Resources Book List 18

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  Zambezi Progressive Art _ 18 Best Black Art Books of 2018

  

   
  

  The best illustrated black art books of 2018. | Photo by Victoria L. Valentine
   
  

   

   

  THE INCREASED INTEREST among some museums in mounting exhibitions featuring the work of African American artists has translated into a growing number of catalogs published to document them, which is wonderful. Many of those catalogs made Culture Type’s 2018 list of best illustrated art books, along with a few monographs, and a volume documenting a private collection. The selected titles were chosen based on how they stood up as individual publications, not because they accompanied a “groundbreaking” exhibition or featured the work of an “important” artist. Each volume provides an absorbing experience and captures its subject in a thoughtful, informative, and accessible manner, often with an elevated design. As an added bonus, many include insights from other artists. For instance, Henry Taylor’s monograph features a conversation between Taylor and Charles Gaines; Rashid Johnson and Lynette Yiadom-Boakeye contributed to Sam Gilliam’s exhibition catalog; and Kerry James Marshall wrote the introduction to the catalog for Charles White’s retrospective. The Best Black Art Books of 2018 are volumes you would want to actually read, in addition to leafing through the beautiful images. (Titles listed in order of publication date.)
  

   

   
     
  

  “Fired Up! Ready to Go!: Finding Beauty, Demanding Equity: An African American Life in Art. The Collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz,” by Peggy Cooper Cafritz, with contributions by Kerry James Marshall, Uri McMillan, Simone Leigh, Hank Willis Thomas, Jack Shainman, and Thelma Golden (Rizzoli Electa, 288 pages). | Published Feb. 20, 2018
   
  1. Fired Up! Ready to Go!: Finding Beauty, Demanding Equity: An African American Life in Art. The Collections of Peggy Cooper Cafritz
  THIS VOLUME IS A REAL TREASURE. Hundreds of contemporary artworks by artists of African descent are illustrated. Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947-2018), the passionate and inveterate collector, purchased the works over two periods of time. (She lost her first art collection to a house fire in 2009, and soon began assembling another.) The book showcases her art collections and documents her life. She pens an engrossing biographical essay that spans growing up in Mobile, Ala., to her ascension as an influential Washington, D.C., lawyer, arts patron/advocate, and founder the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. In addition, her relationships with key figures are revealed and explored through contributions from artists, gallery owner Jack Shainman, and Studio Museum in Harlem Director Thelma Golden, who conducts an interview with Cafritz for the book. Emerging artists are overwhelmingly represented in Cafritz’s more recent collection, artists such as Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Nina Chanel Abney, Derek Fordjour, Tschabalala Self, Titus Kaphar, and Simone Leigh, who she supported early and are coming into their own today. Cafritz, who died at age 70, two days before the official publication of this book, bequeathed the majority of her vast collection to the Studio Museum (400+ works) and Duke Ellington (250+ works). The gesture will benefit generations to come, as will this volume, which Cafritz titled with her mantra: “Fired Up! Ready to Go!” She’s left an insightful gift of great value to both new collectors and art world insiders, as well as those interested in transformational cultural leaders.
  

   

   
    

  “Theaster Gates: How to Build a House Museum,” Edited by Kitty Scott, with foreword by Stephan Jost, and contributions by Josh T. Franco, Greg Tate, and Mabel O. Wilson, et al. (Art Gallery of Ontario, 236 pages). | Published April 1, 2018
   
  2. Theaster Gates: How to Build a House Museum
  CELEBRATING BLACKNESS through legacy sites, Theaster Gates mounted a grand immersive exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario that proposed “new ways of honoring and remembering Black experience and explore[d] the potential of these spaces through music, dance, video, sculpture and painting.” The 2016 exhibition was the largest presentation of Gates’s work to date. Organized as a world of symbolic structures, the show featured “houses” dedicated to the likes of blues musician Muddy Waters, legendary Chicago DJ Frankie Knuckles, brick mason George Black of Winston Salem, N.C., and Negro Progress. This last house gallery featured paintings by Gates inspired by the graphic visualizations of Negro progress W.E.B. Du Bois displayed at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 and three landscape paintings by Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872). In the same space, a letter from Gates to fellow artists enlisting them to share their experiences with what Negro progress looks like today was presented with a response from Kerry James Marshall. Published two years after the show was on view, this volume builds on the exhibition experience. Here Gates, whose practice has its foundations in structures restored and activated to house archives and present art, film and music, presents full-color images of featured works alongside installation views of the galleries and performances. The volume also includes essays by Greg Tate and Mabel O. Wilson and an informative conversation between Gates and exhibition curator Kitty Scott that delves into the roots of the space-based aspects of the artist’s practice and explores the concepts that frame the show. Copies of letters from the 61 artists and writer/curators who embraced Gates’s request conclude the volume (maximum two pages, drawings allowed). In addition to Marshall, participants included Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Candida Alvarez, Xenobia Bailey, Nick Cave, Sonya Clark, Bethany Collins, David C. Driskell, Derek Fordjour, Todd Gray, Maren Hassinger, Rashid Johnson, Larry Ossei-Mensah, Lowery Stokes Sims, Carrie Mae Weems, and Wilmer Wilson IV, among many others. The collective candor, wisdom and insight is gripping.
  

   

   
     
  

  “Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths,” Foreword by Gary Garrido Schneider, with contributions by Lowery Stokes Sims, Patterson Sims, Seph Rodney, and Joyce J. Scott, and coordination by Coby Green-Rifkin and Carolynn McCormack (Grounds for Sculpture, 192 pages). | Published April 24, 2018
   
  3. Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths
  BEAUTY, WIT AND TURMOIL co-exist in the imaginative beadwork of Baltimore artist Joyce J. Scott. Her figurative sculptures, wall hangings and jewelry address politics, racism, violence, and gender issues. A number of works honor the legacy of Harriet Tubman as both a symbolic and historic figure, hence the name of her recent, and most ambitious, exhibition presented at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J. Published to accompany “Harriet Tubman and Other Truths,” this catalog is the most comprehensive volume to date documenting Scott’s work. Rife with full-color images of her artwork, installation views, and documentary photographs, the volume features a wide-ranging conversation with the artist conducted by curator Lowery Stokes Sims. Scott talks about how the 2015 death of Freddie Gray while in police custody affected her community, learning to create with beads from her mother, and honing her glasswork skills in Seattle, Wash., Deer Isle, Maine, and Murano, Italy.
   
  “I’d like my art to induce people to stop raping, torturing, and shooting each other. I don’t have the ability to end violence, racism, and sexism…but my art can help them look and think.” — Artist Joyce J. Scott
  

   

   
     
  

  “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965–2016,” by Adrian Piper, with editing and text by Christophe Cherix, Cornelia Butler, and David Platzker, with contribution from Tessa Ferreyros (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 352 pages). | Published May 22, 2018
   
  4. Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965–2016
  A PIONEERING CONCEPTUAL ARTIST, philosopher, and yoga devotee, Adrian Piper’s work challenges assumptions about race, identity, gender, and class. This volume documents her 50-year retrospective presenting some of the most profound and relevant work she’s produced over her career. Composed of an array of works that spans painting, drawing, video, performance, and more, her oeuvre is insightful and multifaceted. The exhibition features 291 works, a selection that includes highly personal works and others that are inherently public. There’s a 2007 video titled “Adrian Moves to Berlin” that features her doing a happy dance of sorts on an open plaza in Berlin and another called “Funk Lessons” (1983), in which the artist methodically teaches a group of people at UC Berkeley how to dance. Colorful abstract “LSD” paintings made in 1966 hang gallery style. There are 35 Barbie Doll Drawings (1967) and four vintage chalk boards with the phrase “Everything will be taken away” repeated in cursive writing (2010-13). Featuring video of President George H.W. Bush shaking hands with LAPD officers, “Black Box/White Box” (1992) presents alternating perspectives of the Rodney King beating that gave rise to the Los Angeles riots. Another installation features a shelf holding jars of Piper’s hair and nail clippings, an ongoing work initiated in 1985 that will be donated to the Museum of Modern Art upon the artist’s death. “The Vanilla Nightmares” (1986) is composed of drawings on the pages of the New York Times, inserting black figures into articles and advertisements featuring white people, “suggesting the racial fears and biases of a culturally liberal publication.” A passageway connecting two galleries requires visitors to hum (“Any tune will do.”) when leaving one room to enter the other. It’s a sprawling, uncompromising survey, a real thrill to wander and experience. To an extent, all of this comes through in the catalog. Essays by the curators are complemented by a contribution from Piper who writes about the intersection of her art and her philosophy work and invokes the concept of synthesized intuition, hence the exhibition title. More than 200 pages in the catalog are devoted to full-color plates—illustrations and installation views of her work, and documentation of her performances and videos. A personal chronology authored by Piper concludes the volume. The detailed, year-by-year accounting of her activities and experiences over the course of her lifetime is a fascinating read.

