The colour of anxiety: race, sexuality and disorder in Victorian sculpture

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, British sculptors began to move away from the whiteness of Neoclassical marble and started to incorporate colour into their work, using bronze, silver, gold, ivory and porcelain as well as semi-precious stones, tinted waxes, enamels and paint. The exhibition examined the rise of coloured sculpture in relation to widespread anxieties about social change and scientific advances, drawing attention to a Victorian fascination with colouring people and people of colour. Includes a reprint of David J. Getsy's article 'Privileging the Object of Sculpture: Actuality and Harry Bates' 'Pandora' of 1890' originally published in Art History (vol. 28, no. 1, February 2005).

Contents

Foreword / Laurence Sillars -- The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in. Victorian Sculpture / Nicola Jennings and Adrienne L. Childs -- 'Art for Morality's Sake': Whiteness, Marble, and. American Slavery / Charmaine A. Nelson -- Blood, Bronze and Stone: Fictions of Slavery in Victorian-Era Sculpture / Adrienne L. Childs -- Carpeaux and the Erotics of Slavery / David Bindman -- Privileging the Object of Sculpture: Actuality and Harry Bates' 'Pandora' of 1890 / David J. Getsy -- The Use of Colour and the Femme Fatale in Late Victorian Sculpture / Nicola Jennings -- Open Source: Sanford Biggers' 'Chimeras' / Christa Clarke -- Works in the Exhibition.