Book of the Day Posted Feb 24, 2019

Book of the Day > Adam Pendleton: Black Dada Reader

Book of the Day > Adam Pendleton: Black Dada Reader. Published by Koenig Books. "Now available in paperback, Black Dada Reader is a collection of texts and documents that elucidates 'Black Dada,' a term that acclaimed New York–based artist Adam Pendleton (born 1984) uses to define his artistic output. The Reader brings a diverse range of cultural figures into a shared conceptual space, including Hugo Ball, W.E.B. Du Bois, Stokely Carmichael, LeRoi Jones, Sun Ra, Adrian Piper, Joan Retallack, Harryette Mullen, Ron Silliman and Gertrude Stein, as well as artists from different generations such as Ad Reinhardt, Joan Jonas, William Pope.L, Thomas Hirschhorn and Stan Douglas. It also includes essays on the concept of Black Dada and its historical implications from curators and critics, including Adrienne Edwards (Walker Arts Center/Performa), Laura Hoptman (MoMA), Tom McDonough (Binghamton), Jenny Schlenzka (PS122) and Susan Thompson (Guggenheim)."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 23, 2019

Book of the Day > I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100

Book of the Day > I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100. Published by Rizzoli. "One hundred years after the Harlem Renaissance emerged as a creative force at the close of World War I, I Too Sing America offers a major survey on the visual art and material culture of the groundbreaking movement. It illuminates multiple facets of the era--the lives of its people, the art, the literature, the music, and the social history--through paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, and contemporary documents and ephemera. The lushly illustrated chronicle includes work by cherished artists such as Romare Bearden, Allan Rohan Crite, Palmer Hayden, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and James Van Der Zee. The project is the culmination of decades of reflection, research, and scholarship by Wil Haygood, acclaimed biographer and preeminent historian on Harlem and its cultural roots. In thematic chapters, the author captures the range and breadth of the Harlem Reniassance, a sweeping movement which saw an astonishing array of black writers and artists and musicians gather over a period of a few intense years, expanding far beyond its roots in Harlem to unleashing a myriad of talents upon the nation. The book is published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 21, 2019

Book of the Day > Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement

Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement. Published in conjunction with an exhibit at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College. "Few American artists today are creating work as striking and politically charged as Carrie Mae Weems. Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement explores a unique body of aesthetically powerful work that is particularly relevant in the context of current debates about social justice. In addition to acclaimed series by Weems dealing with historical archives, this catalogue for an exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College also features new photographs that address police violence. Strategies of Engagement highlights Weems’s relationship with her viewers, which is at once pedagogical, confrontational, and collaborative, thus encouraging ongoing debates about power and resistance, history and identity. Intellectually and ethically challenging, the works in Strategies of Engagement are also imbued with melancholy seriousness, playful wit, and unexpected flashes of hope, grace, and beauty. Essays by a diverse collection of scholars analyze Weems’s use of performance and masquerade to reanimate lost histories and others focus on her transformative interventions in documentary photography and archives. The volume is rounded out by a panel discussion with Weems about the relationship between the arts and social change."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 20, 2019

Book of the Day > The Time Is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago's South Side, 1960-1980

Book of the Day > The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago's South Side, 1960-1980. Published by University of Chicago Press. "During the 1960s and 70s, Chicago was shaped by art and ideas produced and circulated on its South Side. Defined by the city’s social, political, and geographic divides and by the energies of its multiple overlapping art scenes, this vibrant moment of creative expression produced a cultural legacy whose impact continues to unfold nationally and internationally. The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side, 1960-1980, published in tandem with an exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art, examines this cultural moment—brimming with change and conflict—and the figures who defined it. Focusing primarily on African American artists in and out of the Black Arts Movement, The Time is Now! re-examines watershed cultural moments: from the Wall of Respect to Black Creativity, from the Civil Rights Movement to AfriCOBRA, from vivid protest posters to visionary Afrofuturist art, and from the Hairy Who to the radical sounds of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Employing new scholarship that reassesses and recalibrates traditional narratives of postwar Chicago art, the exhibit resonates with current national dialogues around race, gender, protest, and belonging. The book contains a series of long and short essays, interviews, and other contextual material, along with full-color images of all works included in the exhibition and extensive reproductions of ephemera and historical photographs."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 17, 2019

Book of the Day > Henry Taylor

Book of the Day > Henry Taylor. Published by Rizzoli. "This definitive survey of over 200 of the painter's portraits and street scenes forms a personal and political portrait of society today. For three decades the iconic artist has worked his way through New York, Los Angeles, Europe, and Africa, documenting what he sees. In his circle are artists, musicians, writers, performers, as well as friends from his ten years as a psychiatric technician. It is the artist's empathetic eye that allows him to imagine his figures with authenticity and grace--not better than they are, or more glamorous--but part of a big, complicated world. Flat, brushy flows of color cast figures that often float in surreal landscapes abstracted from the barbeque in the park, or neighboring street. Suites of Taylor's paintings are reproduced alongside handwritten accounts of the sittings, offering an in-depth understanding of the artist's world. Contributions by Charles Gaines, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Sarah Lewis, and Zadie Smith touch on the nature of truth, racial terror; memory and belonging in America. This definitive monograph celebrates Taylor's direct and revealing portraits, offering a tonic to a divisive cultural moment."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 14, 2019

Book of the Day > Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy, and the Avant-Garde

