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Showing posts with the label Anton Graff

Feature Post.

The Slave Market and the Theatre of European Anxiety

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Author Brian Hawkeswood.                                                                                                   Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung https://artelbestudio.blogspot.com/2025/04/orientalist-beautiful-form-of-realism.html When Jean-Léon Gérôme exhibited The Slave Market in 1871, Europe was not an innocent observer of slavery. The Atlantic system had only recently been dismantled in parts of the Western world; Brazil would abolish slavery in 1888. European empires were expanding across Africa and the Middle East. Racial hierarchies were being codified in pseudo-scientific language. Anthropology, colonial administration, and academic painting shared an overlapping visual culture.         ...
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Anton Graff and the Naming of Saxon Switzerland

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  Author -Brian Hawkeswood.                                                                           Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung It was a quiet summer afternoon in my gallery, Studio Elbe , when a visitor paused before one of my paintings—a reimagined portrait appropriated from Anton Graff . He studied it closely, then, almost as an aside, remarked that Graff himself had once named the region now known as Saxon Switzerland . I was momentarily startled. I had known of Graff’s formidable reputation as a portraitist, but not of any such geographical legacy. Could it be true? The idea intrigued me, not only because it lent new resonance to the painting on the wall, but because it suggested how profoundly the gaze of the artist can shape the world—literally, in this case, giving a n...
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