Blackness, Whiteness, and the Idea of Race in Medieval European Art

Patton, Pamela A.

doi:10.1515/9780823285594-016

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“…Interestingly, and reflecting the scene on the Louvre specimen mentioned earlier, there seems to be a hierarchical relationship within these groups of people; Kahil (1972) notes that “most of the time, the Oriental [the Persian] is proudly perched atop the animal, while the Negro is depicted in a subaltern position, leading the animal by the bridle” (p. 280). In addition to differentiating among categories of “others” according to physical features and geographic provenance, I would argue that Greek art further isolated the figure of the Black camel attendant in order to convey a concept of race closer to a sociohierarchical structure (Bartlett, 2001; Heng, 2018; Patton, 2019).…”

Section: Camels In Greco‐roman Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual representations of dromedaries in Greco‐Roman antiquity and the middle ages: Imagining the other before orientalism

Sauquet

2023

Curator The Museum Journal

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The diorama Lion Attacking a Dromedary found in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History rightfully belongs to an Orientalist artistic tradition that crystallized many of the discriminatory misrepresentations of people of color that have plagued our society to this day. Camels and dromedaries, associated with the “Orient,” constituted an integral element of the exotic vision held and disseminated by Europeans. The motif of the camel and its dark‐skinned rider, however, emerged many centuries prior to the context of colonial Europe and across media. This paper explores the surfacing and subsequent proliferation of the camel as a symbol of otherness and foreignness in Antiquity and the Middle Ages in relation to Christian and imperial ideologies. I argue that the material evidence points to a long‐standing associative combination of the camel with people of color and/or of foreign origin and thus establishes a precedent worth our attention as we continue to wrestle with the racial and political ramifications of Lion Attacking a Dromedary.

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Section: Camels In Greco‐roman Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual representations of dromedaries in Greco‐Roman antiquity and the middle ages: Imagining the other before orientalism

Sauquet

2023

Curator The Museum Journal

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show abstract

Blackness, Whiteness, and the Idea of Race in Medieval European Art

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Visual representations of dromedaries in Greco‐Roman antiquity and the middle ages: Imagining the other before orientalism

Visual representations of dromedaries in Greco‐Roman antiquity and the middle ages: Imagining the other before orientalism

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