Earlier this week, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter commandeered everyone’s Instagram feeds when she posted a now-iconic photograph announcing her pregnancy with twins. She’s seen kneeling and surrounded by an aura of flowers—both a pose and a set of references that emphasize her fertility. More than the photograph’s composition, Bey’s image underscores this contemporary moment where the model, as both patron and matriarch, can control the dissemination of her likeness to a broad audience via social media. In a culture now in the throes of appropriation from historical sources, in the midst of trying to figure out what the future holds, what are we to make of these luxurious maternity photos of one of the world’s most famous women?
Awol Erizku’s photograph is now part of a series on Beyoncé’s website under the title “I Have Three Hearts.” The accompanying text, written by poet Warsan Shire (whose work Bey also quotes in her Lemonade film), intersperses lines like, “Mother has one foot in this world and one foot in the next, mother black venus” and “Venus has flooded me,” among family pictures and photo sets from not just Erizku, but Kaleb Steele and Daniela Vesco as well. Here the emphasis is doubly referential to her position as a mother and the allegorical embodiment of love—a “black Venus.”
Awol Erizku’s photograph is now part of a series on Beyoncé’s website under the title “I Have Three Hearts.” The accompanying text, written by poet Warsan Shire (whose work Bey also quotes in her Lemonade film), intersperses lines like, “Mother has one foot in this world and one foot in the next, mother black venus” and “Venus has flooded me,” among family pictures and photo sets from not just Erizku, but Kaleb Steele and Daniela Vesco as well. Here the emphasis is doubly referential to her position as a mother and the allegorical embodiment of love—a “black Venus.”
These homages to Venus recur through the ages. There is, of course, Sandro Botticelli’s 15th-century painting TheBirth of Venus, which shows the goddess of love, sensuality and procreation at its center while winds blow roses at her feet and violets freckle the landscape. The ubiquity of this image—appearing in posters hung on the rooms of young girls across the world—has become a touchstone for artists interested in the aggrandizement of images of love. Venus (or her Greek equivalent, Aphrodite) is no submissive pet but an astute interceder in world events. Who do you think started the Trojan War?
Venus as shown by Botticelli was not new then, and it is not new now. Rather, it draws from the 4th century B.C.E. via the sculpture Aphrodite of Knidos, a Hellenistic depiction of the goddess that is groundbreaking because it marks the rise of the female nude in art. Before that, the nude male body was considered of superior beauty. In the photographs, Beyoncé shares with these other Venuses a modesty often found in the historical female nude. She is not naked. Her hands cradle her breasts and protuberant belly, and in some instances she dons demure knickers.
Even enveloped in all this history, it is the more contemporary references within these photos that hammer away at the viewer. Erizku seems to echo celebrated New York portraitist Kehinde Wiley’s process of substituting black bodies into historical paintings. But unlike Wiley’s depictions, there is an attempt here at timelessness rather than timeliness. Erizku is no stranger to this kind of iconographic mashup—see his well-known 2009 work Girl With a Bamboo Earring, which reinterprets Jan Vermeer’s iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring with a modern black model.
Despite the mostly wholesome nature of the “I Have Three Hearts” photographs, there is also a windswept, Koons-esque flavor to the set. Jeff Koons also grappled with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in his depiction of his wife La Cicciolina in his Made in Heaven series. In these images, we witness the couple’s intimacy and revel in a florid arena of Rococo-like fantasy. Koons would go on to collaborate with Lady Gaga on an ARTPOP cover inspired by, among other artworks, Birth of Venus. On some level, all these contemporary jaunts play off each other.
I am also struck by the tropical and Meso-American touchstones within Erizku’s photographs. Beyoncé’s figure and staging at once evoke another great conveyer of multi-faceted femininity: Frida Kahlo. Kahlo’s nudes, as purveyors of nuture and the calamities of nature, get at the intertwinement of Beyoncé’s images of personal life with her own celebrity. Kahlo’s personal hardships (miscarriages, affairs, a disability) coupled with her very public relationship with her then-more-famous-husband Diego Rivera became her subject matter. Beyoncé’s family photos tow this line of letting you in and keeping you out. Their closest visual precursors are Rivera’s Nude with Flowers (Veiled Woman), from 1943, or even his Sunflowers, from 1921, with its depiction of a kneeling black woman encircled by flowers (seen below).
