Deborah Willis, an expert on African American photography asks 18 writers, critics and film makers each to select a photograph of personal or historical significance and to read it for insights into the black experience.

The Paul R. Jones Collection is one of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive holdings of African American art in the world.  Jones, who was named by Art and Antiques as one of the top one hundredcollectors in the country, began buying paintings, prints, photographs, and sculpture four decades ago and has now amassed over fifteen hundred works, many of them by well-known artists. Among the sixty-six represented in A Century of African American Art are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Henry Osawa Tanner, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, and Hale Woodruff. Lavishly illustrated with over one hundred color photographs, this book provides an important resource for the study of the works included in the Jones collection, the artists who created them, as well as the social and historical contexts that engendered them. The volume brings together ten essays, which examine four issues in American art: portraiture and realism in relation to abstract expressionism, the implications of color, the role of narrative, and the concept of multiple originals. Each essay makes the intentional effort to de-race African American art--not to strip the work of its idiomatic cultural footing, but rather to situate it within the larger picture of the nation's history and cultural traditions. Reflecting the diversity of the collection itself, the contributors come from wide-ranging fields including American art, African American art, African art, art conservation, color theory, photography, and sociology.  Together, the eclectic selections make a major contribution to recontextualizing African American scholarship in the broadest sense, while also providing important insights into the Jones collection. Contributors are Marcia R. Cohen, Diana McClintock, Ann Eden Gibson, Winston Kennedy, Debra Hess Norris, Ikem Stanley Okoye, Sharon Pruitt, Carla Williams, and Margaret Andersen.

African Americans have for the most part been absent from Texas's photographic history. Scholarly texts on photography rarely mention black Texans, and few museums have catalogued or displayed their work. Portraits of Community redresses this situation by presenting more than two hundred powerful images of black Texans taken by a group of little-known black photographers and includes deatiled interviews with the men and women behind the cameras. Alan Govenar, a writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker in Dallas, has created a memorable book.

Recently, a number of cutting edge African American artists have investigated issues of race and American identity in their work, relying on the use of historical source material and the subversion of archaic media. This scrutiny of little known, yet uncannily familiar, racialized imagery by contemporary artists has created a renewed interest in the politics of nineteenth-century American art and the role of race in the visual discourse. Portraits of a People looks critically at images made of and by African Americans, extending back to the late 1700s when a portrait of African-born poet Phillis Wheatley was drawn by her friend, the slave Scipio Moorhead. From the American Revolution through the Civil War and on into the Gilded Age, American artists created dynamic images of black sitters. In their effort to create enduring symbols of self-possessed identity, many of these portraits provide a window into cultural stereotypes and practices. For example, while some of these pictures were undoubtedly of distinct, named individuals, many are now known by titles that reference only generalized types, such as Joshua Johnston's painting Portrait of a Man, c. 1805-10, or the silhouette inscribed "Mr. Shaw's blackman," cut around 1802 by the manumitted slave Moses Williams. By the middle of the nineteenth century, photography began to offer black sitters an affordable and accessible way to fashion an individual identity and sometimes obtain financial support, as in the case of the numerous cartes-de-visites produced during the 1860s and '70s that bear the image of the feminist activist Sojourner Truth above the text, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance." Portraits of a People features color reproductions of over 100 important portraits in various media, ranging from paintings, photographs, and silhouettes to book frontispieces and popular prints. Essays by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw consider silhouettes and African American identity in the early republic, photography and the black presence in the public sphere after the Civil War, and portrait painting and social fluidity among middle-class African American artists and sitters. This landmark publication will change the way that we view the images ofblacks in the nineteenth century.

Facing History is a catalog from the exhibition "Facing History: The Black Image in American Art 1710-1940 organized by The Corcoran Gallery of Art. It seeks to address how African Americans were portrayed in American artworks.

We live in the age of the individual. Every day, we're bombarded with depictions of the beautiful, successful, slim, socially conscious, and extroverted individual that our culture has decided is the perfect self, and we berate ourselves when we don't measure up. This model of the perfect self and the impossibly high standards it sets can be extremely dangerous. People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy, and unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression and suicide. Journalist and novelist Will Storr began to wonder about this perfect self that torments so many of us: Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell? To answer these questions, Storr takes the reader on a journey from the shores of Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California, the rise of narcissism and the "selfie" generation, and right up to the era of hyper-individualism in which we live now. Selfie tells the epic tale of the person we all know so intimately--because it's us.

