Theodore Gericault, Painting Black Bodies: Confrontations and Contradictions (Routledge Research in Art and Race)

This book examines Théodore Géricault's images of black men, women and children who suffered slavery's trans-Atlantic passage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including his 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa. The book focuses on Géricault's depiction of black people, his approach towards slavery, and the voices that advanced or denigrated them. By turning to documents, essays and critiques, both before and after Waterloo (1815), and, most importantly, Géricault's own oeuvre, this study explores the fetters of slavery that Gericault challenged--alongside a growing number of abolitionists--overtly or covertly. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, race and ethnic studies and students of modernism.

Alhadeff, Albert

Reference

Routledge

Book by National Gallery of Art (U.S.); Elsen, Albert Edward; Alhadeff, Albert

Rodin rediscovered

Arts & Photography

Elsen, Albert Edward

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Sculpture

National Gallery of Art

Based on a controversial and politically charged event, The Raft of the Medusa is Gericault's most ambitious work. The painting depicts the wreck of a French government ship off the West African coast, and its passengers' desperate struggle to survive. Since its unveiling in 1819, this masterpiece has been both decried and admired for its unrelenting realism and for its unrelenting realism and for its ground-breaking portrayal of the ship's survivors. Here Alhadeff revises the standard reading of The Raft as a realistic depiction of a tragic event, highlighting instead the ambiguities Gericault has woven into the scene. These ambivalences, he argues, reveal as much about Gericault's artistic brilliance as they do about the advent of abolitionism in the turbulent society in which he lived. Elegantly written and illustrated with many details from the painting as well as rarely seen comparative works, this is a provocative new look at a work which remains central to the history of modernity in art.

The Raft of the Medusa: Gericault, Art, and Race

Individual Artists

Prestel Pub

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