The Image of the Black in Western Art

Book excerpt: "A pioneering work in the field of art history, The Image of the Black in Western Art is a comprehensive series of ten books which offers a lavishly illustrated history of the representations of people of African descent from antiquity to the present. Each book includes a series of essays by some of the most distinguished names in art history. Ranging from images of Pharaohs created by unknown hands almost 3,500 years ago to the works of the great masters of European and American art such as Bosch, Dürer, Mantegna, Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, Hogarth, Copley, and Goya to stunning new media creations by contemporary black artists, these books are generously illustrated with beautiful, moving, and often little-known images of black people. Black figures-queens and slaves, saints and soldiers, priests and prisoners, dancers and athletes, children and gods-are central to the visual imagination of Western civilization. Written in accessible language, the extensive and insightful commentaries on the illustrations by distinguished art historians make this series invaluable for the general reader and the specialist alike."--Résumé de l'éditeur.