This is the first monograph on Baltimore artist Amy Sherald (born 1973), and coincides with her first solo museum show at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Sherald, best known for her stunning and iconic portrait of Michelle Obama, makes paintings of African Americans she encounters on the street, in the grocery store or on the bus. "When I choose my models," the artist has said, "it's something that only I can see in that person, in their face and their eyes, that's so captivating about them." Through these vibrant, sometimes fantastical portraits, Sherald captures the essence of her particular subjects while engaging in broader dialogues about the black experience, the performance of race and the historic lack of nonwhite representation in the Western art canon. Set against a monochrome background and divorced of context, time and place, the life-sized, frontal figures are dressed in costumes and carry objects that indicate their daily activities or imagined or perceived selves. Although each subject--painted with sober realism--bears clear resemblance to the sitter, Sherald adds the props and clothing, conjuring the figure's possible alternate self, and hinting at the complexity and performance of identity and race.

What was the 'Classical Revolution' in Greek art? What were its contexts, aims, achievements, and impact? This book introduces students to these questions and guides them towards the answers. Andrew Stewart examines Greek architecture, painting, and sculpture of the fifth and fourth centuries BC in relation to the great political, social, cultural, and intellectual issues of the period.

Do we really know pornography when we see it? Pornography is condemned for being "too close" whilst erotica is defended as "leaving room for the imagination." And the art of the nude is treated as something much more special, located even further away from the potential of arousal. Art/Porn argues that these distinctions are based on an age-old antithesis between sight and touch, an antithesis created and maintained for centuries by art criticism. Art has always elicited a struggle between the senses, between something to be viewed and something to be touched, between visual and visceral pleasure. Images compel the senses in ways that are both taboo and intrinsic to art. Contemporary responses to images of the nude embody this longstanding tension. Our fears about the materiality of art when in close proximity to our own bodies exist alongside a regulation of sensory response which dates back to Antiquity. Art/Porn reveals how - from fondling statues in Antiquity to point-and-click Internet pornography - the worlds of art and pornography are much closer than we think.

In The Homoerotic Photograph, Allen Ellenzweig reminds us that photography has persistently captured the male gaze upon other men. Gathered here are 127 beautiful and provocative duotone photographs that reflect the wide-ranging history of male homoeroticism as revealed by the camera - amply suggesting spiritual, physical, and intellectual exchange between men. To accompany these images, Ellenzweig offers a detailed account of the multiple and complex meanings of the homoerotic, from the 1850s to today.

Uses iconic dandy and queer figures to explore relationships between homosexuality, modernism, and modernity.

Spanning more than a century of photography and film, Hard to Imagine is the first visual chronicle of the evolution of gay male image culture, from the canonical works of "art" photography and cinema to the private and often highly explicit productions of amateurs. This comprehensive work explores a vast, eclectic tradition in its totality, analyzing the aesthetics of the visual imagery, its production, circulation, and consumption, and broad social and legal implications.

Published in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, this book provides insight to the work of American artists and their unique studio spaces. Over 100 photographs with letters and other primary source materials (notes, sketchbook pages, invitations, etc.) offer an intimate perspective on the work and studios of over 100 significant American artists from the late 19th century to the 1970s. ARTISTS IN THEIR STUDIOS shows the evolution of studio spaces and by extension the public/private personae of the artists. It also informs the public about the holdings of the Smithsonian's Archives and creates an awareness of the value of these primary sources as historical evidence.

Artists at Work provides readers with a rare glimpse into the working studios of twenty of today's most important artists. Seidner beings the readers into the studios, displaying the working space, the tools, and the work-in-progress. For each artist, Seidner includes a striking black and white portrait, as well as color photographs of the studio and his reflections on his personal encounters with the artist. Among the artists featured are Jasper Johns, John Cage, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, Brice Marden, Richard Serra, and Chuck Close.

This retrospective provides an overview of the work of Peter Hujar, whose portraits earned him cult status before his early death in 1987. Hujar drew most of his subjects from among his friends, many of whom were celebrities in their own right: Divine, William Burroughs, David Wojnarowicz, Paul Thek and Robert Wilson. His formal black and white photographs could expose human vulnerability, loneliness and grief. These photographs were chosen from the estate to represent his work. Hripsime Viser writes about Hujar's work from a European perspective, while American critic Max Kozloff analyzes the artist's visual language. These essays are complimented by the recollections of friends and acquaintances from the art world such as Gary Schneider, Nan Goldin, Ann Wilson, and Fran Lebowitz.

