The African Venus??? The Sable Venus In 1818, T. Stothard painted a symbolic canvas entitled The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola, West Africa, to the West Indies (1794). The painting is part of “a frequent eighteenth-century characterization of African women that invokes black beauty primarily to show the superior beauty of whiteness yet often registers expression to the anxious desire for these ‘undesirable’ women.” #blackhistory 365 #blackpresenceineurope: Day 267, Sept 24 on facebook/kentakepage The Voyage of the Sable Venus was regarded as a “preposterous misinterpretation of the ‘Middle Passage,” as the image did not reflect the Maafa (slavery), but was more a theme of the physical charm of the Black woman. The painting features a wealth of classical details. There are no African gods. The goddess and the gods are all Roman – and although the goddess is black, all the gods are white. The image romanizes and whitens the Maafa (slave) trade, as it presents an African woman (the ‘Sable Venus’) standing on a half-shell, attended by cherubs, being towed by dolphins to the Americas. To the left is Triton carrying the British flag and guiding the procession across the ocean, looking at the woman. In this depiction of the Middle Passage there is no reference to the horrors endured by those transported across the Atlantic on slave ships. Instead the Sable Venus eyes the reins and holds them as she guides the dolphins, as if the journey from Africa to the Americas were entirely voluntary — as if it were not a journey by force but a journey by choice. The image reveals even as it conceals. It is obviously not an image that accurately depicts the psychic reality of African men and women in the transatlantic Maafa trade. The value of the image is that it accurately depicts the psychic reality of white European men. The image is not a slave narrative but an [enslaver] narrative. It is a projection, a cultural imposition that serves a quite specific purpose for white European men. The image is an example of how Africa has provided Europe with an opportunity for the projection of fantasies from its collective unconscious or, more accurately, from its cultural unconscious. The painting does not just normalize the Maafa trade. It idealizes it. This is not truth and reconciliation. It is lie and rationalization. A member of the British parliament, after seeing Stothard’s painting wrote these lines: Her skin excelled the raven’s plume Her breath the fragrant orange bloom Her eyes the tropic beam Soft was her lip of silken down And mild her look as evening sun That gild the cobre stream. Source: African Presence in Early Europe, Ivan Van Sertima jungnewyork/venus.shtml muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/studies_in_english_literature/v051/51.3.allen.html Kentake Page The Sable Venus In 1818, T. Stothard painted a symbolic canvas entitled The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola, West Africa, to the West Indies (1794). The painting is part of “a frequent eighteenth-century characterization of African women that invokes black beauty primarily to show the superior beauty of whiteness yet often registers expression to the anxious desire for these ‘undesirable’ women.” #blackhistory 365 #blackpresenceineurope: Day 267, Sept 24 on facebook/kentakepage The Voyage of the Sable Venus was regarded as a “preposterous misinterpretation of the ‘Middle Passage,” as the image did not reflect the Maafa (slavery), but was more a theme of the physical charm of the Black woman. The painting features a wealth of classical details. There are no African gods. The goddess and the gods are all Roman – and although the goddess is black, all the gods are white. The image romanizes and whitens the Maafa (slave) trade, as it presents an African woman (the ‘Sable Venus’) standing on a half-shell, attended by cherubs, being towed by dolphins to the Americas. To the left is Triton carrying the British flag and guiding the procession across the ocean, looking at the woman. In this depiction of the Middle Passage there is no reference to the horrors endured by those transported across the Atlantic on slave ships. Instead the Sable Venus eyes the reins and holds them as she guides the dolphins, as if the journey from Africa to the Americas were entirely voluntary — as if it were not a journey by force but a journey by choice. The image reveals even as it conceals. It is obviously not an image that accurately depicts the psychic reality of African men and women in the transatlantic Maafa trade. The value of the image is that it accurately depicts the psychic reality of white European men. The image is not a slave narrative but an [enslaver] narrative. It is a projection, a cultural imposition that serves a quite specific purpose for white European men. The image is an example of how Africa has provided Europe with an opportunity for the projection of fantasies from its collective unconscious or, more accurately, from its cultural unconscious. The painting does not just normalize the Maafa trade. It idealizes it. This is not truth and reconciliation. It is lie and rationalization. A member of the British parliament, after seeing Stothard’s painting wrote these lines: Her skin excelled the raven’s plume Her breath the fragrant orange bloom Her eyes the tropic beam Soft was her lip of silken down And mild her look as evening sun That gild the cobre stream. Source: African Presence in Early Europe, Ivan Van Sertima jungnewyork/venus.shtml muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/studies_in_english_literature/v051/51.3.allen.html
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 02:03:47 +0000
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