"Just like us": cultural constructions of sexuality and race in Roman art

• Autores: John R. Clarke
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 78, Nº 4, 1996, págs. 600-603
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Part of a symposium providing a range of critical perspectives on aesthetics, ethnicity, and the history of art. The writer challenges the persistent notion that Roman society was similar to that of 20th-century Euro-Americans. He focuses on two Roman artworks, a painting entitled Couple on Bed with Servant, which is usually seen as erotic, and a mosaic of a black bath servant, which is usually identified as a racist image of an ithyphallic pygmy. He shows that if the Roman context is taken into account, the painting is seen to have been a sign of the owner's upper-class pretensions. In addition, he concludes, the mosaic is found to represent both a warning to users of the bathhouse in which it was found to be careful of the superheated floor and an image intended to dispel the evil eye through laughter.