Historical Narratives and Conversations — Review on Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast
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A bust sculpture of a woman of African origin: Her upper body is twisted in opposite directions with a rope bounding her. Her frowning brows and clenched jaw depict her defiance and resistance toward whoever is holding her captive or enslaving her. Her breasts and shoulders are exposed beneath the cloth that barely covers her body. She gazes upward at the enslaver with fierceness but also vulnerability, hinted by her hollow eyeballs.
Why Born Enslaved! (Pourquoi Naître Esclave!) by French sculptor, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, created in 1868, is the centerpiece of the provocative exhibition Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It appears as a back-to-back set of two made of marble and terracotta, respectively. Carpeaux used four contrasting textures for her skin, cloth, rope and hair to create a realistic image of a woman, which contains a narration with motions and dynamics. The exhibition occupies very little space in the Wrightsman Exhibition Gallery, yet it is packed with plenty of insightful analysis and contemporary reflection, as the first exhibition at The Met to examine Western sculpture concerning the histories of transatlantic slavery, colonialism and imperialism. The curators deliberately select a wide range of 35 other artworks to evoke active conversation with the centerpiece. Through parallel viewing and guidance by the four prompts elicited in the exhibition labels (Who narrates history? What is abolition? What is representation? What is the legacy of the Black figure in Western art?), viewers are challenged to reflect on the features in the works from a modern perspective. The exhibition incorporates Black figures in Western art to problematize the narratives and representations in the history of slavery and abolition, and to further consider the formative role art has played in shaping them.
Why Born Enslaved!, created three years after American Emancipation and around 20 years after the Second Abolition of slavery in the French Atlantic, could function to revisit this piece of history or to act as an artistic response to the historical record for the audience back then. Early critics appreciated its anti-slavery message, but the curators of this exhibition invite the argument that there exist limitations and blind spots in traditional Western representation back in the 19th century. For instance, the controversial naked chest of the sculpture is interpreted as a sexualized and eroticized body image of Black women. Even though it was made after the abolition, this limitation of subconsciously following these stereotypes still exists among artists. The coexistence of abolitionist advocacy and colonizer residues in an art piece could lead to the represented figure being “an object of desire as well as an agent of defiance” (Budick).
The sculpture Woman from the French Colonies (1861) by another French sculptor of the same period, Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier, could be analyzed parallelly with Why Born Enslaved!. Although this sculpture was made earlier than the centerpiece, it has been said that the woman modeled for these two sculptures was the same unidentified woman (Greenberger), possibly an American woman who moved to Paris named Louise Kuling. One could observe different artistic representations of the same person. By using multiple materials (Algerian onyx-marble, bronze, enamel, amethyst, white marble socle), Cordier illustrated an unrealistically fancy image of a bare-shouldered African woman. Her face contains a relaxed and almost smile-like expression. Also, she seems to be motionless or static, which contrasts with Carpeaux’s naturalistic and realistic work, which is more dynamic and emotional. This work is a stereotypical representation or a “type” of a black female figure (Junceau), which historians might call “black Venus,” who are nameless figures in history and reduced to certain physical features. Elements in this artwork and the eroticization of Why Born Enslaved! depict the artists’ mythologized subject within a male European sense of beauty and attractiveness. In this case, art has inevitably participated in the colonizer’s stereotype.
Meanwhile, Forever Free (1867), an iconic all-white marble sculpture by African American artist Edmonia Lewis of Anishinaabe and Ojibwe heritage, demonstrates an example of Black self-representation. No gaudiness is added by jewelry or clothing, nor the uneasiness in facial expressions. The heroic, freed Black man is standing rather than sitting or kneeling. He holds a broken shackle and raises his fist aloft, demonstrating his strength and self-determination, while his female companion is kneeling and clasping her hands gratifiedly. As Budick suggested, the pieces of self-representation were more concerned with the journey to liberation than the state of triumph or enslaved, like in Cordier’s and Carpeaux’s works. Their representations are fantasies under structural racism (Greenberger), and Carpeaux took a step further to portray the tense historical moment of enslaving. When these portrayals are dominant among artists and in society, it even could be the case that “a white man’s work helped shape the way black history is understood” (Budick). It is precisely the case for Why Born Enslaved!, which was massively reproduced and widely recognized as a luxury object back then in France. Lewis’ figures are calm, confident and harmonious, but they are not detached from the enslaved history, as revealed by the shattered shackle, iron ball and kneeling of gratitude. The histories narrated by agents and observers could differentiate as they view the same event or identical figure from diverse perspectives and under different societal influences. The curators’ choice of these exhibited together demands viewers to ponder their perceived historical narrations and trouble art as if it is a double-edged sword: problematizing the work while elevating its vision.
The exhibition has raised questions about the relationship between history and art, especially how art is manipulated to narrate history and how stereotypical representations are elicited in art. The exhibits have responded to, if not directly, the four questions raised on the labels. Regarding that, the curators are thoughtful about including a public participation component. Viewers are invited to contribute to the prompts by writing their thoughts on the index cards and putting them on display. It encourages them to actively reflect on the contradictions and divergence that arise from the artworks and “exchange” ideas with fellow viewers. Also, with the appropriate selection of the theme color, blackish green, the sculptures in white and brown are foregrounded, visually favorable for viewing.
By including various artworks by artists of different backgrounds, the exhibition Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast guided us to problematize the previous historical representations and reflect on their effects on viewers in different generations. The centerpiece, Why Born Enslaved! is purposely put in conversation with other sculptures to raise questions about the narrators of history, the representation of Black figures and the role of art in historical narratives. Intrigued by this exhibition, when looking at other artworks under historical backgrounds, one would carry on and wonder: How did people perceive it and the representation behind it back then? And how about now?
Works Cited
Budick, Ariella. “Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast at the Met — Sex and Slavery.” Financial Times, 20 Apr. 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/adea1199-9d5c-47aa-830c-6780ed2e1b68
Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast. Mar. 10, 2022 – Mar. 5, 2023, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
Greenberger, Alex. “When Representation Isn’t Enough: New Exhibition at the Met Takes Up the Complex Case of a 19th-Century Abolitionist Sculpture.” ARTnews, 10 Mar. 2022, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/carpeaux-recast-metropolitan-museum-of-art-1234621559/
Junceau, Brandt. “Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast.” The Brooklyn Rail, Jun. 2022, https://brooklynrail.org/2022/06/artseen/Fictions-of-Emancipation-Carpeaux-Recast