Abstract

Representations of black female bodies in western art defy easy categorization. Situated as "other" within colonial discourse, the represented black female body has historically undergone a double fetishization on the basis of a perceived sexual and racial lack. Dorothy Stevens' Coloured Nude (1933) is symptomatic of this unique fetishization, a state which is indicative of the positioning of "Black Woman" as dichotomous to idealized white womanhood. Representations of black women in Canadian painting in the 1930's locate white artists' fascination with the black: subject as exotic "other". While the highly praised Coloured Nude (1933) situated "Black Woman" as sexually aggressive, exotic and unnatural, an exploration of contemporaneous female nudes reveals the frequent controversy over innocuous white female nudes and the dismissal of alternative constructions of black female nudes. These racialized museum practices were informed by a double standard of propriety which turned on the race of the subject.