Robert Mapplethorpe never concealed his interest in and passion for the human figure in all its sensuous manifestations. His celebrated black-and-white photographs from the later part of the 20th century reveled in the athletic body, the nude body, the exquisite body. This groundbreaking exhibition and its accompanying catalogue explore the relationship between the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe and Classical art, in particular through Mannerist engravings and sculpture. The pairing of works is among the first collaborations between the Guggenheim Museum and the State Hermitage Museum. Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition exemplifies the artist's rapport with the elongated and elaborate forms of Mannerist art, namely the study of the human body, highlighting the underlying classicism evident in the clarity and potency of all Mapplethorpe's subjects as well as their explosive energy. The classical ideal was not only a poetic inspiration but also an ethical model and, in his creative quest, Mapplethorpe described photography as "the perfect way to make a sculpture." The potency of love and Eros, which electrifies many of the Mannerist works shown here, is articulated again in the work of Mapplethorpe. The vital anatomical forms of his portraits of models such as bodybuilder Lisa Lyons and the statuesque Derrick Cross find their roots in Antiquity, and here they find their mirror in the likes of Jan Harmensz Muller's Sabine woman and Jacob Matham's Apollo. The Hermitage's superb collection of Italian painting and sculpture amply illustrates the course of Italian art from the Middle Ages to the 18th century and includes an impressive collection of Mannerist works. Approximately 50 Mannerist works from the Hermitage collection are paired with the same number of works by Mapplethorpe from the Guggenheim's collection, are several Italian, French and Flemish bronze sculptures from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Essays by the curators are included: Addressing the return to Classicism at the end of the 16th, 19th, and 20th centuries, Arkady Ippolitov discusses the obsession that defines both the work of Mapplethorpe and the Mannerists. Germano Celant's text further explores the influence this 16th-century style had on Mapplethorpe's artistic practice and sensibility, illuminating the artist's interest in the study of pure form as well as allegorical imagery. Articulated in both word and image, the catalogue also traces Mapplethorpe's complex relationship to the history of art more broadly, ranging from Neoclassicism to Surrealism, with comparisons to the work of Jacques-Louis David, Antonio Canova, Auguste Rodin, Man Ray, and more. A third essay by Guggenheim Curator Jennifer Blessing traces allegorical representations in 19th- and 20th-century photography, with references to Mapplethorpe's oeuvre.

Poetic and lush, Robert Rauschenberg's Combines present layers of complex and sometimes conflicting information. This approach, first explored by Rauschenberg in the early 1950s, proved prescient and has become increasingly relevant in the current age of cascading information, when even the most ground-breaking artists are referencing and sampling disparate elements to create new forms. The Combines suggest the fragility of definitions, the fluidity of materials and the complexity of forms that are characteristic of Rauschenberg's works. The artist's handling of materials provides a precise physical evolutionary link between the painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism and iconographical, subject-driven early Pop art. This book focuses on the works created roughly between 1954 and 1964, the most important decade in the artist's 50-year career, and constitutes the most complete survey of the Combines ever presented, as well as the most rigorous analysis of their political, social, autobiographical and aesthetic significance. An introductory essay by exhibition curator Paul Schimmel titled "Reading Rauschenberg" offers an iconographic analysis of the earlier Combines, based on in-depth conversations with the artist. Other texts help to contextualize the Combines, such as Thomas Crow's essay that calls them the major artistic statement of their time, and the one body of art that could simultaneously hold its own from de Kooning to Pop art.

Growing up in the 1950s, Tom Bianchi would head into downtown Chicago and pick up 25-cent "physique" magazines at newsstands. In one such magazine, he found a photograph of bodybuilder Glenn Bishop on Fire Island. "Fire Island sounded exotic, perhaps a name made up by the photographer," he recalls in the preface to his latest monograph. "I had no idea it was a real place. Certainly, I had no idea then that it was a place I would one day call home." In 1970, fresh out of law school, Bianchi began traveling to New York, and was invited to spend a weekend at Fire Island Pines, where he encountered a community of gay men. Using an SX-70 Polaroid camera, Bianchi documented his friends' lives in the Pines, amassing an image archive of people, parties and private moments. These images, published here for the first time, and accompanied by Bianchi's moving memoir of the era, record the birth and development of a new culture. Soaked in sun, sex, camaraderie and reverie, Fire Island Pines conjures a magical bygone era. Tom Bianchi was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago and graduated from Northwestern University School of Law in 1970. He became a corporate attorney, eventually working with Columbia Pictures in New York, painting and drawing on weekends. His artwork came to the attention of Betty Parsons and Carol Dreyfuss and they gave him his first one-man painting show in 1980. In 1984, he was given his first solo museum exhibition at the Spoleto Festival. After Bianchi's partner died of AIDS in 1988, he turned his focus to photography, producing Out of the Studio, a candid portrayal of gay intimacy. Its success led to producing numerous monographs, including On the Couch, Deep Sex and In Defense of Beauty.

