While portraiture is defined as depicting a figure’s likeness, it can reveal so much more about the subject’s or artist’s race, identity, and culture as well as a history of race, identity, and culture. This is especially evident when discussing Black portraiture.

My tour began with Henri Matisse’s anatomical exaggerations of Venus’s figure in Figure décorative (1908), which, though differently titled, appears similar to his depiction of the Black body in works such as Deux Négresses (1908). Together, they visually reflect the history of reducing Blackness to the body and sexuality. While viewing SONG OF SOLOMON 5:16 – BE BEEWORLD: BE B BOY B GIRL (after “Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Gueifei playing the same flute,” by Kitagawa Utamaro) (2014–2016) by Rozeal (formerly known as iona rozeal brown), I discussed her “combining of cultures,” highlighting the appropriation of Black and hip-hop culture and its reduction to an aesthetic. Lastly, with Amy Sherald’s They call me Redbone but I’d rather be Strawberry Shortcake (2009), I discussed how the artist’s experiences of being a young, light-skinned Black girl impacted her views of Blackness and innocence as well as how those experiences influenced her work, removing the idea of “color-as-race.”

Interdisciplinary Humanities major and Painting minor, Howard University
Howard University Undergraduate Intern, 2022–2024