An American Odyssey

An American Odyssey

Author: Mary Schmidt Campbell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 0199723648

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By the time of his death in 1988, Romare Bearden was most widely celebrated for his large-scale public murals and collages, which were reproduced in such places as Time and Esquire to symbolize and evoke the black experience in America. As Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us in this definitive, defining, and immersive biography, the relationship between art and race was central to his life and work -- a constant, driving creative tension. Bearden started as a cartoonist during his college years, but in the later 1930s turned to painting and became part of a community of artists supported by the WPA. As his reputation grew he perfected his skills, studying the European masters and analyzing and breaking down their techniques, finding new ways of applying them to the America he knew, one in which the struggle for civil rights became all-absorbing. By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, he had begun to experiment with the Projections, as he called his major collages, in which he tried to capture the full spectrum of the black experience, from the grind of daily life to broader visions and aspirations. Campbell's book offers a full and vibrant account of Bearden's life -- his years in Harlem (his studio was above the Apollo theater), to his travels and commissions, along with illuminating analysis of his work and artistic career. Campbell, who met Bearden in the 1970s, was among the first to compile a catalogue of his works. An American Odyssey goes far beyond that, offering a living portrait of an artist and the impact he made upon the world he sought both to recreate and celebrate.


Basquiat : The Unknown Notebooks

Basquiat : The Unknown Notebooks

Author: Dieter Buchhart

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 9780872731790

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"Accompanying a major traveling exhibition, this first-ever survey of the rarely seen notebooks of Basquiat features the artist's handwritten notes, poems, and drawings, along with related works on paper and large-scale paintings. With no formal training, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) succeeded in developing a new and expressive style to become one of the most influential artists in the postmodern revival of figurative during the 1980s. In a series of notebooks from the early to mid-1980s, never before exhibited, Basquiat combined text and images reflecting his engagement with the countercultures of graffiti and hip-hop in New York City, as well as pop culture and world events. Filled with handwritten texts, poems, pictograms, and drawings, many of them iconic images that recur throughout his artwork-teepees, crowns, skeleton-like silhouettes, and grimacing masks-and these notebooks reveal much about the artist's creative process and the importance of the written word in his aesthetic. With over 150 notebook pages and numerous drawings and paintings, this important book sheds new light on Basquiat's career and his critical place in contemporary art history."--


Block Prints

Block Prints

Author: William S. Rice

Publisher: Pomegranate Communications

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780764984327

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"Block Prints: How to Make Them is an illustrated guide written by William S. Rice. It fully details his artistic process, providing straightforward, step-by-step solutions to the intricate challenges of block printmaking in both advanced and home-studio settings. It was originally published in 1941. This 2019 edition is updated with an introduction and annotation by Martin Krause"--


Procession

Procession

Author: David Acton

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-11-13

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0520288009

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This beautifully illustrated catalogue accompanies the first major museum retrospective of the painter Norman Lewis (1909Ð1979). Lewis was the sole African American artist of his generation who became committed to issues of abstraction at the start of his career and continued to explore them over its entire trajectory. His art derived inspiration from music (jazz and classical) and nature (seasonal change, plant forms, the sea). Also central to his work were the dramatic confrontations of the civil rights movement, in which he was an active participant among the New York art scene. Bridging the Harlem Renaissance, Abstract Expressionism, and beyond, Lewis is a crucial figure in American abstraction whose reinsertion into the discourse further opens the field for recognition of the contributions of artists of color. Bringing much-needed attention to LewisÕs output and significance in the history of American art, Procession is a milestone in Lewis scholarship and a vital resource for future study of the artist and abstraction in his period. Published in association with Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Exhibition dates: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia: November 13, 2015ÐApril 3, 2016 Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth: June 4ÐAugust 21, 2016 Chicago Cultural Center: September 17, 2016ÐJanuary 8, 2017 Ê


