Noémie Ndiaye, Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race, RaceB4Race: Critical Race Studies of the Premodern series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). 376 pages, 8 b&w halftones, 12 color images. $64.95. ISBN 978-1-5128-2263-2. This book’s striking cover design cites a costume print produced by…
Editor’s Note: The last of three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the ongoing impact of Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie (Paris, 1691) by French missionary Chrestien Le Clerq, which is part of the eighteenth-century colonial archive of Indigenous-settler relations on…
Exhibition: Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 16, 2022 – January 15, 2023. Pictures produce knowledge. The premise is uncontroversial, but the role that visual representation has played in intellectual transformations throughout history is often difficult to pinpoint. Diagrams…
Rosalind Savill, Everyday Rococo: Madame De Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain. 2 vols. Norwich: Unicorn Press, 2021. 1211 pp. $275. ISBN 978-1916495715 Dame Rosalind Savill’s Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour & Sèvres Porcelain is a magnificently produced two-volume study of the early development of the Sèvres Porcelain Factory, from its origins in…
Blue Lewoz, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Paris, France, June 10 – July 23, 2022. Visitors to Raphaël Barontini’s show Blue Lewoz at Mariane Ibrahim’s Paris gallery this past summer were greeted by the imposing figure of Creole Dancer (Fig. 1). The 9 feet by 6 feet collage of an archival photo…
Editor’s Note: Published in three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive. In Part I: Reclaiming Komqwejwi’kasikl, Sylliboy presented the poetic gift she received from her ancestors that launched her creative journey reclaiming the komqwejwi’kasikl writing system…
Editor’s Note: Published in three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive. Sylliboy responds to the dehumanizing accounts of her ancestors in Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie (Paris, 1691) and reclaims the komqwejwi’kasikl language from its author,…
Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, ed. by Lauren R. Cannady and Jennifer Ferng (Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2021). 418 pp.; 76 ills. $100 This edited collection started life as a colloquium. The arrangement of the published papers (dedicated to the late and greatly missed eighteenth-century…
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800: Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) website, 2021 edition, http://www.pastellists.com/LaTour.htm. French pastellist Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788), whose sitters included Madame de Pompadour, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, and Voltaire, is often and justifiably lauded as a “tour de force.”[1] Neil Jeffares, the author of…
Les Animaux du Roi, Château de Versailles, Versailles, France, October 12, 2021 – February 13, 2022. Curated by Alexandre Maral and Nicolas Milovanovic. Scenography: Guicciardini & Magni Architetti. Lighting: Lionel Coutou. You are allowed to enjoy this exhibition. Cast off your critical baggage and just relax. It’s okay. Forget your…