   
  

   

   
    

  “Lorna Simpson Collages,” by Lorna Simpson, with introduction by Elizabeth Alexander (Chronicle Books, 192 pages). | Published June 5, 2018
   
  5. Lorna Simpson Collages
  WORKING WITH ADVERTISING IMAGES from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines, Lorna Simpson has created countless collages defined by imaginative hair treatments—crowns of glory made with strokes of watercolor and elaborate geological formations clipped from old textbooks. The portraits have become a signature of Simpson’s practice, as stand-alone works and studies and inspirations for other work. The collages fill nearly every page of this captivating and empowering book. There are 160, seemingly simple yet complex images that beg interpretation, which scholar Elizabeth Alexander provides in her brief, poetic introduction. Simpson also gives some context with a one-page artist statement that is an endless compilation of advertising phrases that accompanied many of the original photographic images. The final one reads: “Reveal the beauty that you conceal.”
   
  “In Lorna Simpson’s collages, “the black and boisterous” hair is the universal governing principle. Black women’s heads of hair are galaxies unto themselves, solar systems, moonscapes, volcanic interiors. The hair she paints has a mind of its own.” — Scholar Elizabeth Alexander
  

   

   
     
  

  “Charles White: A Retrospective,” edited by Sarah Kelly Oehler and Esther Adler, with preface by Kerry James Marshall, and contributions by Ilene Susan Fort, Kellie Jones, Mark Pascale, and Deborah Willis (Art Institute of Chicago, 248 pages). | Published June 19, 2018
   
  6. Charles White: A Retrospective
  IN HIS OPENING ESSAY to this volume, Kerry James Marshall, a student of Charles White (1918-1979), speaks about a “physical sensation, a shiver induced by the mere sight of a thing,” a kind of religious experience, and “the ineffable dimension of art often labeled ‘sublime.'” His words aptly describe the effect of encountering White’s work. Viewing his powerful, beautiful, dignified, and realistic images of black people is indeed a moving experience. Documenting the first major museum survey of White’s work in more than three decades, this catalog features his paintings, drawings, and prints—193 color illustrations and 20 black-and-white ones. White was a key figure as an artist and citizen in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Engaging and insightful essays shed light on critical aspects of his life and contributions, including his murals and depictions of history and historic figures, mastery as a draftsman and printmaker, the centrality of women in his work, his activism, and influence as a teacher. In her essay, Deborah Willis explores the role of photography in White’s practice. He referenced archives and took his own photographs, using the images as source material. The artist’s personal photographs were made available for the first time for the retrospective and appear in the catalog. The volume’s back matter is nearly as eye-opening as the feature content. There’s a lengthy, selected exhibition history; an inventory of the artist’s library—a listing of the books and magazine’s in his possession when he died that are now housed in the Charles White Archives; and a 15-page chronology of his life and career. A 1963 entry notes a profile of the artist published in Negro Digest magazine: “The article begins, ‘The work of Charles White has such simple, direct—and profoundly poetic-power that it is astonishing he is not world famous. Well, perhaps not so astonishing after all: the artist is a Negro characterized by great pride and integrity, and his subject matter is, almost invariably, his own race.'”
   
  “I have been a stalwart advocate for the legacy of Charles White. I’ve said it so often, it could go without saying. I have always believed that his work should be seen wherever great pictures are collected and made available to art-loving audiences. He is a true master of pictorial art, and nobody else has drawn the black body with more elegance and authority. No other artist has inspired my own devotion to a career in image making more than he did. I saw in his example the way to greatness.” — Artist Kerry James Marshall
  

   

   
     
  

  “Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness,” by Zanele Muholi, with text by more than a dozen additional contributors (Aperture, 212 pages). | Published Sept. 1, 2018
   
  7. Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness
  HAIL THE DARK LIONESS indeed. More than 90 powerful and evocative images from Zanele Muholi’s ongoing self-portrait series are collected here, the South African photographer and visual activist’s first monograph. Muholi came to international attention for her documentary-style portraits of South African LGBTQ and gender-nonconfirming individuals. When she turned the camera on herself, her work entered another realm. Using her own face and body as a canvas, she adopts a variety of archetypes and personas, challenging the politics of race and representation in the visual archive. Look closely and in many of the images she’s adorned herself with props plucked from her surroundings, everyday items and specific objects that reflect her personal experience and certain histories, vocations, and circumstances, including a miner’s helmet, bicycle tires, a wash basin, stacks of newspapers, countless clothes pins, inflated black rubber gloves, soda can tabs, a bevy of sunglasses, a zippered travel bag, a doll, masking tape, and currency. The portraits speak to black beauty, raise critical questions about human rights and social justice issues, and confront contested representations of the black body. More than 20 brief contributions from writers, poets, and curators, such as Unoma Azuah, Thelma Golden, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, and Deborah Willis, are woven throughout the illustrated volume. The book also includes a conversation with Muholi conducted by Renée Mussai (who curated the exhibition of the portraits organized by Autograph ABP in London in 2017, that was on view at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in fall 2018), in which the artist discusses in detail the inspirations and meanings behind the images.
  “In Somnyama (her self-portrait series), my skin is the same as it is in real life. It is not artificially darkened. I’m only enhancing the contrast in post-production. I’m speaking of contrast in a literal sense. …Contrast is when two opposing forces clash. Contrast is about difference. What does the use of high contrast mean in relation to black skin? I get a lot of questions and comments such as, ‘I like how she paints her face.’ Why would I have to paint my face?” — Artist Zanele Muholi
  

   

   
     
  

  “Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply,” By Dawoud Bey, with text by Deborah Willis, David Travis, Hilton Als, Jacqueline Terrassa, Rebecca Walker, Maurice Berger, and Leigh Raiford (University of Texas Press, 400 pages). | Published Sept. 18, 2018
   
  8. Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply
  CHICAGO-BASED PHOTOGRAPHER Dawoud Bey received the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant in 2017, providing confirmation of sorts that in his mid-60s his practice is singular, distinctive, and has “potential.” His latest book, a mammoth retrospective volume, makes clear that a genius vision has coursed through his work for more than 40 years. Bey’s largely community-based work captures the diverse American experience. The volume presents his various bodies of work dating from the mid-1970s to 2016, from his documentary photographs of Harlem, small camera work defined by light and shadow, and empowering images of youth to his 20×24 inch Polaroid portraits of fellow creatives such Rebecca Walker, Whitfield Lovell, Lorna Simpson, Sol and Carol LeWitt, and Stuart Hall, and the diptych portraits featured in The Birmingham Project. In her introduction, scholar Sarah Lewis states that Bey has been guided by one question since 1975. “When is the negotiation of being seen in front of the lens a civic act? Dawoud Bey has consciously grappled with this foundational question for decades,” Lewis writes. “His landmark work offers us invaluable models of what this negotiation requires of a photographer’s relationships with his or her subjects and community and with the field of photographic styles that might complicate the ethics of this endeavor, particularly for black subjects.” The book’s description suggests Bey is the “natural heir” to legendary photographers Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, and James VanDerZee. It’s a high bar. “Seeing Deeply” makes a convincing case.
  “The gaze of the subjects toward the lens signified, to me, a gaze of reciprocation: an awareness of the attention being directed at them and an attendant decision to acknowledge that by returning the gaze of the camera—and therefore the viewer.” — Photographer Dawoud Bey
  

   

   
     
  

  “Henry Taylor,” with contributions by Charles Gaines, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Sarah Lewis, and Zadie Smith (Rizzoli Electa, 320 pages). | Published Oct. 9, 2018
   
  9. Henry Taylor: The Only Portrait I Ever Painted of My Momma Was Stolen
  OVERFLOWING WITH MORE THAN 200 IMAGES, this new monograph documents the practice of Henry Taylor, the Los Angeles artist known for his bluesy approach to abstract figuration. It’s a wonderful book and a genuinely good read. The first major volume to survey his career, “Henry Taylor” offers five ways of looking at the artist—through full-color illustrations of his works, mostly paintings and some sculptures and installations; handwritten notes and jottings interspersed throughout the pages that capture his momentary thoughts; an interview conducted by fellow Los Angeles artist Charles Gaines; and essays by Harvard University art historian Sarah Lewis, acclaimed British author Zadie Smith, and 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah. A testament to their readability (and Taylor’s relatability), two of the essays were published in magazines intended for general audiences in advance of the book’s release. Smith’s distillation appeared in The New Yorker and Ghansah’s feature profile was included in New York magazine.
  