Ultimately, this brings us back to the “black Venus,” a term used to describe Saartjie Baartman, or as she was commonly known in 19th century France, the Hottentot Venus. While on display in England, Baartman was admired and ridiculed by British audiences for her curvaceous derrière. Baartman, who ultimately was enslaved in her later years in France, represents the darker side of Venus’ legacy. Rumors linking Beyoncé to an upcoming Baartman biopic turned out to be false, but perhaps they surfaced for telling reasons. Baartman encapsulated the more prurient desires that English Victorian male audiences claimed to disavow. Erizku’s images of Beyoncé carry with them the weight of these historical references, yet the artist’s mega-stardom guarantees her agency in a way that Baartman could never have achieved.
Beyoncé’s verecund pose (veil and all) and obvious fecundity (fruitfully round belly) also distracts from the most striking feature of the “I Have Three Hearts” series: Beyoncé is no shrinking violet, nor a come-hither courtesan. She stares directly at you. She is in charge.
In another era, these photographs would have been commissioned by Jay Z and kept for his own pleasure, akin to the way that Camillo Borghese kept the sculptural portrait of his wife (and Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister) Paolina away from public view due to her semi-nude state. Beyoncé emulates Paolina Borghese’s victorious pose in one photograph from the series (seen up top), in which she drapes across a low couch. The pose, taken from Ancient Roman reclining nudes on lecti (beds for dining and entertaining), has its closest source in Antonio Canova’s triumphant portrayal of Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix (or Venus Victorious), from 1808. In fact, some of our most frequently referenced nudes were intended for private delectation. I like thinking of Courbet’s Origin of the World, or Titian’s Venus of Urbino, which was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino of his young wife and for his viewing pleasure. The latter (seen below) is a key examplebecause it servedasone source for Canova’s reclining Venus; let’s call it the grandfather of Beyoncé’s portrait.
Beyoncé as subject, patron, and distributor of her image speaks to her agency, and it is a staggering level of power available to few women throughout history, such as Nefertiti and Queen Elizabeth I. So it is no coincidence that in one of the photographs, a bust of Nefertiti sits on the floor facing away from Beyoncé. The accompanying text reads, “In the dream I am crowning, Osun, Nefertiti and Yemoja, pray around my bed.”
“Beyoncé is the readymade who seemingly gets us closest to a vision of black female agency, black female pleasure,” Columbia Professor Saidiya Hartman once surmised of Bey’s superstardom. Power and pleasure coupled together. There are few portraits of black women by women, with so many others falling into the category of exoticizing fantasies of the male gaze. So while Erizku took Beyoncé’s portrait, he did it in a way that sustains her agency. For one, we know he was already enthralled by her in 2014, when he pulled inspiration from Jay Z’s declaration that “Beyoncé is Mona Lisa with better features” to create a bearded, Duchamp-inspired interpretation of her H&M ad. And at this point, Beyoncé partakes in visual endeavors where she maintains creative control.
Her name reverberates even in the academic world. Last Saturday, sitting on the steps of the Anderson Collection at Stanford, I watched my fellow art historians eat lunches from pink cardboard boxes while scrolling through their Instagram feeds. “The world is falling apart,” said Aimee Shapiro, Director of Programming at the Anderson. “Yes. Maybe we need to recognize that in the contemporary moment, works of art now come from many different places—perhaps ‘The Wire’ is just as culturally trenchant as Courbet’s Burial at Ornan,” replied NYU professor Robert Slifkin, speaking of the painting’s elevation of rural folk to the revered status of history.
Stanford Professor Marci Kwon had just emphatically quoted a memorable bit from Ralph Lemon’sScaffold Room in a presentation: “There’s a Beyoncé in every universe so that if and when the world ends, she’ll be replicated into infinity.” I laughed at this second reference to the world ending because for now, outside of these walls, it was at least crumbling. We had come here hoping to change the shape of art history, but found ourselves at a remove from history happening now. The Muslim ban and subsequent protests had taken over our feeds, but only Beyoncé would manage to break through the hyper-political and polarized moment over the next few days. Perhaps she would be replicated into infinity.
Which brings us to what the power of these photos really is. One has to wonder if the depiction of Beyoncé as Venus might seem the epitome of a culture entrenched in narcissism, in which social media only amplifies its self-obsession. Can the power of celebrity (branding and fashion) really equate with that of queens or the cults devoted to Venus (leadership and divine protection)? Must we recognize images rising to the highest level of popularity as deserving of sustained attention because of their iconicity across social strata? Perhaps only time will tell if Beyoncé’s power widens the lexicon of beauty and female control of their image for girls and women who aspire to be just like her—a dragon breathing fire, with beautiful mane, like a lion. But what we know now, and perhaps knew on some level before, is that Beyoncé is a Venus of our times.