Art and Race: The African (Up) Against the Enlightenment's Eye

This groundbreaking study investigates the close and paradoxical relationship of art and race during the Enlightenment.

In this text, French art historian Anne Lafont examines the complexities and contradictions in Enlightenment-era ideas about race, focusing on the figurations of Africans and other people of color. Through studies of a wide range of eighteenth-century art, Lafont grounds her analysis in the objects themselves and, by doing so, highlights how visual works can reveal the val...