Mary Schmidt Campbell

A celebratory visual chronicle of the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves Spanning over two centuries from around 1800 to the present day, Black American Portraits chronicles the ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves in their own eyes. Remembering Two Centuries of Black American Art, curated by David C. Driskell at LACMA 45 years ago, this book is a companion to the exhibition of the same name that reframes portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters and spaces. This selection of approximately 140 works from LACMA’s permanent collection highlights emancipation, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, multiculturalism of the 1990s and the spirit of Black Lives Matter. Countering a visual culture that often demonizes Blackness and fetishizes the spectacle of Black pain, these images center love, abundance, family, community and exuberance. Black American Portraits depicts Black figures in a range of mediums such as painting, drawing, prints, photography, sculpture, mixed media and time-based media. In addition to work by artists of African descent, Black American Portraits includes several works by artists of other backgrounds who have exemplified a thoughtfulness about, sensitivity toward and commitment to Black artists, communities, histories and subjects. Artists include: Alvin Baltrop, Edward Biberman, Bisa Butler, Jordan Casteel, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Bruce Davidson, Stan Douglas, rafa esparza, Shepard Fairey, Charles Gaines, Sargent Claude Johnson, Deana Lawson, Kerry James Marshall, Alice Neel, Lorraine O'Grady, Catherine Opie, Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Henry Taylor, Tourmaline, Mickalene Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles White, Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Willis.

Selections from the extraordinary Studio Museum in Harlem Collection, accompanying the highly anticipated opening of the institution’s first-ever purpose-built museum Meaning Matter Memory is a keepsake extension of the Studio Museum’s collection of artwork by artists of African descent. Beautiful illustrations of significant works by more than 250 artists are accompanied by original texts from more than 100 voices in the art world, including writers, scholars, artists, and critics.Celebrating myriad voices and artistic media, styles, and eras, this handbook glimpses into the profound and manifold artistic achievements made by Black artists for over 200 years. The book exhibits and carries forward a principal tenet of the Studio Museum’s mission: to serve as the stewards of the work – old, new, and still to be created – by artists of African descent.Featuring work by: Derrick Adams, Emma Amos, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Jordan Casteel, Elizabeth Catlett, Nick Cave, Samuel Fosso, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Barkley L. Hendricks, Arthur Jafa, Rashid Johnson, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Gordon Parks, Martin Puryear, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Augusta Savage, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many more.

As featured in The Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Holiday Gift Books: Fine Art The definitive monograph of Sam Gilliam one of the great innovators in post-war American painting An African American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Sam Gilliam blazed a trail with his singular artistic vision. Gilliam emerged from the Washington, DC art scene in the mid 1960s with works that disrupted established artistic norms and styles. Relentlessly experimental and inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, Gilliam’s lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials. This book, made in close collaboration with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, is the first to comprehensively survey the breadth of his extraordinary career, and features never-before-seen archival materials an insightful newly commissioned texts that shine light on the artist, his life, and his work, together with examples of Gilliam's work spanning five decades.

One of the most important and underappreciated visual artists of the twentieth century, Romare Bearden started as a cartoonist during his college years and emerged as a painter during the 1930s, at the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance and in time to be part of a significant community of black artists supported by the WPA. Though light-skinned and able to "pass, " Bearden embraced his African heritage, choosing to paint social realist canvases of African-American life. After World War II, he became one of a handful of black artists to exhibit in a private gallery-the commercial outlet that would form the core of the American art world's post-war marketplace. Rejecting Abstract Expressionism, he lived briefly in Paris. After he suffered a nervous breakdown, Bearden returned to New York, turning to painting just as the civil rights movement was gaining ground with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education and the Montgomery bus boycott. By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, Bearden had begun to experiment with collage-or Projection, as he called it-the medium for which he would ultimately become famous. In An American Odyssey, Mary Schmidt Campbell offers readers an enlightening analysis of Bearden's influences and the thematic focus of his mature work. Bearden's work provides an exquisite portrait of memory and the African American past; according to Campbell, it also offers a record of the narrative impact of visual imagery in the twentieth century, revealing how the emerging popularity of photography, film and television depicted African Americans during their struggle to be recognized as full citizens of the United States.