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Volume IV: The Image of the Black in Western Art, From the American Revolution to World War I, Part 1: Slaves and Liberators

Volume IV: The Image of the Black in Western Art, From the American Revolution to World War I, Part 1: Slaves and Liberators

Edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

ISBN 9780674052598

Publication date: 05/07/2012

In the 1960s, art patron Dominique de Menil founded an image archive showing the ways that people of African descent have been represented in Western art. Highlights from her collection appeared in three large-format volumes that quickly became collector’s items. A half-century later, Harvard University Press and the Du Bois Institute are proud to publish a complete set of ten sumptuous books, including new editions of the original volumes and two additional ones.

Slaves and Liberators looks at the political implications of the representation of Africans, from the earliest discussions of the morality of slavery, through the rise of abolitionism, to the imposition of European imperialism on Africa. Popular imagery and great works, like Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa and Turner’s Slave Ship, are considered in depth, casting light on widely differing European responses to Africans and their descendants.

Praise

  • A fascinating story of the changing image of Africa's people in Western art. The images are simply extraordinary and the scholarship inspiring. Anyone who cares about Western art or about Africa and her diaspora ought to know these magnificent volumes.

    —Kwame Anthony Appiah

Authors

  • David Bindman is Professor of the History of Art, Emeritus, at University College London.
  • Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the author of numerous books and has written extensively on the history of race and anti-Black racism in the Enlightenment. His most recent works include Stony the Road and The Black Church. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

Book Details

  • 384 pages
  • Belknap Press
  • Associate editor Karen C. C. Dalton

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