Art and Race: The African (Up) Against the Enlightenment’s Eye
Available March 2027
Anne Lafont
Translated by Anna Cummings, with Judith G. Miller
This groundbreaking study investigates the close and paradoxical relationship of art and race during the Enlightenment.
In this text, French art historian Anne Lafont examines the complexities and contradictions in Enlightenment-era ideas about race, focusing on the figurations of Africans and other people of color. Through studies of a wide range of eighteenth-century art, Lafont grounds her analysis in the objects themselves and, by doing so, highlights how visual works can reveal the values of the culture that produced them.
While Lafont locates—unsurprisingly—instances of the marginalization and objectification of Black people, she also draws attention to depictions that present African sitters as subjects in their own right. For example, Anne-Louis Girodet’s Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley (1797) offers a dignified, individualized representation of this formerly enslaved French politician from Saint-Domingue; and portraits of anonymous sitters show them as actual persons whose costumes and poses demonstrate their agency.
Ultimately, Lafont moves beyond artworks to consider the broader intellectual context of the Enlightenment, particularly ideas about freedom, equality, and universal human rights, which were anchored in visual culture and indexed by it. She reveals how these ideals often conflicted with the realities of colonialism and the shifting status of Black people during this era.
Anne Lafont is an art historian and the director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
456 pages
6 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches
149 color and 7 b/w illustrations
ISBN 979-8-88712-011-9
hardcover
Getty Publications
Imprint: Getty Research Institute
2027
Available March 2027
Anne Lafont
Translated by Anna Cummings, with Judith G. Miller
This groundbreaking study investigates the close and paradoxical relationship of art and race during the Enlightenment.
In this text, French art historian Anne Lafont examines the complexities and contradictions in Enlightenment-era ideas about race, focusing on the figurations of Africans and other people of color. Through studies of a wide range of eighteenth-century art, Lafont grounds her analysis in the objects themselves and, by doing so, highlights how visual works can reveal the values of the culture that produced them.
While Lafont locates—unsurprisingly—instances of the marginalization and objectification of Black people, she also draws attention to depictions that present African sitters as subjects in their own right. For example, Anne-Louis Girodet’s Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley (1797) offers a dignified, individualized representation of this formerly enslaved French politician from Saint-Domingue; and portraits of anonymous sitters show them as actual persons whose costumes and poses demonstrate their agency.
Ultimately, Lafont moves beyond artworks to consider the broader intellectual context of the Enlightenment, particularly ideas about freedom, equality, and universal human rights, which were anchored in visual culture and indexed by it. She reveals how these ideals often conflicted with the realities of colonialism and the shifting status of Black people during this era.
Anne Lafont is an art historian and the director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
456 pages
6 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches
149 color and 7 b/w illustrations
ISBN 979-8-88712-011-9
hardcover
Getty Publications
Imprint: Getty Research Institute
2027
Original: $50.00
-65%$50.00
$17.50Description
Available March 2027
Anne Lafont
Translated by Anna Cummings, with Judith G. Miller
This groundbreaking study investigates the close and paradoxical relationship of art and race during the Enlightenment.
In this text, French art historian Anne Lafont examines the complexities and contradictions in Enlightenment-era ideas about race, focusing on the figurations of Africans and other people of color. Through studies of a wide range of eighteenth-century art, Lafont grounds her analysis in the objects themselves and, by doing so, highlights how visual works can reveal the values of the culture that produced them.
While Lafont locates—unsurprisingly—instances of the marginalization and objectification of Black people, she also draws attention to depictions that present African sitters as subjects in their own right. For example, Anne-Louis Girodet’s Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley (1797) offers a dignified, individualized representation of this formerly enslaved French politician from Saint-Domingue; and portraits of anonymous sitters show them as actual persons whose costumes and poses demonstrate their agency.
Ultimately, Lafont moves beyond artworks to consider the broader intellectual context of the Enlightenment, particularly ideas about freedom, equality, and universal human rights, which were anchored in visual culture and indexed by it. She reveals how these ideals often conflicted with the realities of colonialism and the shifting status of Black people during this era.
Anne Lafont is an art historian and the director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
456 pages
6 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches
149 color and 7 b/w illustrations
ISBN 979-8-88712-011-9
hardcover
Getty Publications
Imprint: Getty Research Institute
2027
