A slave by another name: Portrait d’une Négresse

Marie-Guillemine Benoist, "Portrait d'une Negresse," 1800, oil on canvas, Musee de Louvre

We’ve all seen The Carters’ video for “Apes**t” from their new album “Everything is Love.” Shot in the amazingly deserted galleries and plaza of the Louvre museum in Paris, France, amidst classical European, Greek, and Egyptian art, the video is a visual masterpiece and an infusion of black culture in traditionally white spaces.

The clip, directed by Ricky Saiz, took themes such as black royalty, black success, black wealth, black excellence, black beauty, black love, and the protest of the brutalization of black bodies, and dropped them in the middle of one of the bastions of whiteness.



In fact, nearly all of the pieces featured in the video are of white people, including David’s “Coronation of Napoleon,” da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” Scheffer’s “Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta Appraised by Dante and Virgil,” among others.

But towards the end of the clip, we see possibly the only portrait in the Louvre featuring a black person as the subject, the “Portrait d’une Négresse” (Portrait of a Black Woman), painted in 1800 by Marie-Guillemine Benoist. It is this piece, featured ever so quickly, that set everyone on their ear.

Marie-Guillemine Benoist, "Portrait d'une Negresse," 1800, oil on canvas, Musee de Louvre

The medium-sized portrait features a dark skinned black woman seated in an opulent chair, draped in luxurious fabric. She is intricately wrapped, both head and body, in crisp white cloth, with her right breast bared to the viewer.

To many, her expression reads mysterious or inscrutable, to me it reads of sadness, and yearning, of weariness and annoyance at being put on display for the white gaze.

A lot of folks were praising the piece as one of few pre-20th century portraits of a black non-enslaved subject in the Louvre. To which I snorted in derision. Just because she was a servant, did not mean that she wasn’t a slave.

Considering that she was brought to France as a slave by the artist’s brother-in-law from the French island of Guadeloupe. On the French mainland, where slavery had been forbidden since the Middle Ages, a slave’s status legally had to be changed to servant or attendant. A slave by another name…

Artists frequently painted their servants in upper and middle class settings, of course they were usually white servants. The subject in Benoist’s painting is a black woman, thousands of miles from home, who had probably already been traumatized by the effects of slavery, and who most certainly was not free, even if her physical shackles had been removed.

It is said that this portrait became a symbol for women's emancipation and black people's rights. Six years previously in 1794, slavery had been abolished in France and there was a small feminist movement building in France. Both were brought to a halt four years later in 1804, when slavery was reintroduced and legal and social restriction were put on women by Napoleon Bonaparte when he became the emperor of France.

James Smalls, an associate professor of art history and theory at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County wrote extensively about the portrait and its race, gender, and class implications in a 2004 article, “Slavery is a Woman: "Race," Gender, and Visuality in Marie Benoist's “Portrait d'une Négresse” (1800),” in the journal, “Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.”

In the article, Smalls compares slavery and the condition of [white] women at the time, noting that this could have been Benoist’s driving inspiration for the painting. It wasn’t a commissioned piece, but painted on Benoist’s own initiative, according to Smalls.

“Although we do not know whether or to what extent Benoist partook in the volatile debates on slavery and gender current during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in France, her painting may be seen as a voice of protest, however small, in the discourse over human bondage. With the portrait, the artist responded to early nineteenth-century French racialism and the less-than-desirable treatment of women by playing upon the popular analogy of women and slaves.”

At the time Benoist painted the portrait, painting black skin just wasn’t done or taught, so she was taking great risk.

Marie-Guillemine Benoist self-portrait

While the portrait is heartbreakingly beautiful and immaculately executed, I hesitate to praise it, due to the fact that it is a portrait of a black woman in bondage in a white space. She, without a doubt, had no say in how she was painted. Did she protest having her breast exposed to the masses?