   

   
     
  

  “I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100,” by Wil Haygood, with contributions by Carole Genshaft, Anastasia Kinigopoulo, Nannette V. Maciejunes, Drew Sawyer (Rizzoli Electa, 248 pages). | Published Oct. 9, 2018
   
  10. I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100
  MANY VOLUMES AND EXHIBITIONS have paid tribute the Harlem Renaissance, the period generally regarded as dating from 1918 to the stock market crash of 1929. Celebrating the centennial of the creative and intellectual flowering, “I Too Sing America” is a unique exploration of the subject that brings a journalist together with his hometown museum and the community where he grew up in Columbus, Ohio. In the 1980s, Wil Haygood reported a three-part series about the Harlem Renaissance for the Boston Globe. Then he went on to the Washington Post, where his profile of a White House butler formed the basis of a feature film, and authored biographies on pioneering cultural figures Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Sammy Davis Jr., Sugar Ray Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall Jr. His early reporting and years of research for the books connected Haygood to Harlem and its history throughout much of his career and motivated the invitation for him to organize an exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art, with support from the local Lincoln Theatre Association. Titled after Langston Hughes’s iconic poem, “I Too Sing America” considers the Harlem Renaissance “as a movement not confined to either upper Manhattan or the interwar period, but as a historical moment of national and international significance that continues to have reverberations far beyond its typically noted end date in the mid-1930s.” The catalog is a wonderful volume lavishly illustrated with the art and photography that defined the Renaissance. Haygood’s essays on how Harlem emerged as the mecca of Black America, the feverish publishing the period sparked, the dance, theater, and music the era engendered, the two Reverend Powells, and W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, appear throughout the volume. His contributions are punctuated by writings about individual visual artists, including Malvin Gray Johnson, Winold Reiss, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, Augusta Savage, and James VanDerZee, authored by the museum’s curators.
  “What American literature decidedly needs at this moment is color, music, gusto, the free expression of gay or desperate moods. …If the Negroes are not in a position to contribute these items, I do not know what Americans are.”
  — Century Magazine Editor Carl Van Doren
  “…it was glorious, and beautiful, and unforgettable. The impact of the movement during its time swept as far away as London and Paris. …They were black artists who lit a torch. Men and women who made art—art that was often so potent it forced America to take notice. It was a renaissance, true enough, but nothing had come before it. And so it was a resistance.”
  — Wil Haygood
  

   

   
     
  

  “Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite,” Foreword by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, with contributions by Faheem Majeed, Zoé Whitley, and Rebecca Zorach (DePaul Art Museum, 104 pages). | Published Oct. 15, 2018
   
  11. Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite
  AN EXPERT PRINTMAKER who co-founded the Chicago artist collective AfriCOBRA in 1968, Barbara Jones-Hogu (1938-2017) produced political, pro-Black, color-charged images that combined figuration with dynamic graphic lettering. Two months after she died in November 2017, her first-ever solo museum exhibition opened at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago. This volume documents the show. The modest-sized book—in scale and page count—features full-color plates of the works presented in the exhibition and an interview with the artist conducted in 2011 by art historian Rebecca Zorach and social justice archivist Skyla Hearn. Jones-Hogu is forthcoming in the conversation, explaining in detail her technical, intellectual and aesthetic approaches to printmaking. Her candor provides a backstory for the 23 works on paper dating from 1968 to 1973 that were featured in the exhibition—woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and screenprints—with titles such as “Unite,” “Heritage,” “High Priestess,” and “Black Men We Need You.” In her essay, Tate Modern curator Zoé Whitley notes, “The titles of her artworks, notably double as the building blocks of her personal statement of intent.” A fitting tribute to the practice of Jones-Hogu, the front of the book features a detail from her 1969 print “Nation Time” and a silhouetted portrait of the artist appears on the back. Both images are silkscreened on the cover fabric.
  

   

   
     
  

  “Jason Moran,” Edited by Adrienne Edwards, with foreword by Olga Viso, with contributions by Philip Bither, Okwui Enwezor, Danielle Jackson, Alicia Hall Moran, George Lewis, Glenn Ligon, and Jason Moran (Walker Art Center, 272 pages). | Published by Oct. 23, 2018
   
  12. Jason Moran
  PIANIST AND COMPOSER Jason Moran’s unique practice bridges visual and performing arts. He’s worked with an impressive list of artists, including Stan Douglas, Theaster Gates, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker. Published to coincide with Moran’s first solo museum exhibition organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, this catalog is collaborative and improvisational, reflecting the nature of his work. The volume itself is an art project, a mash up of images and text printed on a mix of matte and glossy pages bound between thick board covers. The exhibition features mixed-media “set” installations inspired by historic New York City performance venues—the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, Three Deuces in Midtown Manhattan, and Slugs’s Saloon in the East Village; collaborative projects, including the video installations “Chess” (2013) with Simpson and “Luanda Kinshasa” (2013) with Douglas; charcoal drawings by Moran; in-gallery performances; and “The Last Jazz Fest,” a newly commissioned performance work. The catalog includes essays by curator Adrienne Edwards and Okwui Enwezor. George Lewis writes about how Moran’s work “animates space and leaves trace.” Alice Hall Moran, a mezzo soprano and Moran’s wife, conducts a conversation with the composer. Ligon recalls experiences in clubs with Moran, seeing him perform and spending time backstage. One evening in 2009, Moran and Ligon were in the green room at the Highline Ballroom after then-80-year-old pianist Cecil Taylor and his trio commanded the stage. Moran mentioned he had a gig coming up at Village Vanguard, a legendary jazz venue Taylor (1929-2018) made clear he despised. He declared: “We turned that basement into a citadel.”

   
  

   

   
    

  “Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman,” by Jeffreen M. Hayes, with introduction by Howard Dodson, and contributions by Kirsten Pai Buick and Bridget R. Cooks (GILES, 156 pages). | Published Oct. 23, 2018
   
  13. Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman
  A HOMETOWN EXHIBITION is shining a long overdue light on the many contributions of Harlem Renaissance-era sculptor Augusta Savage (1892-1962). The pioneering artist/activist mentored two generations of artists—Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Selma Burke, Norman Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, and Ernest Crichlow, among them—and campaigned for equal treatment and opportunity for African Americans in the arts. This catalog duly documents her life and work and the exhibition guest curated by Jefreen M. Hayes at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Fla. Savage, who grew up poor outside of the city, left the South and headed north to find her calling. She took classes at Cooper Union School of Art in New York City and won an award to study in Paris in 1929. Back in New York, she was a founder of the Harlem Artists Guild and the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center, which operated with federal funds. On June 8, 1939, Savage opened the Salon of Contemporary Negro Art in Harlem, the “first gallery of its kind in the nation,” as cited by Bridget R. Cooks in her essay about the gallery. The same year, Savage created “The Harp” for the World’s Fair. The 16-foot-high sculpture for which she is best known, depicts 12 singing youth and was inspired by “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the hymn by James Weldon Johnson and his brother. Savage knew Johnson from back in Jacksonville. Similar to the exhibition, this well-conceived volume features three essays and images of about 20 sculptures by Savage alongside works by the many artists she trained. Each of the full-page images includes invaluable background information about the work and in the case of the other artists, their connections to Savage, as well. The volume also presents archival photographs and several letters in which W.E.B. Du Bois corresponds with Savage and others about the artist and her work.
  “This essay considers [Augusta] Savage as a ‘race woman’—an artist, a thinker, and a scholar whose works helped create space for Blackness to exist in and outside of the arts and contributed to social and cultural change…”
  — Curator Jeffreen M. Hayes
     
  

  “Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me,” by Mickalene Thomas, with foreword by Sherri Geldin, and text by Nicole R. Fleetwood, Michael Goodson, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and Antwaun Sargent (Wexner Center for the Art, 128 pages). | Published Oct. 23, 2018
   
  14. Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me
  A SERIES OF MUSES have inspired Mickalene Thomas over the years, expanding her vision of black female beauty and influencing her powerful representations of the black female body. Her elaborate rhinestone embellished paintings and layered collages cast her subjects in eclectic surroundings that replicate her immersive installations. This volume documents an exhibition of the same name at the Wexner Center Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Exploring beauty, identity, and authorship, the featured works include self-portraits and images of her muses—Sandra “Mama” Bush (her late mother), Maya (her former lover), Racquel (her current partner), and other collaborators. The exhibition also presents sculptures and a multichannel video. The fully illustrated catalog is anchored by essays from Michael Goodson, Antwaun Sargent, Nicole R. Fleetwood, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. The volume’s design calls to mind Esopus, the multidisciplinary magazine that was produced in “a striking visual format.” Thomas contributed an artist project to the magazine in 2016 and it ceased publication in September 2018. A month later, this volume was released with a similar (but superior) design approach, including the use of a variety of paper stocks, multiple paper sizes, and vanity gatefolds with the essays printed on bound inserts. In her essay titled “Rebel Woman,” Guy-Sheftall concludes, “…Mickalene Thomas continues to challenge and unmask demeaning images of black womanhood, offering instead compelling alternatives that are impossible to ignore. Her stunning, larger-than-life portraits of black women mesmerize, delight, and overwhelm us and are a visual testament to the transformational and healing power of art.”
  

