Shall post items concerning art, film, culture, and things that remind me of Bowie
Ask me anything
Ask me anything
(Source: captoats)
Goon Squad Ramblings
Bill Murray at Cannes.
If I was gonna thank this God people speak of for anything, I’d probably start by saying cheers for Bill Murray.
I saw this painting at the art show over the weekend and it kind of blew my mind. It’s a weird mystery, not what it looks like… Or is it? The curator claims that:1. It is a self-portrait, painted by a black slave
and
2. The slave is male, dressed up as a woman
In other words, it’s a painting done by a black guy of a black guy, dressed as a woman, painting a woman.
So odd. So hard to process. From the official site:
Although this black artist appears to be wearing a dress, it is likely to be a male figure. As the scholar Sheldon Cheek explains, the artist wears an earring and a silver collar, both common articles worn by black male servants/slaves in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, the collar traditionally indicating slave status. Women rarely, if ever, wore the silver collar. The artist also appears to be wearing a silver “shackle” on the arm.
A further argument in favor of the slave/servant status of this black figure would be the style of dress. The cut-work shoulders and other features of the clothing do not seem typical of the 18th century, and could reflect the often fanciful kinds of costumes worn by slaves of the wealthy during this period.
Usually, black male figures appear in portraits of this period in attendance to their masters, serving as status symbols. The figures are usually engaged in established, common activities such as holding a bowl of fruit or some article of the sitter’s clothing. In the case of this painting, however, this relationship is indicated in a unique and far less subservient manner.
The origin of the painting is as yet uncertain, however, strong clues exist as witnessed in the urban landscape seen through the window in the painting. According to the scholar Bentley Angliss, tiled roofs of this lively and distinctive reddish-pink color are specific to Portugal and colonial Brazil, which was under Portuguese rule until 1822. Similar roof construction and color can be seen on two 18th-century paintings, “Fire at the Retreat of Nossa Senhora do Parto” and “Reconstruction of the Retreat of Nossa Senhora do Parto,” by João Francisco Muzzi. The architecture is reminiscent of that found, for example, in the Brazilian northeastern coastal city of Ceará, settled as a fief of the Portuguese crown whose economy in the 18th century centered on sugar plantations worked by black slaves, and the mining towns of Minas Gerais, such as Ouro Preto, where slave labor was employed during the gold rush and whose magnificent Baroque architecture is well-preserved even today.
The slave population in Brazil was the largest in the world, spanning four centuries. In the 1600s, when native Americans were no longer considered a viable labor force due to large numbers of deaths from abuse and disease, the Portuguese began importing black Africans to support their mining and and sugarcane ventures, and to work on their large estates. Slaves were owned by the upper and middle classes, however they were also owned by the poor as well as by other slaves. Although slavery was abolished in Portugal in 1761, it was not until 1881 that Brazil enacted it’s final abolition, the last country in the Western World to do so.
