Report from Europe.(Black is Beautiful)

Black is beautiful

A little-known aspect of art history is being illuminated in an exhibition at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. In Europe over the past seven hundred years, black people--for the purposes of the exhibition defined as people from Africa south of the Sahara and their descendants elsewhere in the world--have been a source of fascination for artists.

The show, called Black Is Beautiful, charts the ways in which blacks have been portrayed in the art and culture of the Low Countries. Beginning in medieval times black people were depicted in illuminated manuscripts. One of the three magi is traditionally shown as a black man, and in the exhibition later versions of this biblical theme are also represented in the works of such artists as Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens. With the era of increased exploration to areas such as western Africa, Brazil, and Surinam, depictions of black people in Europe became more common. By the eighteenth century it was less rare for black people to live in Europe, and they appear, often as servants or diplomats, in a number of works of art. Slavery was abolished in the Netherlands and its colonies in 1863, by which time, depictions of black people primarily as exotic subjects began to abate. In the early twentieth century, when jazz became popular, black musicians inspired many artists to portray them; and at the same time some European artists, especially the surrealists, in their attempts to trace the original meaning of art looked to different cultures for subjects to depict. The exhibition presents a wide and comprehensive view of the black person in Dutch art, a product of many years of research by the guest curator Esther Schreuder. The catalogue in English is distributed in North America by the Antique Collectors' Club.

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Black Is Beautiful: From Rubens ...