   

   
     
  

  “Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal,” by Hank Willis Thomas, with contributions by Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Kellie Jones, Julia Dolan, and Sara Krajewski (Aperture, 256 pages). | Published Nov. 15, 2018
   
  15. Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal
  TEN YEARS AFTER the publication of his first monograph, “Pitch Blackness,” a new volume surveys the career of Hank Willis Thomas. Published in advance of his exhibition of the same name at the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon, “All Things Being Equal” features key bodies of work from 2002-2018 that display the artist’s dexterity with representation and interpretation of images and language. He’s engaged with branding and advertising, political slogans, civil rights and apartheid-era photography, and more recently public art projects. The graphically driven, image-rich volume was designed by Bobby Martin. Essays by scholar Sara Elizabeth Lewis and curators Julie Dolan and Sara Krajewski are complemented by a conversation between Thomas and art historian Kellie Jones. She introduces the interview by informing readers that she has known the artist for most of his life. The first question she asked Thomas was, “Did you always know you wanted to be an artist?” His answer was, “I never wanted to be an artist.” Over the course of the lengthy conversation, he explains how he realized art was his calling and figured out how to frame and focus his unique photography-based practice. At its core “is his ability to parse and critically dissect the flow of images that comprises American culture, and to do so with particular attention to race, gender, and cultural identity.”
  “Hank Willis Thomas continues in the legacy of these artists and cultural workers, taking on the imperative of this still urgent question: What is role of art for civic life? He also prompts us to consider others: How does visual culture create narratives that shape our notion of who counts in society?”
  — Scholar Sarah Elizabeth Lewis
  

   

   
     
  

  “Sam Gilliam: The Music of Color: 1967–1973,” Edited by Jonathan Binstock and Josef Helfenstein, with contributions by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Larne Gogarty, Rashid Johnson, and Rafael Squirru (Walther König, Köln, 192 pages). | Published Nov. 20, 2018
   
  16. Sam Gilliam: The Music of Color: 1967–1973
  LEAFING THROUGH THIS VOLUME, readers are met with a symphony of color. Page after page brings a rush of greens, yellows, pinks, blues, and purples, countless installation images of Sam Gilliam’s color-washed abstract canvases folded, draped and stretched, hanging from walls and ceilings and laying over a wood sawhorse. It’s a fitting experience given the catalog documents “The Music of Color: Sam Gilliam, 1967-1973” the Washington, D.C.-based artist’s first retrospective exhibition in a European museum. Presented at the Galleries of Kunstmuseum Basel, the show featured 45 paintings from a particularly creative and experimental seven-year period when Gilliam first produced the Beveled-Edge and Drape paintings for which he is most recognized. The works are expansive and improvisational. The array of images in the volume is complemented by excerpts from a series of ongoing conversations between Gilliam and Jonathan P. Binstock initiated in 1994 (when Binstock was a graduate student, he is now director of Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester), that illuminate the artist’s perspective and motivations with regard to his work. Within the color plates, a series of explanatory notes define and provide context for the artist’s various works in seven categories such as Slice Paintings, Drape Paintings, Music and Painting, and Abstraction and Politics. Another plus, the volume features five poems for Gilliam composed by British artist Lynette Yiadom Boakye.
  “In his 1983 book ‘The Fire Next Time,’ James Baldwin make reference to lyrics created by a black slave from a passage in the Bible: ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water the fire next time.’ These words ring in my head each time I experience the work of the artist Sam Gilliam.”
  — Artist Rashid Johnson
   
  

  “Gordon Parks: The New Tide: Early Work 1940–1950,” Edited by Philip Brookman, with foreword by Earl Powell and Peter Kunhardt, introduction by Sarah Lewis, and contributions by Maurice Berger, Richard Powell, Deborah Willis, and photographer Gordon Parks (Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/National Gallery of Art, 304 pages). | Published Nov. 20, 2018
     
  17. Gordon Parks: The New Tide: Early Work 1940–1950
  INVARIABLY IDENTIFIED as the first African American staff photographer at Life magazine, Gordon Parks had a decade of experience when he was hired in February 1949. Those early years were incredibly fruitful and are explored in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and this accompanying catalog. A self-taught photographer, Parks’s work appeared in the St. Paul Recorder newspaper in 1939, providing a launch pad. In the 1940s, he trained his camera on life in Chicago, where he was connected with the South Side Community Art Center. During employment with the Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, and Standard Oil, he documented American labor, struggle and industry. Parks contributed to a variety of publications, including Ebony, Vogue, Glamour, Fortune, and Life, before he was brought on full time. He made portraits of Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and artist Charles White, among others, and published two books, as well. His relationships with Hughes, Ellison, Roy Stryker, Richard Wright, and Alain Locke, are also captured in “The New Tide,” which explores Parks’s formative period for the first time. Emphasizing new research and forgotten images, the volume presents his early work as published in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and other printed matter, as well as his documentary, feature, and fashion photography from the period. Several essays provide context. In the introduction, scholar Sarah Lewis explains the origins of the title. “In ’12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States,’ which Parks referred to as his bible, Wright described a dawning sense of the role of photography for the civil rights movement and a new solidarity committed to racial equality and justice,” Lewis writes. “Wright inscribed a copy of his 1940 novel ‘Native Son‘ to Parks as ‘one who moves with the new tide,’ signaling his position as leader not only within mass media, devising a mode of visual reporting that could have impact and inspire empathy to move past the boundaries of one’s own particular experience.” Billed as developmental work that shaped Parks’s vision, any accomplished photographer would be proud to claim this incredible collection as the hallmark of his or her career.
  

   

     
  

  “Purvis Young,” Edited by Juan Valadez, with an introductioin by Mara Rubell, and contributions by César Trasobares, Barbara N. Young, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rashid Johnson, and Franklin Sirmans (Rubell Museum, 364 pages). | Published December 2018
   
  18. Purvis Young
  ENCAPSULATING THE WORLD of Purvis Young (1943-2010), this volume presents full-color illustrations of more than 250 works by the prolific Miami-born artist who said he painted what he saw—around his neighborhood and in the world, the problems and some good things, too. Published to coincide with his solo exhibition currently on view at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, the book features texts by those who knew him best, the local artist and curator César Trasobares, who organized an early show of Young’s work in 1976 and Barbara N. Young, a librarian who operated the Artmobile (a museum on wheels) and met the artist the same year. A conversation between the artist and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist is also featured. Meeting for the first time, they spoke in 2005, five years before Young died. The exchange reveals the artist’s authentic voice, the way his mind works, his artistic intentions emerge, and he also expresses concerns that people are “getting a fortune off my artwork and stuff.” The Rubells met Young in 1998 through friends who invited them to the artist’s studio. In the catalog’s introduction, Mara Rubell writes, “We knocked on a heavy steel door and Purvis answered the door almost immediately, welcomingly. …Mountains of paintings confronted us. All around us and piled to the top of the tall ceiling, thousands of wooden paintings were stacked on top of each other. …This was where Purvis worked and where he lived alongside several decades’ worth of paintings. It was his personal universe—an authentic place for him to live, to be close to his subjects and to capture the life and struggles of his community.” After page 50, the volume is an album of Young’s artwork a succession of dozens and dozens of paintings on wood and fiberboard grouped into themed sections such as Pregnant Women, Slaves, Faces, Prisoners, Drugs, Horses, Protesters, Funerals, Holy Men and Angels, and Planets and Stars.
  

