“Authorities in the art world demonstrated that the most famous examples of classic beauty in sculpture-the Venus de Milo and the Apollo Belvedere-were chiseled from Ethiopian slave models,” Hopkins wrote. The editorial controversially argued that the models for two paragons of classical beauty had actually been enslaved Ethiopians. A 1903 issue of the magazine published an editorial with no byline, though there’s scholarly consensus that Hopkins penned the piece. Pauline Hopkins, a writer working in Boston for The Colored American Magazine, played a pivotal role. In the mid-19th century, Sarah Baartman, a Black South African woman, was paraded around Europe and put on display due to her large buttocks. She was derisively dubbed the “Hottentot Venus.”Īt the turn of the 20th century, however, Black women started reclaiming classical deities of beauty, such as Venus. When they did-and especially in Western neoclassical art-it was usually in the form of mischaracterization or mockery.įor example, in Thomas Stothard’s 1801 engraving “Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies,” he depicts a Black woman in the style of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” romanticizing the harrowing trauma of the slave trade’s Middle Passage. And because marble statues from antiquity have, over time, lost their painted colors, it’s influenced the widespread belief that all the deities were imagined as White.įor these reasons, Black women have rarely appeared in classical depictions and reproductions. Classical statues such as the Venus de Milo and the Apollo Belvedere are often considered the apex of human perfection. Instead, ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics were held up as paragons of beauty and artistic sensibility. In particular, pro-slavery lobbyists and slavery apologists argued that the presence of slavery in ancient Greece and Rome was what allowed the two empires to become pinnacles of civilization.Įven though ancient Greece and Rome traded with, fought against, and learned from ancient African civilizations such as Egypt, Nubia, and Meroe, the presence and influence of these societies have tended to be downplayed or ignored.
However, in the 19th century, the classical tradition started being wielded against Black people in a specific way. You see it in the branding of Venus razors, named after the Roman goddess of beauty, and Nike sportswear, named for the ancient Greek goddess of victory in the names of cities like Olympia, Washington, and Rome, Georgia in the neoclassical architecture found in the nation’s capital and in debates over democracy, republicanism, and citizenship. The classical tradition has been hugely influential in American society. They’re adding their own twist to what’s called the classical tradition, a style rooted in the aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome, and they’re only the most recent Black women artists to do so.
But that’s exactly what Lizzo did in her new song, “Rumors.” In it, she and Cardi B dress in Grecian goddess-inspired dresses, dance in front of classically inspired statuary, wear headdresses that evoke caryatids and transform into Grecian vases. It isn’t often that a pop star releases a music video that aligns so well with my academic research.
Photos courtesy of YouTube/Lizzo Music Black women have rarely appeared in classical depictions and reproductions.