‘Race Is Everything’ looks at ideas of ‘racial science’ in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, and how art was influenced by them. It looks at race in general, but with a particular concentration on attitudes towards and representations of people of African and Jewish descent. David Bindman argues that behind all racial ideas is the belief that outward appearance, and especially skull-shape, can be correlated with inner character and intelligence, and that these could be used to create a seemingly scientific hierarchy of races. This book considers many aspects, including the skull as a racial marker; ancient Egypt as a precedent for Southern slavery; Darwin, race and aesthetics; the ‘Mediterranean race’; the visual aspects of eugenics; and the racial politics of Emil Nolde.

The book is written in a straightforward manner, free of technical jargon, so I would happily recommend it to anyone interested in race, art or science . . . It would do a world of good if those who make art, as well as those who consume it, are more aware of the connections drawn in Bindman’s important book. * Metascience *
Race is Everything: Art and Human Difference parses the pivotal role of the visual arts in both defining and perpetrating racism in the West, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Cool, informed, and artful, Bindman traces these prejudices back to the Romans and Greeks, whose take on beauty has remained remarkably resilient . . . Bindman’s compassion, however, never out- weighs his intellectual agility. Race is Everything is profound and troubling but fundamentally directive, illustrating what needs to be done to rectify our ignorance and the cultural inculcation of hatred. -- Antonella Gambotto-Burke * The Australian *
Race has been typically treated as at most a troubling theme, topic, or issue in art’s history, rather than a central, abiding – and toxic – structuring principle of the making, use and understanding of art. Bindman puts race centre stage, proving not only that for the last three centuries of European and American art race was “everything”, but that such art, through the misuse of its visualizing powers, has been centrally responsible for this disastrous obsession. Eloquent, deeply learned, and fiercely passionate, this book should be required reading for anyone concerned with the history of art. * Joseph Leo Koerner, Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University *
In this remarkable book, David Bindman shows how concepts of packaged human differences labelled as races have deformed every aspect of the human experience and human society. Can a book about race be a page turner? Yes, absolutely, and this is it! * Nina Jablonski, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology at Penn State, and author of Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color *
David Bindman’s ‘Race Is Everything’ more than fulfils the promise of its title. How we see race is determined by our ideologies of difference, which are often so habituated that we believe we see our world and its inhabitants in an unmitigated manner. By looking at the visual codes in modern Western art representing difference – from the African to the Jew and beyond – Bindman provides us with means of deciphering our visual codes while detailing how such codes evolved and persist. A brilliant (and beautiful) work of cultural criticism. * Sander Gilman, author of Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture *
In this wonderful book David Bindman brilliantly explores the ways in which visual art has represented the very idea of racial hierarchy. Linking ‘scientific’ ideas with the works and lives of artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this lucid, lavishly illustrated text ranges from high art to popular racist imagery, and highlights resisters such as Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois. * Steven Lukes, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, New York University *

David Bindman was Emeritus Durning-Lawrence Professor of the History of Art, University College London and Fellow of the Hutchins Center, Harvard University. He was author or editor of many books including Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century (Reaktion, 2002).