White Psyche

16 Sep 2020-31 Jan 2022

Overview

White dominance is often unacknowledged. It has been the norm and the ideal in European art. It is so very visible in the Whitworth’s collection that it typically passes without comment. Here, as part of our work to shift this unconscious bias, we focus our gaze on the aesthetics of white supremacy in a story about love and good looks. Ancient Greek and Roman art and literature is described as classical. Because of the Roman conquest of parts of North Africa, this includes the Berber writer Apuleius's story of Cupid and Psyche; his creative output was absorbed by the dominant culture. Classical ideals were reborn in the cultural Renaissance that began in Italy in the fourteenth century. Cupid and Psyche look like northern Europeans in countless stories, paintings, and sculptures. The mistaken belief that the ancients saw white marble (and white skin) as the epitome of beauty took seed. Classical artworks began to set standards for taste and beauty in art and museums that have only begun to be questioned.