Black Venus,

1957

<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>