Smalls said that the artist was “always eager to publicize her painting skills, enthusiastically began the task of putting on canvas the "belle couleur noire brillante" (beautiful brilliant black color) that she found by contrasting dark flesh and white cloth.”

The painting was unusual to the public and critics, as well as to Benoist’s oeuvre, as she was known for painting portraits of family life and scenes. Prior to this portrait, which showed a black woman in a setting that would have been traditionally occupied by a white woman, blacks in European art were relegated to the background of tableaus, or attending their white master or mistress.

“Benoist's image reverses the situation—black woman is seated and posed as white woman is busy attending (painting). By depicting a black woman as exotic, servant or slave in the traditional pose and situation of white women, Benoist has turned the Portrait d'une Négresse into something of an allegory of her own condition of subservience to patriarchy,” Smalls said.

Racial equality and women’s rights, though very different in my opinion, have always been lumped together, so I totally get what Benoist was getting at in this portrait. This makes it no less offensive. The woman depicted has been robbed of identity, of voice, of opinion in life…as well as in portraiture.

While Benoist attempted to be a “white savior,” while projecting her own plight onto the woman, she actually only made things worse.

“In using the black female body as a sign of emancipation for all women, Benoist employs an operative series of struggles rendered in binary terms between feminine and masculine, between emotionalized aestheticism, passive domesticity and the desire for political expediency through portraiture as public action; between enslavement and liberty, black and white, stereotype and sympathy. In other words, I see in this portrait the "classic" ambiguity, struggle, and neurotic exchange of power played out between colonizer and colonized—a state of affairs that has become an all-too-expected feature of racial and cultural relations in the modern Western world,” Smalls said.

As to how successful this portrait was at conveying its message of women’s and black’s rights in France is debatable. African and colonial blacks were still seen as exotic, lesser beings than Europeans, so I am wondering, without context, did the “Portrait d'une Négresse” inspire change or did the sitter’s ebony skin and bared breast simply inflame male lust? Would the portrait have been more successful with the sitter fully clothed? Would it even have been praised by critics. I believe that just her black skin, draped in that white cloth, sitting for her own portrait and not reduced to a background accessory of white wealth would have been enough to get the point across.

In the "Apes**t" video, Saiz decided to show the woman without her bare breast, I wonder if he was making the statement that the portrait can serve to bring attention to the beauty of blackness without the bared breast.

Also, did Benoist do the very thing that she fighting against with this portrait by baring this woman’s breast while denying her the power to voice her opinion in the objectification of her body? It brings to mind how certain current “allies” attempt to tell us [black folks] how we should feel, how we should protest, what we should be doing, without actually listening to or understanding our plight.

I wonder how this painting could have turned out if Benoist and the nameless servant had collaborated on the message instead of Benoist forging ahead with her own reductive take on the issue.

I am of a mind to envision it as what Tim Okamura, a Japanese and British artist, is currently doing in his work, painting African-American women, fully clothed, as inspirational and aspirational beings.

Tim Okamura

Tim Okamura, "Regent"

Tim Okamura, "Courage 3.0"

Tim Okamura, "I Love Your Hair"

Tim Okamura, "Rosie No.1"

Okamura, who has an affinity for hip-hop, said in a 2011 NPR interview that an important aspect of his art is an emotional connection, and he hopes people feel that empathy when they see his work.

"I don't consider myself trying to say I'm an authority on African-American culture of life per se. I'm really a storyteller, and in my portraits, there's a narrative, and I think that the people I paint, in my opinion, have a very important story that needs to be told."

Wiley’s 2012 take on Judith and Holofernes causes a stir

Kehinde Wiley, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 2012

Almost immediately following the unveiling of President Barack Obama’s official portrait by artist Kehinde Wiley, a small outcry was raised because in 2012, Wiley had painted two majestic portraits of black women brandishing the decapitated heads of a white women.  The voices claimed that the piece was racist.

Kehinde Wiley for the New York Times.  His other version of Judith Beheading Holofernes in the background.

