Portraits of resistance : activating art during slavery /
Van Horn, Jennifer
Portraits of resistance : activating art during slavery / Jennifer Van Horn.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction : Neptune Thurston's portraits -- Making portraits -- Fleeting portraits -- Haunted portraits -- Viewing portraits -- Destroying portraits -- Epilogue : Archibald Motley's portraits.
This timely and eloquent book tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Jennifer Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured the portrait's importance as a site of resistance.... Portraits of Resistance is not only a significant intervention in the fields of American art and history but also an important contribution to the re-examination of racial constructs on which American culture was built.
0300275153
African Americans in art.
African Americans--Portraits.
Art and society--History.--United States
Enslaved persons--United States--Portraits.
Portraits, American.
Race in art.
Portraits of resistance : activating art during slavery / Jennifer Van Horn.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction : Neptune Thurston's portraits -- Making portraits -- Fleeting portraits -- Haunted portraits -- Viewing portraits -- Destroying portraits -- Epilogue : Archibald Motley's portraits.
This timely and eloquent book tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Jennifer Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured the portrait's importance as a site of resistance.... Portraits of Resistance is not only a significant intervention in the fields of American art and history but also an important contribution to the re-examination of racial constructs on which American culture was built.
0300275153
African Americans in art.
African Americans--Portraits.
Art and society--History.--United States
Enslaved persons--United States--Portraits.
Portraits, American.
Race in art.