Three African American Artists and the Black Female Nude in American Art examines the black female nude in the works of Eldzier Cortor, Dox Thrash, and Archibald Motley. This study offers insight into the lives of black women in America, highlights the artists\u27 academic training and admiration of European and classical art and explores the black female nude from a perspective rarely discussed in the scholarship on American nudes. I argue that the use of the nude, a classical white figure, as a narrator of the black woman\u27s experience offers a visual opposition of what the nude historically represented and how black women were perceived in American art
