#blackamoor

They found an actor who looks nothing like Sparry. Too bad Sparry can't see how ashamed the wife is of his baldness & low IQ.

Digi sketches up top that I’m going to trad ink and color for one of my classes and studies of Carrie Mae Weems work below :’) I’m honestly just gon copy paste my school discussion board notes on this below :’) Along with the sphinx mixed aunt Jemima/mammy archetype yet sexualized there are dozens of molasses baby boys, strewn around her. One article referred to them as “Blackamoor” sculptures, which I’d never heard of before.

“Blackamoor is a type of figure in European decorative art from the Early Modern period, depicting a black man. Common examples of items and objects decorated in the blackamoor style include sculpture, jewelry, and furniture. Typically the sculpted figures carried something, such as candles or a tray. They were thus an exotic and lightweight variant for the "atlas" in architecture and decorative arts, especially popular in the Rococo period.”

The Jewelry is just absolutely striking. It’s just wild to me the way this surpasses all possible parody – you’ve turned a man into not just an object, but something you can wear on your lapel. A woman into an earring, a child - a bracelet.

The reference images I found were from actual current listings, this iconography is still being bought and sold.

Most Blackamoor jewelry was/is produced by Italy. As a southern-Italian who grew up with the knowledge that the word “Mulignan” (moo-yan) is still used on Arthur’s Ave (because it was shouted at my sister’s boyfriend by a maitre-d, and because she told me about it, I’ve never asked to take Dylan there for a date, even tho he, Himself, is half Italian and I grew up eating food from there).

In my first VAJ page, I have a Ngil Fang Mask overlooking and casting out 3 pieces of blackamoor jewelry. Made by the people of Gabon, “‘You can view the Ngil  as agents of social control,’ explains the specialist. ‘In simple terms, the ceremonies mainly consisted of frightening those who had evil intentions.’” These all white masks would’ve been horrifyingly beautiful, emerging from the shadows of night.

“Silent Incantation II” (2020), oil on canvas over panel, 38 x 33 inches. 

Subversive and Grandiose, Kajahl’s Vivid Portraits Supplant Historical Narratives

Through his meticulously rendered portraits, Santa Cruz-born artist Kajahl subverts the tradition of Blackamoor—a highly stylized European aesthetic that visualized people of color, particularly African men, in exoticized forms and subservient roles—by instead depicting Black subjects in valorized positions. Part of a series titled Royal Specter, the vivid paintings center alchemists, scholars, astronomers, and various intellectual figures within grandiose and luxurious settings.

While the artist’s works evoke the racist sculpture and decorative pieces of Blackamoor, they remove the historical context and alter the original narrative through anachronistic details. Each oil painting is layered with imagined elements, from the inaccuracies of the source material to Kajahl’s portrayals of fictional characters. “My fantasy is gazing back at their fantasy. I am their fantasy and they are mine… I am the specter of their imagination,” he says.

All images © Kajahl

“Star Gazer In Solitude” (2020), oil on canvas over panel, 72 x 54 inches

Left: “Moment of Contemplation (Scholar)” ( 2020), oil on canvas over panel, 48 x 36 inches. Right: “Oracle (Holding Mirror)” (2020), oil on canvas over panel, 48 x 36 inches

“Silent Incantation I” (2020), oil on canvas over panel, 38 x 33 inches