What is common to all portrait photographs is a situational element. In portrait photography, the presence of the photographers gaze also becomes an integral part of what the picture is about- the activity of one person looking, manifested in a moment that can feel like the blink of an eye or a small eternity. This book offers for the first time a complete text that combines the theoretical with the practical.

Since the announcement of photography's invention in 1839, various methods of making photographs have been practiced. Until the advent of digital photography at the end of the twentieth century, all of these methods required three elements: light-sensitive materials that behave predictably in response to light; chemicals that control and fix the action of light to create an image; and a support upon which the image rests. Photographers and others have continually explored and refined these basic requirements in their quest to expand the artistic and technological possibilities of photography.This book describes in a clear, accessible manner the main photographic and photomechanical processes (some still in practice) from the origins of the medium up to the time when the use of chemicals and a darkened room in which to process photographs was gradually superseded by the advent of digital photography.This elegant guide will prove invaluable to students, photographers, museum visitors, collectors, and anyone interested in the rich and fascinating history of photography.The book includes work by Euge`ne Atget, Robert Frank, Laura Gilpin, Andre´ Kerte´sz, Helen Levitt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, William Henry Fox Talbot, Andy Warhol, Edward Weston.

This generously illustrated volume gathers together the most important images of the male nude from the invention of photography to the present day.

Photographer Jorge Lewinski provides readers with a survey of the use of the nude in the history of photography. His book explores the various ways nudes have been portrayed in photographs.

Down winding tunnels and across gritty subway platforms, through her writing, both gritty and raw, Kole introduces an unforgettable cast of characters in a world that millions pass through, but few know well. The chapters are informal, intimate diary entries, jotted down at midnight after long sessions underground.

This stunning collection of photographic portraits traces US history through the lives of well-known abolitionists, artists, scientists, writers, statesman, entertainers, and sports figures. Drawing on the photographic collections of the National Portrait Gallery, author Deborah Willis explores how these images--many by famous photographers--reveal the nation's history through an African American lens and challenge us all to uphold America's highest ideals and promises. Let Your Motto Be Resistance is the inaugural publication of the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

This highly anticipated book showcases the work and voices of an exciting selection of artists shaping the conversation about contemporary art in the United States today Since its introduction in 1932, the Whitney Biennial--the Museum's signature exhibition--has charted new developments in contemporary art. The 2019 Biennial is curated by members of the museum's curatorial staff Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, well-known in the contemporary art world for their track records of working with emerging artists and producing historically minded exhibitions. The book features process images and source material from each of the Biennial participants, in addition to a commissioned text on each artist and essays by the curators on the themes of the exhibition.   Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney's Alice Pratt Brown Director, notes, "The Biennial is a tradition that goes back to the institution's historical roots while providing us with a barometer of the new. Pushing beyond what is comfortable, presenting diverse approaches to artmaking, and understanding that art can never be severed from the world at large have become the hallmarks of the Biennial." Coming in the midst of dramatic shifts in the cultural, social, and political landscapes, this book will serve as an important resource on present-day trends in contemporary art in the United States.

If one street in America can claim to be the most infamous, it is surely 42nd Street. Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 42nd Street was once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers and movie houses. Over the last two decades the notion of safety-from safe sex and safe neighborhoods, to safe cities and safe relationships-has overcome 42nd Street, giving rise to a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes. 42nd Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester, and New Jersey's suburbs. Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there: the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being "renovated" behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as "family values." Unless we overcome our fears and claim our "community of contact," it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.

Do we really know pornography when we see it? Pornography is condemned for being "too close" whilst erotica is defended as "leaving room for the imagination." And the art of the nude is treated as something much more special, located even further away from the potential of arousal. Art/Porn argues that these distinctions are based on an age-old antithesis between sight and touch, an antithesis created and maintained for centuries by art criticism. Art has always elicited a struggle between the senses, between something to be viewed and something to be touched, between visual and visceral pleasure. Images compel the senses in ways that are both taboo and intrinsic to art. Contemporary responses to images of the nude embody this longstanding tension. Our fears about the materiality of art when in close proximity to our own bodies exist alongside a regulation of sensory response which dates back to Antiquity. Art/Porn reveals how - from fondling statues in Antiquity to point-and-click Internet pornography - the worlds of art and pornography are much closer than we think.