I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, okay…please don’t attempt to narrow his creative genius down to racism, when it goes so far beyond that.’

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1614-20 (wikipedia)

The pieces are actually a modern take on the numerous works depicting the fictional biblical story of Judith and Holofernes and have little to do with their idea of racism and more to do with racial and gender identity and inequity, society’s ideas of what is beautiful, and the portrayal of women, specifically black women, in art history.  Wiley simply uses Judith and Holofernes to illustrate these themes in a most amazing and provocative manner.

Kehinde Wiley, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 2012 (artnet)

As the story goes, Judith, a beautiful widow, is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors.  She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of Holofernes, an Assyrian general who was about to destroy her home, the city of Bethulia.  Ingratiating herself with the besotted Holofernes, she is allowed to enter his tent, where he lies in a drunken stupor.  She decapitates him and his head is taken away in a basket.  Without their leader, the Assyrians abandon their plan and Israel is saved.

Triophime Bigot, Judith Cutting off he Head of Holofernes, 1640 (wikipedia)

It is a story that has been painted so many times, it has become an artistic theme.  Since the Renaissance, Judith has been depicted as a saintly heroine, and an erotic femme fatale.  Portrayals of her have ranged from violent to sexual to triumphant.  Sometimes she has even been painted in the nude. Judith is an example of the Power of Women art theme in the Northern Renaissance.

Franz von Stuck, Judith. 1928 (wikipedia)

Franz von Stuck, Judith and Holofernes, 1927 (wikipedia)

 It is one of my favorite artistic themes. My favorite depictions are the ones done by Caravaggio, Klimt, Cranach the Elder, Reidel, Stuck, and of course, Wiley.

Caravaggio, Judith Beheding Holofernes, 1598-1599

Gustav Klimt, Judith I, 1901

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1530

 

August Reidel, Judith, 1840

Cristofano Allori, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1613

Fede Galizia, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1596

I have always seen Judith as a heroine doing what she must to protect her home.  It is very much in the vein of “no one is going to save me, so I must save myself…and everyone else.”  A theme that black women know all too well.

As a black man, Wiley recognizes the connection of the Judith beheading Holofernes story to the story of black women in American society since we were first forcibly brought here in the 18^th century. 

In a 1962 speech, Malcolm X said, “The most disrespected woman in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman."

And yet, here we are, still powering through to save ourselves…and everybody else.  We’ve seen it time and time again over the years.  Most recently, we’ve seen black women, tired of a feminist movement that didn’t include intersectionality, start the black feminist movement in the 1980s.  We’ve seen black women, tired of watching our black men (and women) die at the hands of police, start the “Black Lives Matter” movement.  Even the “Me Too” movement was started by a black woman, Tarana Burke, and then co-opted by white Hollywood.  And let’s never forget that it was black women who solidified Doug Jones’ defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama. 

So yeah, we are familiar with the “fuck it, I’ll do it,” spirit of the biblical Judith.

Wiley, a classically trained artist known for his style of taking on the works of old masters, such as Peter Paul Rubens, Jaques-Louis David, is widely familiar with the story of Judith and Holofernes and its impact on art.  His work focuses on racism in art history, and comments on modern street culture and masculinity.  He reinvents classical portraits by replacing the white sitters we usually see in museums worldwide with contemporary African Americans. Wiley has stated, “The whole conversation of my work has to do with power and who has it.”

The Wiley Judith and Holofernes paintings were a part of his first series of portraits of women called “An Economy of Grace,” intended to tackle the historic representation of women in art.  In a 2012 New York Magazine article on the series, Wiley said, “Women have always been decorative. They’ve never been actors or possessed real agency.”

In one of the paintings, his Judith is Triesha Lowe, a stay-at-home mom whom Wiley found at the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn. The severed head is one of Wiley’s assistants.  The North Carolina Museum of Art foundation has said about the piece, “Wiley translates this image of a courageous, powerful woman into a contemporary version that resonates with fury and righteousness.”