   

      
   
  

  SOME OF THE BEST ART BOOKS published this year focus on the past and the present. Exhibition catalogs such as “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85” and “Soul of a “Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” and the scholarly publication “South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s,” document the Black Arts Movement and the artists and works that defined the period. The activities of that era provided a path for the increasingly influential voices and innovative practices of new generations of contemporary artists working today, figures such as Nina Chanel Abney, Mark Bradford, and Adam Pendleton, whose recent publications are also among the best of 2017. Featuring work by and about people of African descent, the following Culture Type Picks are exceptional volumes. (Titles listed in order of publication date.)
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Betye Saar: Easy Dancer,” Edited by Mario Mainetti, Chiara Costa, Elvira Dyangani Ose, with a foreword by Miuccia Prada, Patrizio Bertelli, and contributions by Richard J. Powell, Deborah Willis, and Kellie Jones (Fondazione Prada, 320 pages). | Published Feb. 28, 2017
   
  

  1. Betye Saar: Easy Dancer
  This modest-scale, more than 300-page catalog documents “Uneasy Dancer” (Sept. 15, 2016-Jan. 8, 2017) at the Prada Foundation. The comprehensive survey of Betye Saar’s career was her exhibition show in Italy. “I am an uneasy dancer in a slow dance that is my ninetieth revolution around the son,” Saar writes in part in the catalog. The volume features writings by Richard Powell, Deborah Willis, and Kellie Jones and is dominated by an amazing, detailed timeline charting Saar’s work and life from the moment she was born in 1926 through 2016, when “Uneasy Dancer” opens in Milan. Handsomely designed, the chronology is illustrated with documentary photos and images of her work. A uniquely bound volume, each page appears to be a fold out, but is indeed attached at the center spine. Another catalog, “Betye Saar: Still Tickin'” was published in August. It features the artist in conversation with Sara Cochran, a bounty of full-color images of the artist’s work, and writings by Saar from 1973-2016.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s,” by Kellie Jones (Duke University Press, 416 pages). | April 7, 2017
   
  2. South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s
  A curator and professor of art history and archeology at Columbia University, Kellie Jones spent the past decade researching and connecting with African American artists who got their start in Los Angeles half a century ago. Her efforts yielded “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980,” a groundbreaking exhibition, and accompanying catalog, that explored the work of Maren Hassinger, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, Senga Nengudi, David Hammons, Betye Saar, and Charles White, among others. Jones delves further into the transformational period with “South of Pico.” She considers the work of assemblage artists within the context of the 1965 Watts Rebellion; examines the impact of artist-run institutions including the Brockman Gallery founded by Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis, Suzanne Jackson’s Gallery 32, and several Samella Lewis ventures; and charts the emergence of the “performative impulses” and de-materialized practices of Hammons, Hassinger, and Nengudi. Both a scholarly triumph and a fascinating read, this book provides the backstory for some of the most consequential artists to emerge from the Black Arts Movement and examines the work, projects, and initiatives they fostered.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-–85: A Sourcebook,” Edited by Catherine Morris and Rujeko Hockley (Duke University Press, 320 pages). | Published April 21, 2017, paperback
   
  3. We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–-85: A Sourcebook
  The groundbreaking exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution” examines for the first time the experiences and perspectives of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. Featuring works by Emma Amos, Jeff Donaldson, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Loïs Mailou Jones, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Samella Lewis, Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others, the show presents a diverse group of artists who lived and worked at the intersection of art production, political activism and social change. Organized by the Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition is on view at the California African American Museum through Jan. 14, 2018. An invaluable reference, this volume is a true sourcebook, containing reproductions of key documents, articles, and publications from the period. Writings by curators Catherine Morris Rujeko Hockley, and many of the artists represented in the show, give context. The book begins with the words of Audre Lorde and, on the last page, the volume concludes with a poetic tribute to artist Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015) by Alice Walker.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Alice Neel: Uptown,” by Hilton Als, with a foreword by Jeremy Lewison (David Zwirner Books/Victoria Miro, 144 pages). | Published May 23, 2017
  4. Alice Neel: Uptown
  Curated by Hilton Als, “Alice Neel: Uptown” was a revelation. Anyone familiar with the work of Alice Neel (1900-1984) has seen her portraits of people of color, but to realize the depth of this aspect of her practice and view more than 30 of these images presented together was a moving experience. Her portraits are defined by precise outlines, expressive brushstrokes, and her use of color to bring out the personalities of her subjects. Considered one of the most important American portrait painters of the 20th century, Neel had little interest in flattery, but rather sought to capture the complexity of her sitters. For the exhibition, Als, a critic at The New Yorker, selected paintings that portray African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, and other people of color—neighborhood children, fellow artists and progressives among whom the artist lived in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side. Als has a connection with Neel. The two share a dedication to the diversity of New York City and, in his introduction to the fully illustrated catalog, he describes her as an essayist on canvas. Throughout the volume he provides backstories for the paintings, a variety of musings, as well as biographical information about her subjects. Many of them are significant figures, but not widely known, such as scholar and social critic Harold Cruise (whose portrait graces the cover of the catalog); artist Faith Ringgold; Ron Kajiwara, a graphic designer at Vogue magazine; and civil rights activists James Farmer and Hugh Hurd, who was also an actor.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush,” Edited by Marshall N. Price (Duke University Press, 124 pages). | Published May 26, 2017
   
  5. Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush
  It’s been a banner year for Nina Chanel Abney, a relatively young artist known for her provocative, politically charged paintings articulating the complexities of contemporary society. She presented her first solo museum exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2017 and her inaugural exhibitions at Jack Shainman Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery are currently on view in New York. This catalog, another first, documents the Nasher show, a 10-year survey exploring the arc of her practice which has evolved from a more painterly style to decidedly emphatic approach, mixing figuration and abstraction with a riot of bold color, symbols, and meaning. Illustrated with full-color images of her paintings throughout, this publication includes a preface by Richard Powell, contributions from Marshall N. Price and Natalie Y. Moore, and a great conversation between Abney and curator Jamillah James of ICA Los Angeles.
  “The organized chaos of Nina Chanel Abney’s paintings owe some debt to her wide-ranging art historical and cultural influences. Bringing together the dynamism of Picasso (particularly the captivating polemic tableau Guernica), Robert Colescott’s acerbic historical reimaginings, and an incisive distillation of pop cultural and socio-political content, Abney’s work presents the figure in stunning and curious detail. Her fondness for ambiguity reveals itself in cryptic strings of text and fractured bodies with mismatched parts askew, updating for the digital age the surrealist exercises of chance poetry and the exquisite corpse.”
  — Jamillah James, Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Kerry James Marshall,” by Greg Tate,‎ Charles Gaines,‎ and Laurence Rassel (Phaidon Press, 160 pages). | Published June 12, 2017
   
  6. Kerry James Marshall
  A tribute to Kerry James Marshall’s grand practice, Phaidon’s recent publication punctuates the fanfare surrounding the three-venue tour of “Mastry,” the artist’s 30-year survey and accompanying catalog. Many early and more recent works are illustrated and considered in this volume, including the 1991 painting “Blue Water Silver Moon (Mermaid),” which earns an entire essay by Laurence Rassel. Other features include a lengthy, amazing conversation between Marshall and Los Angeles artist Charles Gaines; an essay by Greg Tate on the artist’s figures, which he calls “Marvellously Black Familiars”; and a chronology illustrated by the catalogs and brochures that have documented Marshall’s exhibitions over the years.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day,” Edited by Christopher Bedford and Katy Siegel, with contributions by Peter James Hudson, Anita Hill, Sarah Lewis, Katy Siegel, Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois (Gregory R. Miller & Co., 230 pages). | Published June 27, 2017
   
  7. Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day
  In representing the United States at the 2017 Venice Biennial, Mark Bradford recognized both the personal significance and national import of the honor. The artist conceived and re-conceived the exhibition in his Los Angeles studio, eventually presenting paintings, sculptures and video the reflect his individual voice, collapse the division between artist and ordinary people, and emphasize his belief in the social and cultural influence of art, particularly in this historic, political moment. The accompanying catalog documents this ambition. It’s a panoramic offering that brings together the wise, ever-relevant words of James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois, with the highly readable contributions of Anita F. Hill on the intersection of law, policy, art and injustice; Sarah Lewis on the art of productive dissent; and Zadie Smith on Bradford’s video “Niagara” and the larger meaning of one’s strut, swagger and sway. Photographs of Bradford from childhood through the years animate a wide-ranging interview with the artist conducted by curator Christopher Bedford. A generous section of full-color images of the exhibition works and installation views concludes the volume.
  “Made in Los Angeles for the world to see in in Venice, ‘Tomorrow is Another Day’ achieves the democracy and pluralism the times require. It is no accident that this statement comes from a person whose social being—as black, gay, working class—has long been discounted. When the center—money, social power, and even simple everyday stability—is concentrated among the smallest number of people in history, what is called marginal is bigger than ever; it encompasses most of us. Bradford is the right artist for this historical moment, when, as he says, “Our progressive voices are needed—needed to mobilize the margins. The periphery is massing.”
  — Christopher Bedford and Katy Siegel, Tomorrow is Another Day
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Terry Adkins: Recital,” Edited by Ian Berry, with contributions from Anthony Elms, Okwui Enwezor, Cheryl Finley, Charles Gaines (Prestel, 224 pages). | Aug. 11, 2017
   
