FLP is joined by art historian Melissa Baksh to unpack why, in Western art, white skin can be more than just skin-deep…
CLASS DESCRIPTION
The colour white has long had a deep-rooted, ideological function in art and visual culture. From the seventeenth century onwards, the economic exploitation of peoples via the transatlantic slave trade relied heavily on notions of racial difference, whereby we see the first attempts to explain racial difference and white superiority by so-called science. The invention of the ‘white race’ helped to facilitate and even justify the exploitation of black labourers. Can we therefore think of whiteness in colonial art as more than simply an aesthetic choice, but rather, a political one? In Western art, white skin can be more than just skin-deep: there are wider historical, sociological and anthropological assumptions at play with regards to lightness and darkness of skin complexion. To go further, this ideology also takes a gendered turn; we also start to see a valorisation of female whiteness in particular, which conflates white skin with beauty, morality and virtue. However, far from being relegated to history, whiteness as we know it today is a legacy of colonialism, and these dangerous ideologies continue to exist in various forms.
This session will explore the construction of whiteness in art history, and in particular, white femininity. Looking firstly at whitewashing in Western art (where historically, women who would have been brown or black are portrayed as white) it will go on to look closely at how portraits of white female sitters have been imbued with layers of ideology, such as notions of moral authority, innocence and even nationhood.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Melissa Baksh is a London-based art historian, writer, educator, curator and broadcaster/DJ. A desire to open up art collections and make art accessible to a wide range of audiences underpins her work, and she has delivered lectures, tours and workshops in The National Gallery, Hayward Gallery and Wellcome Collection, to name a few. Melissa has written for publications including The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Art Newspaper, Frieze and Art Review on Old Masters, Italian Renaissance art, contemporary art, colonial history and legacies and public art. She is currently a curator at Morley Gallery.
Instagram: @melissabaksh_
X: @Melissa_Baksh
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissabaksh/
UPCOMING SESSIONS WITH THE FEMINIST LECTURE PROGRAM
Monday 16th September
Kitty Underhill (she/her)
Where do Flaws Come From?: Bellies, Bodies and the Social Construction of Imperfection
Monday 23rd September
N.A. Kimber (she/her) and K.E. Donoghue-Stanford (she/her)
Death and the Maiden: Femininity in the Gothic
Monday 30th September
Carolina Hades (she/her)
Pole Dancing Against the Algorithm
Monday 7th October
Janine Francois (she/they)
Black {Gendered} Space Time: From the Heavens to Outer Space
Monday 14th October
Parumveer Walia (he/him)
Staged Bodies: Performativity in Feminist Photography
Monday 21st October
Isobel Atacus (she/they)
Eva Hesse: Imagining the Unruly
Monday 28th October
Gudrun Filipska (she/her)
Feminism and Zombie Culture
Monday 4th November
Anna Titov (she/her)
Cyborgs, Transcorporeality and Volatile Bodies: Ecofeminist Theories of Embodiment
Monday 11th November
Jennifer Higgie (she/her)
Stars in Their Eyes: 19th-Century Spiritualism and Female Proto-Surrealism
Monday 18th November
Melissa Baksh (she/her)
Whitewashed? Whiteness and Femininity in Art History
Monday 25th November
Dr. Noam Yadin Evron (she/her)
Hildegard of Bingen: Mystic, Artist, Composer, Pioneer
Monday 2nd December
COMING SOON
Monday 9th December
Baylee Woodley (they/them)
Medieval Femmes: Queer Femininities in Medieval England
Monday 16th December
Summer Lee (she/her)
The Incendiary History of Red Lingerie
RECORDING
A recording of the lecture will be sent out by The Feminist Lecture Program after the event finishes, within 2 hours of the end of the class. This email will also contain any resources/reading list the lecturer shares.
Please add hello@feministlectureprogram.com to your email contacts to ensure you receive the recording as expected.
Please note that the recording will expire 7 days after sending.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class. We suggest a donation of £20, however, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we can continue to offer our sessions on a donation basis.
MORE FLP…
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And that's it!
We're really looking forward to you joining us x