medievalpoc:medievalpoc:While Murray assumes considerable...

medievalpoc:

medievalpoc:

While Murray assumes considerable real estate in the foreground of the painting, there is great care in the representation of Belle. She is not darkened nor obscured, her gaze is fixed and direct; she is smiling and is dressed as an aristocrat. The portrait is exceptional for these reasons.

Other images of the period present a black identity negatively and these images exist in great abundance. And what we learn from looking back at these images is telling: the white European perception of our bodies, our beauty rendered in such monstrous ways to the edification of whiteness is the tool of white supremacy.

We are very much still negotiating the impact of seeing images that erase and obscure black beauty and humanity today.

Our blended histories have yet to be accurately represented in popular consciousness, so every old story uncovered becomes a new retelling and a demand that we examine some painful truths about our past and how it shapes our present.

-Syreeta McFadden, “Belle Navigates Blurred Lines Between Race, Gender, and Class in 18th Century Britain” (feministing.com)

Medievalpoc posts tagged “Dido Elizabeth Belle”

Someone recently asked me about the first thing I saw or read that seeded the idea for medievalpoc. 

This portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle was included in a presentation for Honors Interdisciplinary History of Western Civ (part 2 i think), a nine-credit course in a program I was in back in college, years ago. And even being a part of something that intensive (the full program had 24 req’d credits of JUST interdisciplinary history), I’m pretty sure this was the only painting of its kind I saw.

Making these images more accessible to educators and students (in or outside of institutions!) is one of the main goals of this project, because I know from experience that sometimes art can inspire us in ways we never expected or imagined.