Tuesday News: Online Super Cookies, 2014 Bestsellers, Black Madonnas, and Tom Stoppard on love
Publishing Newsart history / bestsellers / cookies / diversity / Drama / hardcovers / love / paperbacks / privacy / publishing / web browsers6 Comments
“Super cookies” track you, even in privacy mode – With all of the focus on privacy online these days, it may not surprise you to know that despite the numerous technological precautions you can take, your web surfing habits are not really so secure. So called “super cookies” are tracking us even when we’re in privacy mode on our browser, and short of deleting all cookies before running privacy mode, or keeping a browser for privacy mode only, there’s not a lot we can do.
The great irony is that the bug is caused by a feature designed to increase your privacy.
Some Web browsers remember if you used the prefix https:// in the address bar to secure your communication on a given website. It saves a super cookie that ensures the next time you connect, your browser defaults to the more secure https channel. It remembers that even if you launch private mode.
But that super cookie lets third-party Web programs — like advertisements or social media buttons — remember you too. –CNN Money
What the Numbers Reveal About the 2014 Bestsellers – So some interesting statistics on Publishers Weekly’s 2014 bestsellers. Big surprise (not), movie adaptations are a good way to get a book on the bestseller list. Good news, more books hit #1 on the bestseller list this year than last (96 to 78), and unsurprising but not so wonderful news, there are fewer major publishers this year, but they’re bigger and more powerful. For example, Random House Penguin “now owns nearly 40% of the hardcover bestseller real estate and almost 38% of the paperback.” Further,
Adding up all the shares of the 2014 group of seven underscores their bestselling power: they controlled 87.3% of the hardcover bestseller territory and 91% of the paperback lists. Lest writers begin to despair, keep in mind that we are only talking about bestsellers here—books that make up less than 1% of the total number of titles published annually. –Publishers Weekly
Retroactive Erasure: The Black Madonnas of Europe – A very good piece on the way in which the 20th century has revised the history of Black Madonnas, denying their racial designation and denigrating the value of their blackness in the process. Some of this is attributable to the development of race as a 19th century construct, and the simultaneous rise of racism as a codified discriminatory system. Up until the 18th century, Black Madonnas “were seen as not only the most true to life (due to their origins attributed to Saint Luke’s portraits), but as the most beautiful and desirable.” Art history has been pretty stubborn in its Anglocentrism; however, there is a younger generation of scholars in the field who are bringing in critical race theory and other aspects of cultural studies theory to challenge the old guard’s narrow ways of thinking about and teaching in the field.
One of the most baffling failures of logic in all of academia is the flagrant attachment to the unsupported claim that the Black Virgins of Europe, of which there are well over 300, are notblack because they are Black. For some reason, their inability to explain her dark complexion is combined with the adamant position that it must be explained. That, however, has not stopped most scholars on the subject of the Black Madonnas asserting that whatever the reason for her skin color, it could not possibly be because the artists intended to paint her skin that color, and if they did, it must be some other reason than because that was how she looked. –People of Color in European Art History
The Greatest Definition of Love – From Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, a lovely definition of love that is most definitely relevant to Romance. In fact, it makes me yearn for those meaty epic historical sagas of the 70s and 80s – now there’s a trend I wouldn’t mind seeing return to the genre.
It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. –Brain Pickings
Thanks for the Stoppard quote. It is lovely.
Well, I’d be more impressed with the argument about black madonnas if they weren’t illustrated by so many icons. As one picture showed, many icons were paintings full paintings, covered with silver, except for the faces and hands. People lit candles in front of them. Not infrequently, the silver cladding was later taken off, to see more of the original painting. So, you have a painting where everything except the only skin showing (hands and face) are covered and protected from candle smoke and then, centuries later, when the face and hands are dark, is it because of the candle smoke or the original intentions of the artist?
Further, icon art is often not original. many icons are copies of famous icons that had miraculous powers. A monastery I visited in Crete had numerous (not very similar) copies of its most famous and miraculous icon, including the one my kids dubbed Zombie Madonna. Hence, it would not be surprising if later artists copied the smoke-darkened original. The first icon in the article was a copy made in the 1700s from an original first mentioned in 730 AD, and given to the monastery in Mt Athos, Greece in the 1400s. It’s known as the “Three handed Mother of God” You can easily do a Google image search and see a large number of famous copies, complete with Mary with 3 hands.
Additionally, historically, “black” in a homogenously white Europe often meant someone of a less pale shade of white. In Russia, home to some very pale-skinned people, “black” is used to mean Central Asians (often with similar complexions to Chinese), and people of the Caucasus mountains (ie Caucasians). Their complexions range from similar to Italians to Middle Easterners. In Pride and Predjudice, there are a few mentions of Elizabeth Bennet’s being “dark” or “very brown,” which I don’t think reflected anything more than her being less than diligent in wearing a sunhat or wielding a parasol.
Lastly, I did not see African features in any of these pictures.
I’m willing to believe that there might be some paintings of black madonnas, but I need better proof than I read there.
I read the excellent scholarly article by Monique Scheer that the blog post frequently cites. Scheer does a far better job of looking at the evidence without trying to make it fit a previous agenda. She also points out that many of the images that were supposedly from a life portrait by St. Luke only gained that reputation in the 13th and 14th centuries; the blog post fails to mention that when it says: “Many of these copies, and even copies of copies, are made from originals attributed to Saint Luke and are said to have been drawn from life; i.e., they are true portraits of the Virgin Mary herself.”
Scheer does not deny that these images may have been created with a dark complexion originally, both because Catholic theologians like Albertus Magnus believed that the Virgin had a dark complexion due to her ethnicity, and because wooden statues with a darker tone appeared more antique (and antiquity was associated with authority in the Middle Ages). She also points out the origins of the “smoke and chemical reactions” explanation in the assertions of scholars from the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
I have been interested in the topic of Europe’s Black Madonnas since I saw the one in Montserrat. Our tour guide blithely repeated that explanation for their Madonna’s complexion. I will no longer believe it without some actual scientific evidence. However, I have yet to find scientific evidence that debunks the popular explanation. I was disappointed that the Retroactive Erasure post did not cite any sources for the statement that “Even analyses of relative age, possible smoke exposure, and darkness of skin tone debunked these assumptions.”
A thorough examination of the issue is important, in light of the controversy over the recent restoration of Chartres Cathedral, which included the whitewashing of its formerly Black Madonna.
Art of certain period often didn’t have specific ethnic features – just as you can find images of men and women basically looking the same and only identified by gender through clothing. I also had skepticism in college art history when some of the books would go out of their way with the “they really aren’t black.” Mainly because the arguments weren’t based on art history scholarship, and didn’t use a lot of cited references. But then the older books also had a lot about women that had interesting biases as well.
“keeping a browser for privacy mode only”
Sigh, I really need yet another browser now. (There are loads of reasons to use multiples!)
Seconding your wish for more of the 70s/80s-style historical sagas! Many weren’t romances in the sense that they lacked HEAs, of course, but they were still great, angsty reads.
If you assume the black madonnas are faithful copies of a life portrait of Mary, it’s still probable that they are faithful copies of an aged and smoke-damaged original.
Given that the bible discussed the origins and ethnicities of many people, I’d think if Mary didn’t look like a typical Israelite of her time, it would have been mentioned. That makes it quite unlikely that she was blonde-haired or blue-eyed or black, as we define the word today.