  8. Terry Adkins: Recital
  When Terry Adkins (1953-2014) died suddenly three years ago, this catalog was in development. Understandably delayed and pushed back a number of times, the volume was finally published a few months ago. Well worth the wait, it’s a fitting tribute to a multidisciplinary artist who expressed himself through music, sculpture, installations, and performance. In 2012, Ian Berry curated “Recital,” Adkins’s 30-year survey at the Tang Teaching Museum. Berry writes in the catalog, “Adkins grew up deeply invested in visual art, music, and language. His approach to artmaking is similar to that of a composer, and the sequence of images in this book is conceived as a score creating interplay among pieces in different media and from diverse bodies of work.” Lavish illustrations are interspersed with written contributions by Adkins, Charles Gaines, Lauren Haynes, Adrienne Edwards, and George E. Lewis, among others; an archive of writings about the artist’s work; interviews with Adkins conducted by Berry and Okwui Enwezor; and a loving postscript from Merele Williams Adkins, the artist’s widow.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “A Beautiful Ghetto,” by Devin Allen with contributions by D. Watkins and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Haymarket Books, 124 pages). | Published Sept. 12, 2017
   
  9. A Beautiful Ghetto
  Capturing the Baltimore protests in response to the 2015 police killing of Freddie Gray, Devin Allen’s photographs went viral on social media and gained nationwide attention from mainstream media. The amateur photographer’s beautifully striking images of the realities of race, poverty, and the gulf between the police and the community in Baltimore earned him a Time magazine cover, a museum exhibition, and a Gordon Parks Foundation fellowship. This publication brings together page-after-page of his documentary images of the uprisings and revealing portraits of everyday life in the city. Brief contributions by D. Watkins, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Wes Moore, Aaron Bryant, and Gail Allen-Kearney, give context and tee up the volume.
  “This book is a visual story of the uprising. It’s also the story of Baltimore, Freddie Gray, and so many countless others who grew up, work, and raise their families in places like Baltimore. This book is to challenge the stigma, to show the beautiful side of the ghetto, and hopefully to inspire others to love, respect, and invest in our communities. This book is for you.”
  — Devin Allen, Beautiful Ghetto
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” Edited by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley, with contributions by Linda Goode Bryant, Susan E. Cahan, David Driskell, Edmund Gaither, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, and Samella Lewis (D.A.P./Tate, 256 pages). | Sept. 26, 2017
   
  10. Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
  Organized by the Tate Modern in London, the exhibition “Soul of a Nation” features art made between 1963-1983, a time of radical change in the United States. During the two-decade period, young black artists were trying to navigate the intersection of art, politics, and identity. Many struggled to determine their purpose and balance a desire to make important, complex art work and also reflect their experiences and the state of race in America. The show presents work by more than 60 artists, working both individually and within artist collectives such as Spiral and AfriCOBRA. Featuring “What’s Going On” by Barkley L. Hendricks on the cover, the catalog provides a visual journey through the period with documentary photographs and full-color images of art and ephemera, coupled with writings by Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley. The curators expound upon a score of topics, from the Studio Museum in Harlem, Just Above Midtown Gallery, The Black Photographers Annual, and Emory Douglas and the Black Panther newspaper to abstraction shows, black women artists, FESTAC ’77, and the Wall of Respect and mural movement. Meanwhile, figures from the era, including Samella Lewis, David C. Driskell, and Jae and Wadsworth Jerrell, contribute reflections.
  “Soul of a Nation,” meanwhile, was chosen as [the] exhibition title to emphatically assert that however much individuals had to fight for acknowledgement and recognition within their own country, they are undeniably, indelibly part of that nation. There is no America without African Americans. The story of art in America is incomplete without acknowledging Black American artists.”
  — Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley, Soul of a Nation
  

   

   
     
  
  “Adam Pendleton: Black Dada Reader,” Edited by Stephen Squibb, with contributions by Adrienne Edwards, Laura Hoptman, Tom McDonough, Jenny Schlenzka, and Susan Thompson (Koenig Books, 352 pages). | Published Sept. 26, 2017
   
  

  11. Adam Pendleton: Black Dada Reader
  The conceptual practice of Adam Pendleton is particularly compelling because his artistic output is tethered to a rigorous intellectual vision. His practice centers around language, abstraction, history, and identity. Spanning painting, sculpture, printmaking, video, writing and performance, he describes his output as Black Dada. Earlier this year, the Brooklyn-based artist told the New York Times that Black Dada is “a way of articulating a broad conceptualization of blackness.” To further explore the theory, he has published the “Black Dada Reader,” bringing together cultural figures past and present. Pendleton employs the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, Stokely Carmichael, LeRoi Jones, Sun Ra, alongside contributions by artists Ad Reinhardt, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, William Pope.L, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Stan Douglas, and curators and critics Adrienne Edwards, Laura Hoptman, Tom McDonough, among others.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today,” Edited by Erin Dziedzic and Melissa Messina, with text by Valerie Cassel Oliver, Lowery Stokes Sims, et al. (Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 144 pages). | Published Oct. 24, 2017
   
  12. Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today
  Presenting the work of 21 artists spanning four generations between 1891 and 1981, “Magnetic Fields” is the first exhibition to explore comprehensively black women artists working in abstraction. On view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., through Jan. 21, 2018, the show considers their work in context with each other and the larger history of abstraction. The catalog documents the exhibition with contributions by Lowery Stokes Sims and Valerie Cassel Oliver. Other curators write briefly about individual artists—Mavis Pusey, Maren Hassinger, Chakaia Booker, Lilian Thomas Burwell and Sylvia Snowden. A painting by Mildred Thompson graces the cover. In terms of visual presentation and design, there is nothing particularly compelling or out of the ordinary about this volume. However, its substantive significance in terms of documenting this important exhibition can’t be overstated. Sims writes, “That black abstraction has been positioned at the center of social and political issues is thought provoking, especially given that black abstract artists are increasingly achieving wider recognition as people accept that not all artwork by African Americans has to be perceived through a polemic lens.”
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Frank Bowling: Mappa Mundi,” Edited by Okwui Enwezor, with contributions from Frank Bowling,‎ Kobena Mercer,‎ Anna Schneider,‎ and Zoe Whitley (Prestel, 256 pages). | Published Nov. 7, 2017
   
  13. Frank Bowling: Mappa Mundi
  Curated by Okwui Enwezor with Anna Schneider, “Frank Bowling: Mappa Mundi” remains on view at Haus der Kunst in Munich through Jan. 7, 2018. A broad survey of rare and never-before exhibited large-scale paintings, the exhibition centers around the artist’s monumental “map paintings” created between 1967 and 1971, the year they were first shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The catalog is enveloped in his 1970 painting “Middle Passage.” The metaphoric blend of red and yellow graces the front and back covers as well as the volume’s edges. Inside, Enwezor opens the catalog by stating the significance of the artist’s “modulated color abstraction,” describing his work as “some of the most ambitious and remarkable painting of any artist to emerge in postwar Britain.” Highlights include contributions by Tate Curator Zoe Whitley and British artist Lynette Yiadom Boakye; reproductions of correspondence between Bowling and critic Clement Goldberg; a selection of writings by Bowling from 1969 to 1993; and full-color illustrations of the exhibition works and additional works from 1960-2015.
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Malick Sidibé: Mali Twist,” with text by André Magnin, Brigitte Ollier, Manthia Diawara, Robert Storr (Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain/Editions Xavier Barral, 296 pages). | Nov. 28, 2017
   
  14. Malick Sidibé: Mali Twist
  Celebrated photographer Malick Sidibé (1936-2016) is recognized for his vibrant images of youth culture in his native Bamako, Mali, in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This fully illustrated catalog documents “Malick Sidibé: Mali Twist,” the retrospective exhibition currently on view at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporainin in Paris through February 2018. The volume is rife with formal portraits and candid images from throughout his career. The fabulous cover image is just the beginning. Countless black-and-white images are interspersed with brief scholarly writings by André Magnin, Brigitte Ollier, Manthia Diawara, and Robert Storr, printed on mint-green pages. The contributions include a first-person essay by Sidibé in which he details his path to photography. First published in 1998, it was updated for this publication. The catalog concludes with an added bonus: Folders reproduced from Sidibe’s archive containing party images from 1963-1974, complete with his handwritten labels and notes. CT
  “That Sidibé was a ‘popular’ photographer rather than a satirical pop commentator on vernacular culture—which is to say he was a photographer firmly grounded in his environment who combined work-for-hire portraiture with his own exploratory documentation of the quotidian excitement of his Bamako neighborhood—made him one among several recording angels of a new generation of urban Africans, of which the other most important Malian example was his elder, Seydou Keita. Together they framed our vision of this crucial period of postcolonial history, and, while there were certainly many other perspectives in play, theirs are the signal oeuvres we have in this medium.” — Robert Storr, Malick Sidibé: Mali Twist
  

