Black Venus
Black Venus

© 1957, Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs

Black Venus
Black Venus

Currently not on view

Black Venus,

1957

Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs, 1915-2010; born Saint Rose, LA; died Chicago, IL
2009-28
Drawing on scenes of everyday life as well as classical mythology, Margaret Burroughs explores and asserts African and African American identity. Black Venus belongs to a series of linocuts that Burroughs completed after studying at the Taller de Grafi ca Popular (Workshop for Popular Art), a cooperative print studio in Mexico that focused on the social, political, and economic struggles of the Mexican people. Here, Burroughs portrays Venus emerging from a scallop shell, recasting the goddess of love as an African woman. Burroughs chose to affi rm the beauty and strength of African women just as the Civil Rights movement was gathering steam, and it is possible to see her work in light of Rosa Parks’s act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, both of which occurred in 1955.
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More Context

<p>In <em>Black Venus</em>, artist and activist Margaret Burroughs inserted an image of Black beauty into the Western imagination. The composition draws heavily from, and is a response to, Thomas Stothard’s <em>Voyage of the Sable Venus</em>, which depicts similar figures in a satirical, more European style. Both works are based on Sandro Botticelli’s, yet each replaces Botticelli’s fair-skinned, lighthaired embodiment of the goddess of love with a Black woman. The centrality of Burroughs’s Venus forces traditionally powerful (white, male) forms like Poseidon, god of the sea, to the periphery—and almost to invisibility. The result is a central, starkly contrasted figure that dares to challenge familiar, but narrow,<br>conceptions of beauty and power. </p><p><strong><em>Amy Amatya, Class of 2021</em></strong><br></p>

More About This Object

Online Collection Sets: African American Prints

Information

Title
Black Venus
Dates

1957

Maker
Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs
Medium
Linocut on white imitation Japanese paper
Dimensions
block: 35.6 × 28 cm (14 × 11 in.) sheet: 46.7 x 37.9 cm. (18 3/8 x 14 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Felton Gibbons Fund
Object Number
2009-28
Place Made

North America, United States

Inscription
Initialed in block lower right: M.B. Signed in graphite, below block at right: Margaret Burroughs Titled and numbered in graphite below block at left and center: Black Venus / 30//50
Marks/Labels/Seals
Workshop blindstamp below block at lower left: "R"
Culture
American
Type
linocuts, prints
Materials
printing ink, Japanese paper
Techniques
linoleum-block printing, mounting
Subject
oceans, shell and shell material, figures (representations), putti, mythology, women

[Swann Galleries, New York, African-American Fine Art Auction, Sale 2169, lot 44, February 17, 2009]; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, 2009.

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The Museum regularly researches its objects and their collecting histories, updating its records to reflect new information. We also strive to catalogue works of art using language that is consistent with how people, subjects, artists, and cultures describe themselves. As this effort is ongoing, the Museum’s records may be incomplete or contain terms that are no longer acceptable. We welcome your feedback, questions, and additional information that you feel may be useful to us. Email us at collectionsinfo@princeton.edu.

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