NEWSWEEK: You found such a variety of images. What struck you most?
GREER: Some would be grotesque, some would be beautiful, but they always seemed to me to be more than what they were. They always seemed to be mirrors, a way Europe looked at itself. I wanted to explore the European psyche through these images, to celebrate them and say to people: as you go to Le Puy [in the Haute-Loire, southern France] and kiss the feet of the black Madonna there, as you honor [third-century African] Saint Maurice with the Easter fire [in Magdeburg Cathedral, Germany], as you do all these things–look around you because we are in your midst and have always been in your midst.
Did you find a clash between the way Europeans venerate these religious images, and the way they treat the blacks living among them?
That’s the contradiction that fascinates me. I went to Poland two years ago to see the [14th-century] black Madonna of Czestochowa and got into a tiff with a monk at the hillside monastery that protects this shrine. I explained to him that in Chicago, where I come from, if I strolled into a Polish-American church when I was growing up there in the 1960s I wouldn’t have been welcome, and I think in some parts of Poland that’s true now, even though most Polish families have [replicas of] this black Madonna in their homes. And he couldn’t admit it to me. Finally he said, “yes, it is true,” and he said, “I have to pray on this and talk to my fellow monks.”
Do images of blacks have a wider social resonance in Europe?
When African immigrants were chased through the streets of Magdeburg, Germany, by neo-Nazis in 1994 they took refuge under the statue of Saint Maurice in the cathedral, to remind the people of their history in the city. During the fall of communism, the priests used his image as an inspiration to resistance and then as one of the symbols of reunification because Maurice was patron saint of the old Holy Roman Empire.
Why don’t we hear about these saints?
Historically, in the scramble for Africa in the 19th century, a lot of these images were written out of history deliberately, to keep black people in their place and make them seem inferior. You can’t glorify human beings and steal from them and enslave them at the same time.
What relationship do white Europeans have with these images?
It is deeply private. When you see these black Madonnas they’re very different from the white ones. There’s a silence around them, a great deal of devotion; they’re very loved. You realize that on some level people give more of themselves to these black images. It’s as if they are holes; they soak in people’s consciousness and their emotions.
Were there surprises in the portrayals of blacks in great 18th- and 19th-century art that you looked at?
It was a revelation for me to see how liberated [British painter Thomas] Gainsborough was when he painted black people like Ignatius Sancho. Because of course he had to stylize his white patrons, they had to look nice. With blacks you had the challenge of painting a human being just as they were. But 19th-century depictions are mostly about merchandise and ownership. You had to be wealthy to have a slave and in the 18th and 19th centuries, blacks, particularly little boys, were fashion accessories, just as we have poodles.
How are modern European artists dealing with this heritage of slavery?
I was fascinated by some artists I met in Amsterdam. Geraldo Pinedo [an artist from the Netherlands Antilles] spent a year reconstructing a slave ship. He made each of the slaves a distinct human being, with a unique pose. He wanted to emphasize that slaves, rather than being docile, revolted from the beginning. Suicide was one of the ways they rebelled and he has one lone figure on the bow of his ship poised to jump off. It was the only way he could make his statement.
