French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Lafont, Art and Race – The African against the Enlightenment Gaze
Art and Visual Culture
Anne Lafont
Art and Race – The African against the Enlightenment Gaze
Les presses du réel
ISBN : 978-2-37896-016-2
32.00 €
476 p.
OVERVIEW
Art historian Anne Lafont presents a groundbreaking study of the close and paradoxical relationship between art and race during the Enlightenment. A fresh voice in contemporary scholarship addressing questions of race, art, imagery, and colonies.
Drawing on a corpus of both well-known and lesser-known works of art, the author revisits eighteenth-century Fine Arts through the lens of the representation of Black figures. These figures not only bridge anthropological knowledge and aesthetic experience, but also connect the history of metropolitan luxury with the history of colonial slavery. This book is the culmination of over a decade of research into the depictions of African men and women in continental and colonial French art prior to the abolitionist imagination. It spans visual and artistic cultures from the late seventeenth century—the era of Coypel, Mignard, Largillière, and others, when the West Indian colonies began to make their mark on the metropolitan art scene—to the first third of the nineteenth century—the era of Girodet, Benoist, Léthière, and Géricault—when the failure of the first abolition of slavery (1802) hardened partisan iconography and brought the harsh reality of plantation life to the forefront of artistic creation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Anne Lafont is an art historian and Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS).
She studied in Canada and France before holding a residency at the Villa Medici. She later served as a senior lecturer in early modern art history at the University of Paris-Est before joining the National Institute for Art History (INHA), where she spent ten years. She was elected to the EHESS in 2017 with a project entitled Art History and Creolities.
Her research has primarily focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, with a particular interest in the art of the French Revolution and the pictorial imagination of new citizens—Black individuals—within the broader context of the Atlantic revolutions. At the same time, she has initiated research on naturalistic and anthropological knowledge in relation to the visual cultures of travel, scientific expeditions, and cabinets of curiosity (The Learned Artist and the Conquest of the Modern World, 2010; 1740, The World Abridged, 2012), as well as studies on women's writings on art around 1800 (Feathers and Brushes: Women's Discourse on Art in Europe, 2012). Her work now focuses on the art of the French West Indies during the colonial period and, more broadly, on the arts and cultures of the Black Atlantic.
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An article on this book can be read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
"Art and Race: A Disciplinary Turning Point", by Diane Turquety
The fruit of over ten years of rigorous research by Anne Lafont, Art and Race is a dense and ambitious reflection on the visual representations of Black people in the eighteenth century. Its novel approach challenges and invigorates the discipline of art history in France.
See also on laviedesidees.fr:
This scholarly study belongs to the fields of art history and visual culture studies, bridging the gap between eighteenth-century aesthetics and colonial history. By examining how African men and women were depicted in European painting and sculpture, the author investigates the complex intersections of metropolitan luxury, scientific observation, and transatlantic slavery. The book contributes to broader intellectual debates on the Enlightenment gaze, offering crucial insights into how artistic creation both reflected and shaped racial ideologies during a period marked by shifting imperial ambitions and the rise of abolitionist movements.
Readers interested in eighteenth-century art, postcolonial critique, and the visual history of the Black Atlantic will find this work particularly valuable. It serves as an essential resource for scholars and students seeking to understand the institutional and pictorial mechanisms of representation in France before and after the Revolution. By questioning the ideological underpinnings of canonical fine arts, the volume helps researchers address persistent questions regarding race, alterity, and the historical archives of Western visual culture.
"Colonizing Art", by Guillaume Mazeau, (published online July 31, 2020).