AFRICOBRA

AFRICOBRA

Author: Wadsworth A. Jarrell

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-05-08

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1478002247

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Formed on the South Side of Chicago in 1968 at the height of the civil rights, Black power, and Black arts movements, the AFRICOBRA collective created a new artistic visual language rooted in the culture of Chicago's Black neighborhoods. The collective's aesthetics, especially the use of vibrant color, capture the rhythmic dynamism of Black culture and social life. In AFRICOBRA, painter, photographer, and collective cofounder Wadsworth A. Jarrell tells the definitive story of the group's creation, history, and artistic and political principles. From accounts of the painting of the groundbreaking Wall of Respect mural and conversations among group members to documentation of AFRICOBRA's exhibits in Chicago, New York, and Boston, Jarrell outlines how the collective challenged white conceptions of art by developing an artistic philosophy and approach wholly divested of Western practices. Featuring nearly one hundred color images of artworks, exhibition ephemera, and photographs, this book is at once a sourcebook history of AFRICOBRA and the story of visionary artists who rejected the white art establishment in order to create uplifting art for all Black people.


God's Trombones

God's Trombones

Author: James Weldon Johnson

Publisher: Penguin Group

Published: 1927

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13:

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The inspirational sermons of the old Negro preachers are set down as poetry in this collection -- a classic for more than forty years, frequently dramatized, recorded, and anthologized. Mr. Johnson tells in his preface of hearing these same themes treated by famous preachers in his youth; some of the sermons are still current, and like the spirituals they have taken a significant place in black folk art. In transmuting their essence into original and moving poetry, the author has also ensured the survival of a great oral tradition. Book jacket.


"Something Over Something Else"

Author: Romare Bearden

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780295746432

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In November 1977, The New Yorker published a feature-length biography of artist Romare Bearden by Calvin Tomkins as part of its "Profiles" series. The essay, titled Profile: Putting Something Over Something Else (using Bearden's words to describe the creative process), brought national focus to Bearden, whose rise had seemed meteoric since the late 1960s. The experience of the interview prompted Bearden to launch an autobiographical collection he called Profiles. He sequenced the project in two parts: Part I, The Twenties, featuring memories from his youth in the South and in Pittsburgh, and Part II, The Thirties, about his early adult life in New York. Bearden collaborated with friend and writer Albert Murray on a short statement to accompany each piece. These appeared scripted onto the walls of the Profile exhibition to lead viewers on a visual and poetic journey. This landmark volume reassembles and reconsiders Bearden's Profile series. Beyond providing the opportunity to explore an understudied body of work, the project will investigate the roles of narrative and self-presentation for an artist who made a career of creating works based on memory and experience. It will also reveal Bearden's own gestures away from the autobiographical and toward a broader view.


Posing Modernity

Posing Modernity

Author: Denise Murrell

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300229066

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An ambitious and revelatory investigation of the black female figure in modern art, tracing the legacy of Manet through to contemporary art This revelatory study investigates how changing modes of representing the black female figure were foundational to the development of modern art. Posing Modernity examines the legacy of Édouard Manet's Olympia (1863), arguing that this radical painting marked a fitfully evolving shift toward modernist portrayals of the black figure as an active participant in everyday life rather than as an exotic "other." Denise Murrell explores the little-known interfaces between the avant-gardists of nineteenth-century Paris and the post-abolition community of free black Parisians. She traces the impact of Manet's reconsideration of the black model into the twentieth century and across the Atlantic, where Henri Matisse visited Harlem jazz clubs and later produced transformative portraits of black dancers as icons of modern beauty. These and other works by the artist are set in dialogue with the urbane "New Negro" portraiture style with which Harlem Renaissance artists including Charles Alston and Laura Wheeler Waring defied racial stereotypes. The book concludes with a look at how Manet's and Matisse's depictions influenced Romare Bearden and continue to reverberate in the work of such global contemporary artists as Faith Ringgold, Aimé Mpane, Maud Sulter, and Mickalene Thomas, who draw on art history to explore its multiple voices. Featuring over 175 illustrations and profiles of several models, Posing Modernity illuminates long-obscured figures and proposes that a history of modernism cannot be complete until it examines the vital role of the black female muse within it. Published in association with the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York Exhibition Schedule: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York (10/24/18-02/10/19) Musée d'Orsay (03/25/19-07/14/19)