   

  
  

  THIS YEAR’S SELECTION of the Best Black Art Books includes 12 volumes that in various ways are reframing art history—from scholarly works shedding light on major cultural moments and volumes of groundbreaking photography, to exhibition catalogs surveying broadly the work of important artists such as Kerry James Marshall and Alma Thomas. Highly recommended among Culture Type’s picks is a substantial tome from collector Pamela Joyner, whose unparalleled holdings feature more than 100 African American artists. She emphasizes her engagement with artists, as well as museum curators, often introducing them to new artists and loaning works from her collection to their institutions. Joyner’s mission? “It’s no less ambitious than an effort to reframe art history,” she says. Overall, 12 books featuring work by and about people of African descent rank among the best this year. (Titles listed in order of publication date.)
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Stan Douglas: The Secret Agent,” by Stan Douglas, with contributions by Eric Bruyn, Jason Smith, Dirk Snauwert, and Séamus Kealy (Ludion, 192 pages). | Published Jan. 26, 2016, hardcover
  1. “Stan Douglas: The Secret Agent”
  This compelling volume documents three recent projects by Canadian artist Stan Douglas, who uses photographs and moving images to surface, consider and manipulate specific political and culture moments. For the video installation “The Secret Agent,” Douglas took Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel set in London and reimagined it in Lisbon, Portugal, in the aftermath of the 1974 Carnation Revolution. A six-hour, experimentally sequenced jazz film set in 1974 at the the renowned CBS 30th Street Studio, “Luanda-Kinshasa” explores the emergence of a globally minded black consciousness and its influence on the New York music scene. “Disco Angola” is a series of eight staged historical photographs juxtaposing two distant places at parallel moments in time—the Angolan Civil War and New York’s glamorous 1970s disco era. Each of these projects have been presented in exhibitions and this monograph masterfully adapts the works to the page with installation views and graphics that reinvent the way “The Secret Agent,” for example, was presented on multiple screens. There are essay contributions and an original script by Douglas, but most of the volume is dominated by many, many full-color images including film stills and production shots.
  

   

   
     
   
  
  

  “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power,” by Susan E. Cahan (Duke University Press, 344 pages). | Published Feb. 19, 2016, hardcover
  2. “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power”
  New York City has a storied history, one of mounting frustration when it comes to integrating its elite art museums. The first demonstrations against the institutions came in 1968. Susan E. Cahan, a curator, scholar, and dean of the arts at Yale College, has spent her career working in museums and academia, the entire time researching this book, which is substantiated by countless interviews with artists (Benny Andrews, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, among others), activists, and museum officials, as well as institutional documents, correspondence, and archival images. She explores the landscape through five key exhibitions: “Electronic Refractions II” (1968) at the Studio Museum in Harlem; “Harlem on My Mind” (1969) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; “Contemporary Black Artists in America” (1971) at the Whitney Museum of American Art”; and “Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual” (1971) and “The Sculpture of Richard Hunt” (1971) at the Museum of Modern Art.
  “This book excavates the moment when museums were forced to face artists’ demands for justice and equality. What strategies did African American artists use to gain institutional access, and what tactics did museum professionals employ, as the establishment and the activists wrestled over power and control? What were the models for democratizing museums? Which actions brought success or failure? …And why, five decades later, do we find many of the same challenges in the major museums: a persistent belief that token inclusion is synonymous with institutional change?” — Mounting Frustration
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series,” by Carrie Mae Weems with Sarah Lewis and Adrienne Edwards (Damiani/Matsumoto Editions, 86 pages). | Published April 26, 2016, hardcover
  3. “Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series”
  Carrie Mae Weems produced The Kitchen Table Series (1990) more than 25 years ago. Among her most important bodies of work, the images consider domesticity, women’s circumstances, and their relationships with lovers, friends and children. Exploring gender and power roles in an intimate familial setting, the photography series features Weems herself depicting an archetype coming into her own. The book includes all 20 images along with the 14 text panels from the series, which is published in its entirety for the first time. Each element has its own page and three gatefolds present a trio of images side-by-side. Essays by curators Sarah Lewis and Adrienne Edwards introduce and contextualize the work.
  “A work of art gains altitude over time if it gestures to a universal horizon. At the heart of the “Kitchen Table Series” is an answer to an eternal question: how do we find our own power? The photographic suite …seems to be about relationships—lovers, friends, and daughters, mothers. Yet the animating focus is about coming into our own, how any quest for sovereignty is shaped not just by longing, [but] striving towards a newly enlarged vision of one’s self in the world.”
  — Sarah Lewis, Kitchen Table Series
  

   

   
     

   

  
  

   

  “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry,” contributions by Ian Alteveer, Helen Molesworth, Dieter Roelstraete and Abigail Winograd (Skira Rizzoli 288 pages). | Published May 3, 2016, hardcover
  4. “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry”
  Chicago-based painter Kerry James Marshall seeks to recast the art history canon with representations of black people and black narratives. This long-awaited volume is a definitive monograph published to coincide with “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry,” arguably the most groundbreaking and celebrated exhibition of the year. The survey was organized by MCA Chicago, MOCA Los Angeles, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it is currently on view at The Met Breuer. Fully illustrated, the cloth-covered book includes images of more than 100 paintings—portraits, landscapes, interiors, and comics—from throughout Marshall’s 35-year career, paired with contributions from curators Ian Alteveer, Helen Molesworth, and Dieter Roelstraete, as well as Elizabeth Alexander, among others. A section of gray-colored pages distinguishes eight writings by Marshall.
  

   

   
     
   
  
  

  “Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem,” by Michal Raz-Russo with contributions by Douglas Druick, Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Matthew S. Wikkovsky, John F. Callahan, and Jean-Christophe Cloutier
  (Steidl Dap, 128 pages). | Published June 28, 2016, hardcover
  5. “Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem”
  Photographer Gordon Parks was friends with author Ralph Ellison and the two collaborated on a pair of projects, Harlem photo essays published in full for the first time in this book. “Harlem Is Nowhere” (1948), focused on the first integrated psychiatric clinic in New York, and “A Man Becomes Invisible,” appeared in the Aug. 25, 1952, edition of Life magazine, shortly after the publication of Ellison’s novel “Invisible Man.” The foreword states that the story told in these pages “is about the synthesis of two different art forms, photography and writing, in the service of social change.” Complementing an exhibition that was on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, the volume includes Parks’s black and white images with narrative captions accompanying the plates; Ellison’s typed manuscript for “Harlem is Nowhere,” complete with handwritten edits; and the layout pages for “A Man Becomes Invisible,” reproduced from Life.
  

   

   
     
   
  
  

  “African Catwalk,” photographs by Per-Anders Pettersson, with contributions by Stella Jean, Simone Cipriani, Alessia Glaviano, and Allana Finley (Kehrer Verlag, 168 pages). | Published Aug. 9, 2016, hardcover
  6. “African Catwalk”
  With the advent of social media, the once exclusive world of high fashion is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Fall and spring runway shows in America and Europe are seen by fashion fans the world over, not just industry insiders. Given this, it is thrilling to behold this volume, a visual feast with images by Per-Anders Pettersson, a Swedish-born photographer who is based in Cape Town, South Africa. The book documents fashion runways from 2010-2015 in 16 African countries, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Ghana. Pettersson’s behind-the-scenes and catwalk images are far more compelling than those published widely of the more prominent and established international fashion weeks. While the fashions, fabrics, and adornments are amazing, the models make the images. The photographs are all about the lighting—bright, dark and sometimes shadowy—beautifully framing the models and always emphasizing the amazing color of the fabrics. The volume features a wide-range of images from tight shots of hemlines and shoes and the faces of models (see cover), to head-to-toe outfits in mid stride and wide shots of audiences at shows.
  “His picture making embodies the disruption and disorder inherent to African fashion. African designers have a choice of assimilating themselves to international norms or standing out, and ‘African Catwalk’ shows how the continent’s designers choose to rage against the traditional statutes of the global fashion machine. His photos reinforce the notion of ‘made by Africans in Africa for Africans’ as a lifestyle choice for global consumers.”
  — Allana Finley, African Catwalk
  