Wiley's "Judith" is a stay-at-home mom named Triesha Lowe.

The piece stands at eight feet by ten feet tall and references the 17th-century painting by Giovanni Baglione, “Judith and the Head of Holofernes”(1608).  Wiley’s “Judith” is wearing a dark gown, custom made by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, her hair is perfectly coiffed, her brown skin glowing.  There is a regal tilt to her head.  I see defiance, I see resilience, I see black womanhood.  It is the same with his other Judith, who is clothed in a Renaissance-esque white gown.

Wiley's other "Judith"

Art critic Walter Robinson said about the piece that it “suggests, with a jovial brutality, that Judith would prefer to be done with white standards of beauty.”

Detail of Wiley's Judith Beheading Holofernes (artefuse.com)

So yeah, nothing racist about it, just Wiley taking societal norms and unapologetically throwing them back in the faces of the oppressors.

Highly anticipated Obama portraits unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery

Kehinde Wiley, Barack Obama (2018)

Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (2018)

The official portraits of President Barack Obama, painted by Kehinde Wiley, and First Lady Michelle Obama, painted by Amy Sherald were unveiled at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery this week. 

Source:  Getty Images via popsugar.com

In the past, presidential portrait unveilings have drawn little fanfare, but the Obamas were not your typical presidential family and Wiley and Sherald are not your typical portrait artists. 

Kehinde Wiley, left, and Amy Sherald, right at the unveiling of the Obama portraits.  Source:  Getty Images

Kehinde Wiley, who grew up in South Central, Los Angeles and is currently based in New York City, is a classically trained portrait artist who has studied in Russia, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Yale University.  He takes contemporary African Americans, in powerful, heroic poses and sets them in backgrounds reminiscent of Old Master style paintings.  It’s hip-hop, it’s unabashedly black, and it’s uniquely Wiley.

Kehinde Wiley for the New York Times

The Veiled Christ (study), 2008

Morpheus, 2008

Equestrian Portrait of King Philip II (Michael Jackson), 2010

Judith and Holofernes, 2012

Shantavia Beale II, 2012

Baltimore-based Amy Sherald, who studied at Clark Atlanta University, Spellman College, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, is a rising portrait artist whose work addresses social justice, politics and African-American culture.  She focuses on issues of race and identity in the American South.  Her grey tone subjects juxtaposed against bright, colorful garments on a flat background are striking, each telling a distinct story.

Amy Sherald for the Baltimore Sun

Innocent You, Innocent Me (2016

A Clear Unspoken Granted Magic, 2017

All Things Bright and Beautiful, 2016

What’s Precious Inside of Him Does Not Care to be Known by the Mind in Ways that Diminish Its Presence, 2017

Grand Dame Queenie, 2012

Both artists usually paint people they see on the street, although Wiley has painted several famous people, including Michael Jackson and The Notorious B.I.G.  Both are aware of the need for more black faces in museums. “There’s not enough images of us,” Sherald said in an October 2017 New York Times interview.

The choice of Wiley and Sherald wasn’t a surprise for some, as the Obamas have always been “rooting for everybody black,” including contemporary black artists, especially the up and comers like Sherald.  That Wiley and Sherald have distinct styles that will stand out among the others in the gallery was almost certainly a deliberate move by the Obamas. 

The Obamas with the artists at the National Portrait Gallery unveiling, Getty Images

Since the announcement in early 2017 that two black artists would paint America’s first black President and First Lady, the portraits were highly anticipated, and the final results, unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery on Monday, deeply moving.

Getty Images

As I watched the unveiling on my computer at home, I gasped when Wiley’s rendition of Obama was unveiled – life size image of a steadfast, unshakably poised leader, seated in a dignified chair, elbows resting on knees, arms crossed, and a stern, alert look in his eyes.  This isn’t the picture of a relaxed man, but a determined, engaged leader.

