The Color of Stone Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America Charmaine A. Nelson Table of Contents		$27.50 paper ISBN-10: 0-8166-4651-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4651-7 $82.50 cloth ISBN-10: 0-8166-4650-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4650-0
How do we “see” race when the color of skin is stone. Nineteenth-century neoclassical sculpture was a highly politicized international movement. Based in Rome, many expatriate American sculptors created works that represented black female subjects in compelling and problematic ways. Rejecting pigment as dangerous and sensual, adherence to white marble abandoned the racialization of the black body by skin color. In The Color of Stone, Charmaine A. Nelson brilliantly analyzes a key, but often neglected, aspect of neoclassical sculpture—color. Considering three major works—Hiram Powers’s Greek Slave, William Wetmore Story’s Cleopatra, and Edmonia Lewis’s Death of Cleopatra—she explores the intersection of race, sex, and class to reveal the meanings each work holds in terms of colonial histories of visual representation as well as issues of artistic production, identity, and subjectivity. She also juxtaposes these sculptures with other types of art to scrutinize prevalent racial discourses and to examine how the black female subject was made visible in high art. By establishing the centrality of race within the discussion of neoclassical sculpture, Nelson provides a model for a black feminist art history that at once questions and destabilizes canonical texts. “Passionate scholarship that both academics and general readers can enjoy.” —Herizons “When a Hollywood movie is made of Edmonia Lewis’ working life and struggle in Rome’s bubbling, competitive art world, Charmaine A. Nelson’s valuable book will further be a resource.” —Leonardo Reviews Charmaine A. Nelson is assistant professor of art history at McGill University. 320 pages | 40 halftones | 7 x 10 | 2007 Table of Contents List of Illustrations Introduction: Toward a Black Feminist Art History Part I. Artists, Environs, Aesthetics 1. Dismembering the Flock: Difference and the “Lady-Artists” 2. “Taste” and the Practices of Cultural Tourism: Vision, Proximity, and Commemoration 3. “So Pure and Celestial a Light”: Sculpture, Marble, and Whiteness as a Privileged Racial Signifier Part II. From Slavery to Freedom 4. White Slaves and Black Masters: Appropriation and Disavowal in Hiram Powers’s Greek Slave 5. The Color of Slavery: Degrees of Blackness and the Bodies of Female Slaves Part III. Two Cleopatras 6. Racing the Body: Reading Blackness in William Wetmore Story’s Cleopatra 7. The Black Queen in the White Body: Edmonia Lewis and the Dead Queen Conclusion: Neoclassicism and the Politics of Race Acknowledgments Notes Index