   

   
     
  
  

  Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art, edited by Courtney J. Martin, with an introduction by Mary Schmidt Campbell, and contributions including Christopher Bedford and Joost Bosland (Gregory R. Miller & Co, 384 pages). | Published Sept. 27, 2016, hardcover
  7. “Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art”
  With a concentration on Abstraction, the Joyner Giuffrida Collection includes more than 300 works by about 100 African American and African diaspora artists, including Sam Gilliam, Norman Lewis, Alma Thomas, Richard Mayhew, Edward Clark, Charles Gaines, Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon, Odili Donald Odita, Lorna Simpson, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Robin Rhode, William T. Williams, Shinique Smith, and Samuel Levi Jones, among others. Initiated by influential collector Pamela Joyner, the extensive holdings are considered among the most significant of their kind. This impressive, nearly 400-page volume documents the collection with full-color images. Organized in four parts with sections devoted to each artist, the foreword by Mary Schmidt Campbell frames contributions from many other leading scholars and curators. Beyond the compelling art and writings, the most rewarding content is the conversations published in the volume, including salon sessions at the San Francisco home of Joyner and Alfred Giuffrida, Thelma Golden talking with Glenn Ligon, Charles Gaines and Mark Bradford engaging each other, and an interview with the collectors by Courtney J. Martin.
  “In my collecting interests, I have largely been attracted to painting, formalism, and abstraction. This is, in part, simply an aesthetic choice. It is also something of a philosophical preference grounded in an acknowledgement of the environment that persisted for African American artists working in the second and third quarters of the twentieth century. at that time, the mainstream art world expected these artists to find legitimacy by producing representational work with obviously African American subject matter. Similarly, the African American community was not especially supportive of abstract artists.
  — Pamela Joyner, Four Generations
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Whitfield Lovell: Kin,” with contributions by Sarah Lewis, Julie L McGee, Klaus Ottmann and Elsa Smithgall, and an introduction by Irving Sandler (Skira Rizzoli, 224 pages). | Published Oct. 4, 2016, hardcover
  8. “Whitfield Lovell: Kin”
  Images of anonymous African Americans rendered from vintage photographs form the basis of Whitfield Lovell’s practice, a sustained exploration of the black experience through history and memory. Two presentations in Washington, D.C., “The Card Series II: The Rounds,” a 54-part installation in the visual art gallery of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and “Whitfield Lovell: The Kin Series and Related Works,” a traveling exhibition currently on view at the Phillips Collection, have brought new attention to his work. The New York-based artist draws portraits of people featured in old discarded photographs taken between Emancipation and the modern Civil Rights era and often creates a narrative “tableaux” by pairing the images with found objects. This monograph coincides with the Phillips show and features a striking portfolio of Lovell’s “Kin” series, along with contributions by the exhibition’s curator Elsa Smithgall, and Sarah Lewis, among others.
  

   

   
     
   
  
  

  “Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers,” by Stephen Shames and Bobby Seale, with photographs by Stephen Shames (Harry N. Abrams, 256 pages). | Published Oct. 18, 2016, hardcover
  9. “Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers”
  The Black Panther Party was founded 50 years ago in October. Several books were published to mark the historic milestone celebrating the Black Power organization that sought racial justice, promoted social programs for the poor, and carried guns legally in self-defense against police aggression. This one offers first-hand insight from Bobby Seale, who co-founded the Panthers with the late Huey P. Newton, and an amazing assemblage of documentary photographs by Stephen Shames. Bold design choices—from the header typeface to the bright yellow accents throughout—visually define the volume. First person oral histories—from Seale, Kathleen Cleaver, Ericka Huggins, Khaled Raheem, Billy X Jennings, and Emory Douglas, the minister of culture who designed the group’s newspaper—fortify the book. The figures talk about everything: local chapters around the nation; the party’s free lunch program, free medical clinics, Liberation Schools, and newspaper; Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, Fred Hampton, and Bobby Hutton; members being jailed, accused of inciting a riot, firearms charges, murder, and more; the Free Huey and Free Bobby campaigns; and the party’s Ten Point Program, the principles for which it stood. Shames notes that while he is not ignoring negative aspects of the Panthers, the images focus on the positive and “deal with aspirations and vision.”
  “Bobby and I wrote this book with the future in mind. We believe that a look back at the role of the Black Panther Party during the turbulent 1960s will help us to better understand the present, and perhaps facilitate a brighter future.” — Stephen Shames, Power to the People
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “The Ecstasy of St. Kara,” by Kara Walker, with contributions by Reto Thüring and Beau Rutland, John Lansdowne, Tracy K. Smith, and photographs by Ari Marcopoulos (Cleveland Museum of Art, 79 pages). |
  Published Oct. 18, 2016, softcover
  10. “The Ecstasy of St. Kara”
  “The Ecstasy of St. Kara,” probes America’s history of racism and subjugation, issues familiar in the Kara Walker’s work. These drawings explore a much more expansive arc, considering the influence of religion and imagining a direct line from past injustices to contemporary challenges and police violence that have borne the Black Lives Matter movement. The title of the exhibition references “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,” a group of sculptures in a chapel in Rome. Walker made the work while she was in the city earlier this year. This catalog, coinciding with the artist’s current exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, is a work of art and captivating design unto itself. Within the sturdy kraft board covers are generous images of the exhibition works framed and in detail. The book begins and ends with multiple spreads of Walker’s drawings. Brief writings by the artist and curators complement the visuals.
  “This group of graphite and charcoal works, created in a burst of activity over three weeks in spring 2016, reflects ongoing questions I have about figuration—in addition to all the rest. They are related to how narratives of faith operate, and the enormous impact religion has had on colonizing and enslaving black people.” — Kara Walker, The Ecstasy of St. Kara
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “1971: A Year in the Life of Color,” by Darby English (University of Chicago Press, 286 pages). |
  Published Dec. 20, 2016, hardcover
  11. “1971: A Year in the Life of Color”
  Nearly a half century ago, there was a political and activist movement to gain agency for black artists and those who studied their work, within New York City’s major museums. A few years after these actions got underway, a desire to gain freedom of expression “from overt racial presentation” took hold among African American artists whose art was defined by color and abstraction. In this accessible, scholarly study, art historian and University of Chicago professor Darby English examines this modern phenomena through close consideration of two groundbreaking U.S. exhibitions: “Contemporary Black Artists in America” (1971) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and “The DeLuxe Show,” which was held a renovated former movie theater in a “poor” Houston neighborhood. The latter, featured in a racially diverse roster of artists—including Anthony Caro, Dan Christensen, Ed Clark, Sam Gilliam, Al Loving, Kenneth Noland, and William T. Williams—and was supported by the founders of the Menil Collection. Illustrated with documentary photographs, and full-color images of art and installation views, the book is rife with footnotes (periodically occupying more space on a page than the main text). The author’s rigor is an added plus for those who wish to delve further.
  “Certain that ‘no serious black artist today would accept to be include in an exclusively black show’ and that any exhibition he organized would have to include nonblack artists as well, (Peter) Bradley (an African American artist who was also an art dealer at the time) proposed a competing vision. ‘This selection,’ said Bradley, ‘breaks down the barriers that create this whole theory of blacks shows and white shows. The DeLuxe Show marks the first time that good black artists share the attention and the tribute with good [nonblack] artists.'” — 1971: A Year in the Life of Color
  

   

   
     
  
  

  “Alma Thomas,” co-edited by Ian Berry and Lauren Haynes (Prestel, 256 pages) |
  Published Dec. 22, 2016, hardcover
  12. “Alma Thomas”
  Alma Thomas (1891-1978) would have appreciated the beauty of this red, cloth-covered monograph. Co-edited by Ian Berry and Lauren Haynes, the fully illustrated catalog complements the first major museum survey of her work in two decades. The two-venue exhibition was presented this year at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College and the Studio Museum in Harlem. The book expands beyond the exhibition, offering a nearly encyclopedic accounting of Thomas’s work—more than 125 vibrant, colorful paintings and works on paper, many published for the first time. A number of studies appear adjacent to the finished paintings they inspired. A preface by Thelma Golden anchors the 256-page book and is followed by scholarly essays from Haynes, Nikki A. Greene and Bridget R. Cooks and specially commissioned artwork responding to Thomas’s oeuvre by contemporary artists Leslie Hewitt, Jennie C. Jones, Leslie Wayne and Saya Woolfalk.