Eight Studies of Heads, Antoine Watteau, ca. 1715–16. © RMN, Musée du Louvre
Blackness Is in the Making: Materials of the 18th-Century Artist
ONLINE ONLY
This is a past event
HOSTED VIA ZOOM
Register in advance for this online event
The year's Gaehtgens Lecture, part of the Beyond the Borders, Beyond the Boundaries series, features Anne Lafont in conversation with Lyneise Williams on the materials, techniques, and challenges involved in 18th-century artistic representations of Blackness in works from across the Atlantic world. Lafont and Williams explore how European conceptualizations of African subjectivity were expressed through images, and how the artistic materiality involved in figuring Black bodies and subjects contributed to the visual construction of race during the Enlightenment.
Anne Lafont is professor (directrice d'études) at the Center for the History and Theory of Art at the School for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris. A specialist of 18th- and 19th-century visual culture in the transatlantic world, Lafont is the author of numerous books including, most recently, L'art et la race: L'Africain (tout) contre l'œil des Lumières (2019).
Lyneise Williams is associate professor of art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2019, she published Latin Blackness in Parisian Visual Culture, 1852–1932, which explores the inextricable links between Blackness and Latin American identity in Paris from the mid-19th to early 20th century.
The conversation is moderated by Getty Research Institute Director Mary Miller.
Sponsored by the Getty Research Institute Council, the annual Thomas and Barbara Gaehtgens Lecture series is dedicated to highlighting leading research in the field of global art history.
The Beyond the Borders, Beyond the Boundaries lecture series brings together speakers whose work expands art historical scholarship beyond the intellectual and geographic constraints that have traditionally defined it. Presented by the Director's Office at Getty Research Institute, the series' topics range from depictions of race in 18th-century painting to participatory art about undocumented migration, provoking new ways of thinking about how practices of inclusion and exclusion have shaped the field.
The conversation will be recorded and available on Getty Research Institute's YouTube channel following the event.