National Portrait Gallery

In the portrait, Obama is surrounded by a lush background of greenery from which flowers of symbolic meaning are intertwined - chrysanthemums, the official flower of Chicago, where Obama began his political career, met his wife and began his family; jasmine represents Hawaii, his birthplace; and African blue lilies signify Kenya, the land of his father’s. 

Wiley said the plants chart Obama’s “path on Earth.”  Obama said that the portrait was, “pretty sharp.”  About Wiley he said "What I was always struck by when I saw his portraits was the degree to which they challenged our ideas of power and privilege."

Sherald’s life sized portrait of Mrs. Obama is done in her style of a gray palette for the former first lady’s skin tone, set against a vibrant white and geometric print dress, custom made by Michelle Smith.  A dress with historic, political meaning. 

Michelle Obama and Amy Sherald unveil her portrait, Getty Images

Smith is an American designer, outspoken critic of the current president, and an unabashed support of civil, women’s, and reproductive rights.  Obama often wore pieces from Smith’s Milly label throughout her tenure as first lady.

The dress draws on the American tradition of quilting, specifically the quilts created by the isolated African-American community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. These quilts were created using recycled scraps of fabric, and are notable for their abstract, asymmetrical compositions.

National Portrait Gallery

 In the portrait, the former first lady’s arms that inspired and shocked the nation are on full display.  Her dignified, serene gaze is leveled at the viewer, her expression is soft, strong, and confident. Her pose is gracefully casual with one hand resting under her chin.

Barack Obama gazes upon the portrait of Michelle Obama, Getty Images

At the unveiling, President Obama said the portrait “spectacularly” captured the First Lady’s “grace, beauty, intelligence, charm and hotness.”  Michelle Obama said that she was “humbled” and “overwhelmed.”

While some social media “art critics” have voiced their displeasure with the renderings, the Obama’s have been nothing but thrilled by their portraits.  What we must remember is that the Obamas chose Wiley and Sherald to paint their portraits, so they were quite familiar with their works and were deliberate in the choosing.  We must also remember that paintings aren’t photographs and these portraits should not be approached as if they are. 

I’m not sure why some folks expected some basic, run of the mill portraits, when the Obamas are such extraordinary public figures.  As artists, I’m sure Sherald and Wiley know that the public will have strong opinions either way, but the blessings of the Obamas is all that should matter.

What is incredibly striking to me as a lover of history and of art, and most importantly as an African American, is the level of fanfare that this unveiling has generated.  The number of think pieces and articles that have been written, the level of discussion, the fact that even those who aren’t art lovers or critics have been discussing these portraits with unprecedented fervor. 

What gives me the most unabashed joy is that the portrait of the first black president will hang among portraits of presidents who owned slaves, who did not believe in the rights of African Americans, who were segregationists. 

A few years ago, as I walked through the America’s Presidents exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. nothing particularly moved me.  Many are your standard issue portraits, very stately and dignified…and a little boring, but there are a few that stand out – some in a good way, the Gilbert Stuart “Lansdowne Portrait” of George Washington, the George Peter Alexander Healy portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the Elaine De Kooning watercolor of John F. Kennedy.  Some stand out in an interesting way, the Chuck Close abstract of Bill Clinton, the Patrick Oliphant sculptures of Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.

The Obama portrait will change that immensely.  African American parents will flock to the National Portrait Gallery in droves with their children, who will gaze up in awe at these majestic masterpieces and once again be filled with hope and pride and the promise of a brighter tomorrow.

As Michelle Obama so eloquently put it at the portrait unveiling, “I’m thinking about all of the young people, particularly girls, and girls of color, who in years ahead will come to this place, and they will look up, and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution. I know about the impact it’ll have on their lives, because I was one of those girls.”

Source:  Amy Sherald's Instagram page

Former President Barack Obama's portrait is on view in the America's Presidents gallery on the museum's second floor.  Former First Lady Michelle Obama's portrait will be featured in the Recent Acquisitions gallery on the museum's first floor until November 2018.