ABSTRACT
"Coloured Nude": Fetishization,
Disguise, Dichotomy
Charmaine A. Nelson
1995
Representations of black female bodies in western art defy
easy categorization. Situated as "other" within colonial discourse, the
represented black female body has historically undergone a double fetishization on the
basis of a perceived sexual and racial lack. Dorothy Stevens' Coloured Nude (1933) is
symptomatic of this unique fetishization, a state which is indicative of the positioning
of "Black Woman" as dichotomous to idealized white womanhood. Representations of
black women in Canadian painting in the 1930's locate white artists' fascination with the
black subject as exotic "other". While the highly praised Coloured Nude (1933)
situated "Black Woman" as sexually aggressive, exotic and unnatural, an
exploration of contemporaneous female nudes reveals the frequent controversy over
innocuous white female nudes and the dismissal of alternative constructions of black
female nudes. These racialized museum practices were informed by a double standard of
propriety which turned on the race of the subject.
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