Running head: ARTS AND SLAVERY 1 Slavery as a Stimulant to Present Artwork Student's Name Institution Course Instructor's Name Date ARTS AND SLAVERY 2 There has not been sufficient study done to give a good explanation of whether arts and slavery have some relationship. With that in mind, we can start thinking about how the two have been displayed together or interconnected. According to the study, the research question is, "Was slavery a stimulant to the present artwork?" The keywords include visual arts, later Paleolithic in Namibia and Egypt, and slavery. The artwork was established in the old years during the evolution of humankind, where the earliest recorded was in the later Paleolithic of Namibia and the late Paleolithic of Egypt. With that information, we can deduce that arts started in Africa. African art was renown as the visual arts such as painting, pottery, jewelry, rock art, and sculpture and was adopted worldwide. Most people who were taken as slaves were sold from Africa, which connects right with the artwork. When the people evolved with artwork worldwide, some development of the art was enhanced through the incredible interaction that happened during and after the slavery trading. As art is done for pleasure and speaking out mind, the people in this field have been able to do arts when they are free, and that has been a good and calm way to speak up about what they have in their minds (Wood, 2018). Africa has the highest number of slaves being taken, they had to adapt to living in their new environs, which made them limited to a lot, but they got the chance to practice their arts whenever they were free. They did crafts to speak up as they could not be allowed to have their voices heard. They made different arts that only the keen ones could get the information portrayed in the paintings. From this attraction, they made their masters attracted by the artwork to do their arts too or even use the skills from the slaves. These slaves did crafts to make sure that they maintained their culture from the back where they originated, which served to preserve ARTS AND SLAVERY 3 it (Carson, 2014). Considering America being built up mainly by the slaves, there were the enslaved ones and the free African Americans. They got the opportunity to pursue their artistic works that boosted the arts in the world. There has been a lot of paintings that have been associated with slaves and mostly portrayed as black people. There have been so many arts that have been meant to show how the slaves were treated, how they lived, how they were punished, and many more, for example, in a painting by Antoine Pesne in 1716, where he painted a German hereditary prince, Friedrich Ludwig, and Henriette Marie. The latter was the hereditary princess of Brandenburg-Schwedt. In the painting, he shows his gold-embroidered cuffs that are at the center of his coat. He wore his stockings over his breeches, and they had a young female slave. There are too many to mention where others show the slaves being poorly treated, as shown in the portrait by Sir Anthony van Dyck of 1623 "Marchesa Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo," where we can see black children being treated as accouterment (Bernier & Willson, 2020). The artwork can be seen to heighten the power to talk more, starting from the arts that were related to slavery as any artist highly did them in the world. There could be a reason why the skills on slavery were highly spread, but it cannot be confirmed for sure, but it can be supposed to have been because slavery had roots all over the world. Could the slavery that happened in the ancient ages be the reason for the high spread artworks? Or could it have been the origin of the current artworks? The major success while undertaking the research is that there is some connection and anticipation to carry on with it to answer the questions for sure, and it is a good area of research that can be opened up for study as information about the art and slavery can be found with ease from the history. The only challenge to undertaking the research is that ARTS AND SLAVERY no direct connector might call in a DNA study on the connection probability, making it expensive. 4 ARTS AND SLAVERY 5 References Bernier, C., & Willson, N. (2020). We were brave. We were strong. We survived. Acts and arts of liberation in the African Atlantic imaginary. Slavery & Abolition, 41(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2019.1685255 Carson, J. (2014). Slavery Before Race: Europeans, Africans and Indians at Long Island's Sylvester Manor Plantation, 1651–1884. Slavery & Abolition, 35(4), 670-671. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2014.965584 Wood, M. (2018). Slavery in small things: slavery and modern cultural habits. Slavery & Abolition, 39(1), 227-228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2018.1432532
