Othello (paintings) Othello (paintings) Othello is a series of paintings executed in 1985 by Nabil Kanso. The subjects of the paintings are loosely based on Shakespeare’s tragedy "Othello". The series comprises 60 paintings dealing with themes of love, race, jealousy, betrayal, and evil. They depict scenes embodying compositions of figural and metaphorical imagery that may be seen as visually reflecting the intimate and dramatic relationship between Othello and Desdemona, and the tense and uneasy relation that passes between and through Othello, Desdemona and Iago. The "Othello" paintings depict a sequence of figural images with oil and acrylic on canvases and paperboards ranging
Othello (character) due to racial prejudice during Reconstruction in the US and notes that Othello is described using similar language to Aaron in "Titus Andronicus". Virginia Mason Vaughan suggests that the racial identity of the character of Othello fit more clearly as a man from Sub-Saharan Africa than from North Africa (Barbary) as north Africans were more easily accepted into society. She states that by 1604, accounts of Othello as deriving from further south were not uncommon. She notes Roderigo's description of Othello having "thick lips" was a racial stereotype used by 16th century explorers for southern Africans. Modern-day readers and theatre