{"id":10275,"date":"2023-08-17T15:01:44","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T15:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/?p=10275"},"modified":"2023-08-18T15:20:49","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T15:20:49","slug":"peter-brathwaite-reimagines-black-art-in-new-book-rediscovering-black-portraiture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/peter-brathwaite-reimagines-black-art-in-new-book-rediscovering-black-portraiture\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Brathwaite Reimagines Black Art In New Book \u2018Rediscovering Black Portraiture\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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During the pandemic, opera singer Peter Brathwaite could no longer perform, so he chose to channel his creativity through the medium of photography by joining <\/strong>Getty\u2019s Museum Challenge<\/strong><\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The playful challenge, which thousands participated in, was to recreate your favorite art by using objects found around the house. <\/strong>Brathwaite took this challenge to heart and not only replicated a single work, but reimagined more than 100 artworks featuring Black subjects throughout history.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 50 of his striking and whimsical recreations have been curated for his new book in collaboration with Getty Publications titled <\/strong>Rediscovering Black Portraiture<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the book\u2019s introduction, Brathwaite said he has always been interested in discovering people who looked like him in the classical canon of art. He notes that as a Black British opera singer, he too is used to being \u201ca rare breed.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The catalyst for Brathwaite’s quest to uncover Black sitters within classical art stemmed from a disconcerting experience during an opera production where he was asked to use white face paint to portray an 18th-century French aristocrat.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat episode with the whiting up was definitely something that made me want to really go out there and find high status black men from that period. And I was determined to do that at that point, in that experience because I just couldn\u2019t understand the insistence that my face should be whitened to fulfill this vision,\u201d he said. \u201cI think there is this preconception that if we see images from a certain period, the black subject is definitely enslaved and definitely low status.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Left: Don Miguel de Castro: Emissary of Kongo<\/em>, ca. 1643. Right: Re-creation by Peter Brathwaite (with photographic partner Sam Baldock). \u00a9 Peter Brathwaite<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rediscovering Black Portraiture<\/em><\/strong> aims to demonstrate that Black people have always existed in art, and that they are elemental to the past, present, and future of art. The Black portraits in the collection range from medieval Europe through the present day. <\/strong>Featured artworks include <\/strong>The Adoration of the Magi<\/em><\/strong> by Georges Trubert, <\/strong>Portrait of an Unknown Man<\/em><\/strong> by Jan Mostaert, <\/strong>Rice n Peas<\/em><\/strong> by Sonia Boyce, <\/strong>Barack Obama<\/em><\/strong> by Kehinde Wiley, and more.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the most important thing for me in that respect was making sure that there was a broad range so that people can understand that Black subjects, people of color from all walks of life have been portrayed in Western art, whether we\u2019ve seen them or not. So it\u2019s very much about debunking myths and stereotypes and asking us to look again,\u201d said Brathwaite. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An exhibition of Brathwaite\u2019s re-creations is currently on view at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in Bristol, UK through September 3, 2023.<\/strong>Purchase a copy of <\/strong>Rediscovering Black Portraiture<\/em><\/strong> at the <\/strong>Getty Museum Store<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the pandemic, opera singer Peter Brathwaite could no longer perform, so he chose to channel his creativity through the medium of photography by joining Getty\u2019s Museum Challenge.  The playful challenge, which thousands participated in, was to recreate your favorite art by using objects found around the house. Brathwaite took this challenge to heart and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[149,32,31,1435,51],"class_list":["post-10275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-black-art","tag-books","tag-featured","tag-peter-brathwaite","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}