One of the most exciting and eclectic celebrations of African American art ever published, Narratives of African American Art and Identity showcases one hundred paintings, etchings, sculptures, and photographs from the collection of David C. Driskell. A true Renaissance man, Driskell himself is an esteemed artist, educator, curator, and philanthropist. His fifty-year career has been committed to promoting African American art. Included are works by John Biggers, Sam Gilliam, Lois Mailou Jones, Keith Morrison, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Augusta Savage, and James VanDerZee -- to name just a few. Each artwork is accompanied by information about the artist and the particular work. This book is the catalog for the exhibition of the same title, which travelled to various American museums through February 2001.

"This book represents a major event in the art world. It is the first book to encompass the entire span and range of black art in America, from unknown artisans and journeymen painters of the 18th century to such internationally admired 19th-century artists as Edward M. Bannister, Edmonia Lewis, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, through the artists of the dynamic "Harlem Renaissance" of the 1920s, and up to Horace Pippin, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden ... and reproduces works, chronologically arranged, by all the 63 artists in the show, their paintings, sculptures, graphics, as well as crafts ranging from dolls to walking sticks" --

"Black autobiographical discourses, from the earliest slave narratives to the most contemporary urban raps, have each in their own way gauged and confronted the character of white society." Sartwell analyses these African American writings and gains a unique perspective on and picture of white identity.--Back cover.

Audience, Agency and Identity in Black Popular Culture analyses black cultural representations that appropriate anti-black stereotypes. Using examples from literature, media, and art, Worsley examines how these cultural products do not rework anti-black stereotypes into seemingly positive images. Rather, they present anti-black stereotypes in their original forms and encourage audiences not to ignore, but to explore them. Shifting critical commentary from a need to censor these questionable images, Worsley offers a complex consideration of the value of and problems with these alternative anti-racist strategies in light of stereotypes’ persistence. This book furthers our understanding of the historical circumstances that are influencing contemporary representations of black subjects that are purposefully derogatory and documents the consequences of these images.

In The Art of Remembering art historian and curator Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw explores African American art and representation from the height of the British colonial period to the present. She engages in the process of "rememory"—the recovery of facts and narratives of African American creativity and self-representation that have been purposefully set aside, actively ignored, and disremembered. In analyses of the work of artists ranging from Scipio Moorhead, Moses Williams, and Aaron Douglas to Barbara Chase-Riboud, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, and Deana Lawson, Shaw demonstrates that African American art and history may be remembered and understood anew through a process of intensive close looking, cultural and historical contextualization, and biographic recuperation or consideration. Shaw shows how embracing rememory expands the possibilities of history by acknowledging the existence of multiple forms of knowledge and ways of understanding an event or interpreting an object. In so doing, Shaw thinks beyond canonical interpretations of art and material and visual culture to imagine “what if,” asking what else did we once know that has been lost.

"Explores African American cultural products that pose competing narratives of black identities that work through the historical trauma of slavery and its legacy, manifested in systematic and institutional racism. Through the analysis and comparison of Alice Randall's novel, The wind done gone, the visual art of Kara Walker, and the hip-hop magazine The source: magazine of hip-hop music and culture, this project highlights the ways in which some cultural producers, in the 1990s, redefine narratives of black identity and subjectivity."--Abstract.

When many think of comic books the first thing that comes to mind are caped crusaders and spandex-wearing super-heroes. Perhaps, inevitably, these images are of white men (and more rarely, women). It was not until the 1970s that African American superheroes such as Luke Cage, Blade, and others emerged. But as this exciting new collection reveals, these superhero comics are only one small component in a wealth of representations of black characters within comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels over the past century. The Blacker the Ink is the first book to explore not only the diverse range of black characters in comics, but also the multitude of ways that black artists, writers, and publishers have made a mark on the industry. Organized thematically into “panels” in tribute to sequential art published in the funny pages of newspapers, the fifteen original essays take us on a journey that reaches from the African American newspaper comics of the 1930s to the Francophone graphic novels of the 2000s. Even as it demonstrates the wide spectrum of images of African Americans in comics and sequential art, the collection also identifies common character types and themes running through everything from the strip The Boondocks to the graphic novel Nat Turner. Though it does not shy away from examining the legacy of racial stereotypes in comics and racial biases in the industry, The Blacker the Ink also offers inspiring stories of trailblazing African American artists and writers. Whether you are a diehard comic book fan or a casual reader of the funny pages, these essays will give you a new appreciation for how black characters and creators have brought a vibrant splash of color to the world of comics.

Joanna Grabski and Carol Magee bring together a compelling collection that shows how interviews can be used to generate new meaning and how connecting with artists and their work can transform artistic production into innovative critical insights and knowledge. The contributors to this volume include artists, museum curators, art historians, and anthropologists, who address artistic production in a variety of locations and media to question previous uses of interview and provoke alternative understandings of art.