The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture
1986
Jacob Lawrence, Lou Stovall Workshop, Inc., Amistad Research Center
(American, 1917–2000)
America
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The Ecstasy of Saint Kara: Kara Walker, New York
By Reto Thüring, Beau Rutland, Kara Walker, John Lansdowne, Tracy K. Smith Photos by Ari Marcopoulos Over the past two decades, Kara Walker has relentlessly examined racial injustice in the United States both past and present. The Ecstasy of St. Kara debuts Walker’s most recent artworks, a series of large-scale drawings on paper. Stemming from her time at an artist’s residency in Rome, the new works echo that city’s long and tumultuous history––its complicated layering of cultures, traditions, and religions, especially Christianity. The new drawings question the notion of history itself, and examine how Walker envisions the rise and fall of society. Richly illustrated, this publication includes plates of each drawing as well as intimate photographs of the artist at work taken by her partner, acclaimed artist and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos. An introduction by Reto Thüring and Beau Rutland contextualizes the importance of this latest evolution within Walker’s oeuvre; John Lansdowne addresses the topic of Christian iconography and its relationship to Walker’s new drawings; and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith contributes a new poem. In addition, a text by Walker considers her work within the recent political climate." 80 pages Published 2016
Collusions of Fact and Fiction
by Ilka Saal Collusions of Fact and Fiction traces a generational shift in late twentieth-century African American cultural engagements with the history and legacies of transatlantic slavery. With a focus on works by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and visual artist Kara Walker, the book explores how, in comparison to the first wave of neo-slave narratives of the 1970s and 1980s, artists of the 1990s and early 2000s tend to approach the past from the vantage point of a liberal entanglement of fact and fiction as well as a highly playful, often humorous, and sometimes irreverent signifying on entrenched motifs, iconographies, and historiographies. Saal argues that the attempt to reconstruct or recuperate the experience of African Americans under slavery is no longer at stake in the works of artists growing up in the post–Civil Rights era. Instead, they lay bare the discursive dimension of our contemporary understanding of the past, and address the continued impact of its various verbal and visual signs upon contemporary identities. In this manner, Parks and Walker stake out new possibilities for engaging the past and inhabiting the present and future. Published 2021
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by Grace Stanislaus Foreword by Jonathan Green For over fifty years, John and Vivian Hewitt visited galleries, artists' studios, and exhibitions in the United States, the Caribbean, and elsewhere in the Americas, collecting hundreds of paintings, etchings, and sketches. The John and Vivian Hewitt Collection of African-American Art represents fifty-eight works that celebrate the expression and passion of twenty artists, including Romare Bearden, Margaret Burroughs, Jonathan Green, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Ann Tanksley, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. The Hewitts believed that sharing their collection with the public would enhance the visibility of artists of African descent and showcase their cultural contributions. The Hewitt Collection was subsequently acquired by the Bank of America and generously donated to The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina. This book contains all fifty-eight works from the collection, exquisitely reproduced in full color. Grace C. Stanislaus provides a text on the significance of the collection that is supplemented by interviews with Vivian Hewitt, David Taylor of the Gantt Center, and art collectors Harmon and Harriett Kelley, and Nancy Washington. 240 pages Published 2017
The Black Index
by Bridget R Cooks (Editor), Sarah Watson (Editor)The artists featured in The Black Index—Dennis Delgado, Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas—build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Their translations of photography challenge the medium’s long-assumed qualities of objectivity, legibility, and identification. Using drawing, sculpture, and digital technology to transform the recorded image, these artists question our reliance on photography as a privileged source for documentary objectivity and historical understanding. The works featured here offer an alternative practice—a Black index. In the hands of these six artists, the index still serves as a finding aid for information about Black subjects, but it also challenges viewers’ desire for classification and, instead, redirects them toward alternative information. 128 pagesPublished November 2nd, 2021
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