A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies is the first single volume survey of current discussions taking place in this rapidly developing area of study. Recognizing the multidisciplinary nature of the field, the editors gather new essays by an international team of established and emerging scholars Addresses the politics, economics, history, and cultural impact of sexuality Engages the future of queer studies by asking what sexuality stands for, what work it does, and how it continues to structure discussions in various academic disciplines as well as contemporary politics

In eight smart, provocative essays, writer and artist Goldberg (The Photographer) examines queer art - literary, visual, and performance-based - and questions the value of fraught, slippery labels such as queer that are variously deployed and interpreted. Goldberg shows the limits of labels, observing that calling art queer" excludes certain art that shares quite a lot with queer art. They remind readers that identities, and communities - the multiplicities of art and humankind - resist being reduced to easy, well-bounded categories. Goldberg effectively queers readers' perspective on consuming and producing cultural products, reminding them to recursively look at language, their contexts, and what their purposes may be when they include and exclude: "Labeling art and writing 'queer' affirms the power of those who are consistently silenced." This book is a passport to the bold, complex world of queer art, literature, theory, politics, and community. (Sept.)Copyright 2016 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.This book might contain the seeds of queer canon, which is sorely needed. Certainly any canon can be expanded but let's start somewhere. Let's start here. Ariel understands the limits and demands of definitions and refuses to be a spokesperson, and what felt a bit policing in the beginning feels much less so by the end. - Kenyatta Jean-Paul Garcia "Tarpaulin Sky""The Estrangement Principle argues for a wider range of possible associations with art made by queer people by unraveling the difficulties of the queer art label. Goldberg invokes the lives and works of artists Renee Gladman, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Jack Waters & Peter Cramer, and others to bring into focus the problematics of categorization in art and literary histories. This book-length essay mixes cultural criticism, close readings, and personal anecdotes, all the while developing a deftly wrought tension between a polemical voice and one of ambivalence. The Estrangement Principle is an exercise in contradiction with the ultimate goal of resisting the practice of movement naming."|ARIEL GOLDBERG'S publications include The Photographer, Picture Cameras and The Photographer without a Camera. They have received a research fellowship at the New York Public Library's Wertheim Study and a Franklin Furnace Fund grant for a series of performances and slideshows. They have been an artist in resident at Headland's Center for the Arts, The Invisible Dog, Residencias Artisticas Intercambios and SOMA in Mexico City."

"I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself, and myself only." When, in the fall of 1987, the poet Quincy Troupe traveled to the south of France to interview James Baldwin, Baldwin's brother David told him to ask Baldwin about everything-Baldwin was critically ill and David knew that this might be the writer's last chance to speak at length about his life and work. The result is one of the most eloquent and revelatory interviews of Baldwin's career, a conversation that ranges widely over such topics as his childhood in Harlem, his close friendship with Miles Davis, his relationship with writers like Toni Morrison and Richard Wright, his years in France, and his ever-incisive thoughts on the history of race relations and the African-American experience. Also collected here are significant interviews from other moments in Baldwin's life, including an in-depth interview conducted by Studs Terkel shortly after the publication of Nobody Knows My Name. These interviews showcase, above all, Baldwin's fearlessness and integrity as a writer, thinker, and individual, as well as the profound struggles he faced along the way. From the eBook edition.

Published in conjunction with the multi-location retrospective of Chances Dances in Chicago, Illinois.

Over 40 years ago, Andy Warhol promoted the concept that artists are celebrities, just as worthy of portrayal as other cultural icons. Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists begins where Warhol left off. Presenting visually striking and conceptually diverse works in a range of mediums, Likeness is the first exhibition and catalogue to propose a recent history of artists' representations of other artists--of friends, peers, and idols. While any portrait is both a document and a personal record of the relationship between the artist and his or her subject, blurring distinctions between public and private, portraits of artists further enrich the situation; they commemorate and concretize the intimate social dramas of the art world and the economies of exchange. Selected here are over 50 paintings, drawings, photographs, and works in other media, created by a loose network of artists primarily active in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Berlin during the past three decades. Included are works by David Armstrong, AA Bronson, Bruce La Bruce, Chuck Close, Tacita Dean, Sam Durant, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Richard Hamilton, Mike Kelley, Sean Landers, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Misrach, Dave Muller, Paul Noble, Julian Opie, Elizabeth Peyton, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Wolfgang Tillmans, James Welling, and others.

Aus Wikipedia. Nicht dargestellt. Auszug: Rennertshofen is a municipality in the district of Neuburg-Schrobenhausen in Bavaria in Germany. ...http://booksllc.net/?l=de

In these ten intertwined essays, one of our most provocative young novelists proves that she is just as stylish and outrageous an art critic. For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the Mona Lisa and Virginia Woolf's The Waves, she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us. "Art Objects is a book to be admired for its effort to speak exorbitantly, urgently and sometimes beautifully about art and about our individual and collective need for serious art."--Los Angeles Times