 Book of the Day > Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy, and the Avant-Garde. Published by Prestel. "This fascinating, interdisciplinary, and generously illustrated book presents creative pairings that defy the idea of the modern artist as a solitary genius. In the art world, pairs of individuals often inspire each other’s works. These intimate relationships are explored in all their various forms—obsessional, conventional, mythic, fleeting, life-long—in this book that illuminates the works of painters, sculptors, photographers, designers, poets, writers, musicians, dancers, and performers of the modern era. In addition to introductory essays, each couple is profiled in brief chapters that feature candid portraiture, a rich array of illustrated works that illuminate the impact each had on the other, and an introductory text that pinpoints the significance of the relationship, written by leading authorities. Two additional subsections explore the importance of collaboration, friendship, anti-establishment notions, and radicalism both within Surrealist couples and the Temple de l’Amitié in Paris. Reflecting a contemporary view of sexuality and relationships, this book also offers a counterpoint to the notion of the female as muse, presenting a more balanced portrayal of male and female creative output. This volume also reveals how creative individuals came together to overcome the constraints of their time, reshape art, redefine gender stereotypes, and forge new ways of living." 
Book of the Day Posted Feb 13, 2019

Book of the Day > African Twilight: The Vanishing Rituals and Ceremonies of the African Continent

Book of the Day > African Twilight: The Vanishing Rituals and Ceremonies of the African Continent. Published by Rizzoli. "African Twilight is the two-volume, slipcased magnum opus of the two pioneering documentary photographers of African tribal cultures and ceremonies-- a world that is quickly vanishing before our very eyes. Now, nearly two decades after these photographer's landmark African Ceremonies and with a greater sense of urgency, this book completes the journey, covering disappearing rituals and ceremonies from some of the most inaccessible corners of the African continent, to create the definitive statement on this subject. This new landmark volume will set the standard for capturing a visual testament to the vanishing traditions of African peoples.No other book like this exists or can ever be created again, as more than 40 percent of what has been documented here has already vanished. For the last 15 years of their four decades of African fieldwork, world-renowned photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have continued their journey across Africa, seeking out remote communities to record the sacred ceremonies, powerful art forms, and boundless creativity of the people living there today. This ground-breaking book is a testament to these vanishing moments and peoples. African Twilight is a celebration of the powerful artistry and boundless creativity of Africa's cultural heritage for audiences worldwide, transporting viewers into a world of connections between individual and community, body and soul, land and people. All of the photography is previously unpublished."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 10, 2019

Book of the Day > Maya Angelou and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Life Doesn't Frighten Me

Book of the Day > Maya Angelou and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Life Doesn't Frighten Me. Published by Abrams Books. "Maya Angelou's brave, defiant poem celebrates the courage within each of us, young and old. From the scary thought of panthers in the park to the unsettling scene of a new classroom, fearsome images are summoned and dispelled by the power of faith in ourselves. Angelou's strong words are matched by the daring vision of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose childlike style reveals the powerful emotions and fanciful imaginings of childhood. Together, Angelou's words and Basquiat's paintings create a place where every child, indeed every person, may experience his or her own fearlessness. Celebrating its successful 25 years in print, this brilliant introduction to poetry and contemporary art features brief, updated biographies of Angelou and Basquiat, an afterword from the editor, and a fresh new look. A selected bibliography of Angelou's books and a selected museum listing of Basquiat's works open the door to further inspiration through the fine arts."
 
Book of the Day Posted Feb 07, 2019

Book of the Day > Stick to the Skin

Book of the Day > Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965-2015. Published by University of California Press. "The first comparative history of African American and Black British artists, artworks, and art movements, Stick to the Skin traces the lives and works of over fifty painters, photographers, sculptors, and mixed-media, assemblage, installation, video, and performance artists working in the United States and Britain from 1965 to 2015. The artists featured in this book cut to the heart of hidden histories, untold narratives, and missing memories to tell stories that "stick to the skin" and arrive at a new 'Black lexicon of liberation.' Informed by extensive research and invaluable oral testimonies, Celeste-Marie Bernier’s remarkable text forcibly asserts the originality and importance of Black artists’ work and emphasizes the need to understand Black art as a distinctive category of cultural production. She launches an important intervention into European histories of modern and contemporary art and visual culture as well as into debates within African American studies, African diasporic studies, and Black British studies. Among the artists included are Benny Andrews, Bessie Harvey, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Noah Purifoy, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Joyce J. Scott, Maud Sulter, and Barbara Walker."
Book of the Day Posted Feb 06, 2019

Book of the Day > Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal

Book of the Day > Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal. "Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal presents a survey of the artist’s prolific and extraordinary interdisciplinary career, with a particular focus on the work’s relationship to the photographic image and to issues of representation and perception. At the core of Hank Willis Thomas’s practice, is his ability to parse and critically dissect the flow of images that comprise American culture, with particular attention to race, gender, and cultural identity. Other powerful themes include the commodification of identity through popular media, sports, and advertising. In the ten years since his first publication, Pitch Blackness, Thomas has established himself as a significant voice in contemporary art, equally at home with collaborative, trans-media projects such as Question Bridge, Philly Block, and For Freedoms as he is with high-profile, international solo exhibitions. This extensive presentation of his work contextualizes the material with incisive essays from Portland Art Museum curators Julia Dolan and Sara Krajewski and art historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, and an in-depth interview between art historian Kellie Jones and the artist that elaborates on Thomas’s influences and inspirations."
 
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