Black Bodies, White Gold : Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World

In Black Bodies, White Gold Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity central to the slave trade and colonialism, as a focus for new interpretations of the way art, commerce, and colonialism were intertwined in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. In doing so, Arabindan-Kesson models an art historical approach that makes the histories of the Black diaspora central to nineteenth-century cultural production. She traces the emergence of a speculative vision that informs perceptions of Blackness in which artistic renderings of cotton--as both commodity and material--became inexorably tied to the monetary value of Black bodies. From the production and representation of "negro cloth"--the textile worn by enslaved plantation workers--to depictions of Black sharecroppers in photographs and paintings, Arabindan-Kesson demonstrates that visuality was the mechanism through which Blackness and cotton became equated as resources for extraction. In addition to interrogating the work of nineteenth-century artists, she engages with contemporary artists such as Hank Willis Thomas, Lubaina Himid, and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, who contend with the commercial and imperial processes shaping constructions of Blackness and meanings of labor Cover 1 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Illustrations 16 Introduction: Threads of Empire 20 1 · Circuits of Cotton 48 2 · Market Aesthetics: Color, Cloth, and Commerce 86 3 · Of Vision and Value: Landscape and Labor after Slavery 140 4 · Material Histories and Speculative Conditions 190 Coda: A Material with Memory 222 Notes 232 Bibliography 266 Index 304 A 304 B 305 C 307 D 310 E 310 F 310 G 311 H 311 I 312 J 312 K 313 L 313 M 313 N 314 O 314 P 315 Q 316 R 316 S 316 T 318 U 318 V 318 W 319 Y 319 Z 319 "Using cotton-a commodity central to the slave trade and colonialism-as a paradigm, Black Bodies, White Gold presents new interpretations of the way art, commerce, and colonialism were intertwined in the nineteenth century Atlantic world. It models an art historical framework that centralizes the histories of the Black diaspora to nineteenth-century cultural production"-- Provided by publisher "Anna Arabindan-Kesson examines how cotton became a subject for nineteenth-century art by tracing the symbolic and material correlations between cotton and Black people in British and American visual culture."-- Provided by publisher