera. Casta paintings were government commission artworks depicting social and racial castes in the Spanish colonies. This painting in particular shows the child of a Spanish man and an enslaved African woman. These paintings were not meant to be racist, but rather a sort of scientific documentation of people before the invention of photography. There are two aspects of this painting that should be highlighted. The first being the cherub-like mixed-race child that is looking directly at the viewer. During this time, the Romanticism period was beginning to take hold, and you can see that light, weightless perfection in the depiction of this child. The second is how dark the African woman is. When viewing the Spanish man and mixed-race child, there is no question where the light source is, and it is not difficult to see depth in their figures. However, when viewing the African woman, you’ll notice that she is very dark, almost black. It is difficult to see the depth in her skin, and while she is in the foreground of the image, she is almost invisible as the viewer’s eyes drift directly towards the child’s gentle eyes.







https://unframed.lacma.org/2015/04/22/why-albino-some-notes-our-new-casta-painting-miguel-cabrera

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Guerrilla Girls Billboard (aka the Guerrilla Girls Poster), 1989

Image
This billboard was commissioned by a coalition of anonymous, female artists known for donning gorilla suits at their meetings. This piece calls out the harsh reality of how museums have been organized in the past, and how they still are for the most part today. This billboard is one of many that the Guerrilla Girls commissioned in order to expose the racial and sexual discrimination that has long been dominant in the art world. The billboard uses a grayscale print of the Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, with a gorilla head plastered wear the female head should be. This is not only branding the billboard but also criticizing the artwork as well. It’s pointing out that no one really cares about the woman’s individuality, but rather just her body and sexuality. By censoring the face, they show how women’s voices have been silenced in the art world. It is very to the point, the statistics to the right probably haven’t changed much in the last 30 years which is most ...
Read more

Wangechi Mutu, Preying Mantra, 2006

Image
This piece by Wangechi Mutu is all about taking back the African female form from these racist, sexist ideals that have haunted black women for hundreds of years. In previous artworks, we have seen how black women are depicted as sexual, unintelligent, secondary characters. They are rarely the subject matter, and if they are it’s over-sexualized, over-exaggerated, and displayed as exotic erotica. What Wangechi Mutu does in this piece is she combines all these ideas, as well as a nod to classical paintings, to depict not a nude woman, but the injustices done in the oppressive colonization of Africa by European nations. First, we see and abstracted woman lying in a classical pose on top of Kuba cloth, which is native to Kenya, where Mutu was born. It’s full of symbology, there’s trees, which are a part of those people’s creation story as well as many others around the world. There’s also a serpent, which we see a lot in classical art usually in reference to sin associated with the ...
Read more

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863

Image
This piece by Manet was one of the most controversial pieces of art in Paris at the time of its debut in 1863. First, there was the subject matter. The subject is a high-class Parisian prostitute and her black female servant. The subject, Olympia, is trying to seduce the viewer. In the art world at the time, this was not appropriate. Nudity was generally reserved for figures representing mythological fables or tales. Olympia was not a goddess, or a mythological figure, she was a “real” prostitute in Paris and this shocked the public. Again, the representation of a black woman is very dark, almost blending into the black background. She wasn’t the main subject, but there to represent “primitive sexuality” and to show that Olympia was a high-class prostitute. Finally, this piece is definitely inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino , but critics saw it as a direct insult to the classical piece. For one, classical paintings are very precise and technical whereas Manet did not hide his b...
Read more