Books selected by Jill Chisnell (Art, Architecture & Design Librarian).
African Artists: From 1882-Now
A groundbreaking A-Z survey of the work of over 300 modern and contemporary artists born or based in Africa.
Afro-Atlantic Histories
A colossal, panoramic, much-needed appraisal of the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories across six centuries.
Arthur Jafa: MAGNUMB
An essential overview of Jafa's sweeping, dynamic and disquieting video portraits of Black American life.
Barbara Earl Thomas: The Geography of Innocence
Barbara Earl Thomas's new body of work carries within it the sediments of history and grapples with race and the color line.
Barthélémy Toguo
Barthélémy Toguo is a multiple disciplinary artist whose work addresses migration, colonialism, race, exile and displacement.
Beyond the Black Atlantic
A groundswell of complex events around the globe have made discussion surrounding the Western Eurocentric, often prejudiced notion of Blackness even more relevant and controversial in recent years. Social conflicts in Western societies that were long thought to have been overcome such as those in the United States, for example have sparked new awareness among members of the Black community and simultaneously brought the idea of a global, polyphonic Black culture (the Black Atlantic) to the fore. Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at Kunstverein Hannover, Germany.
Dana Claxton
This book consolidates our understanding of Dana Claxton's dominant and recurring themes-indigenous history, culture, beauty and spirituality.
Darrel Ellis
The first monograph on Darrel Ellis' expressive transformations of photographic memory.
Devan Shimoyama: All the Rage
A painterly kaleidoscope of Black queer life Bright paint, sequins, rhinestones, fabric, feathers: the paintings of Pittsburgh-based artist and CMU professor Devan Shimoyama (born 1989) resemble midsummer night dreams of alternative masculinities.
Faith Ringgold: Politics / Power
Ringgold's most formative and influential political works are gathered in this beautifully designed clothbound volume.
Fantasy America
Contemporary artists revisit Warhol's 1985 love letter to America. Against the backdrop of nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the Black Lives Matter movement, the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election, these essays and artworks probe and challenge our perceptions of what America is and what it can become.
Hayao Miyazaki
A richly illustrated journey through the extraordinary cinematic worlds of beloved filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.
Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water
Thirty years in the making, Pindell’s titular project is presented in a beautiful clothbound volume.
Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands
A major survey of contemporary artist Hung Liu, whose layered portraits explore history and memory through the stories of marginalized figures.
The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Response
The first comprehensive collection of the words and works of artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).
Kara Walker: A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be
"A unique opportunity to encompass the celebrated and impacting universe of Kara Walker, this publication gathers together 600+ works on paper realized by the artist between 1992 and 2020--almost all of them being reproduced for the first time, as they come out from her until now zealously-guarded private archive."
Matthew Angelo Harrison
In his sculptures and installations, Matthew Angelo Harrison (b. 1989) engages with the legacies of racism and colonialism, parsing their contemporary connections to labor in the United States through an evolving visual language.
Mischief Making: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Art, and the Seriousness of Play by
In a gorgeously illustrated exploration of the art of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Mischief Making disproves any notion that play is frivolous. Deploying mischievous tactics, Yahgulanaas shines a spotlight on serious topics. As he investigates Indigenous and other worldviews, the politics of land, cultural heritage, and global ecology, his distinctive style stretches, twists, and flips the formlines of classic Haida art to create imagery that resonates with the graphic vitality of Asian manga.
No Humans Involved
This collection of artworks from a diverse group of artists provides a contemporary response to Jamaican scholar and theorist Sylvia Wynter's call to action, addressing the social divisions present today and exploring opportunities for social unity.
The Obama Portraits by
A richly illustrated celebration of the paintings of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
Painting Is a Supreme Fiction: Writings by Jesse Murry, 1980-1993
Presents the writings of artist and poet Jesse Murry (1948-1993), an extraordinary thinker who believed in the capacity of painting to hold the complexity of human meaning. This unprecedented collection brings together his published art criticism with previously unpublished philosophical writing and poetry from 1980 to his tragic death from AIDS-related illness at the age of forty-four. The result is a portrait of an original mind which sought to unite the histories of Romantic landscape painting with the realities of Black experience through "a belief in the restorative and creative powers of the imagination."
Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe
An unprecedented look at Nellie Mae Rowe's art as a radical act of self-expression and liberation in the post-civil rights-era South.
The Sculpture of William Edmondson: Tombstones, Garden Ornaments, and Stonework
William Edmondson (1874-1951) was the first African American sculptor to have a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality
Book sheds new light on an under-recognized visionary artist whose work has been central to The Museum of Modern Art's collection of time-based media art.
Theaster Gates: Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories, Reflections
A multidisciplinary look at the foremost archive of Black American visual culture, as recast by Theaster Gates.
Toyin Ojih Odutola: The UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi
This extraordinary illustrated story - Toyin Ojih Odutola's best-known body of work - chronicles the private lives of two fictional aristocratic Nigerian families, the UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi, if colonialist and slave-trade interventions had never disrupted the country.
Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?
Between Afrofuturism, fantasy and postcolonialism: the most comprehensive monograph to date on the fantastical worlds of Wangechi Mutu.
The "Black Art" Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism across Continents by
Reading African art's impact on modernism as an international phenomenon, The "Black Art" Renaissance tracks a series of twentieth-century engagements with canonical African sculpture by European, African American, and sub-Saharan African artists and theorists.
Art on the Frontline: Mandate for a People's Culture
Angela Davis' iconic 1985 essay on the role of art in social and racial liberation, responded to by artist Tschabalala Self 35 years later.
A Black Gaze : Artists Changing How We See by
"A groundbreaking, radical new study of the transformative cultural, aesthetic, & political shifts initiated by black contemporary artists inc. Arthur Jafa, Deanna Lawson, Dawoud Bey, etc. who are dismantling the white gaze and demanding that we see-and see blackness in particular-anew."
Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture by
A culmination of six years of multidisciplinary research by trans poet and curator Anaïs Duplan about the aesthetic strategies used by experimental artists of color since the 1960s to pursue liberatory possibility.
The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design
"The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design is a 21st century statement on the intersection of the future of African people with art, culture, technology, and politics. This collection enters the global debate on the emerging field of Afrofuturism studies with an international array of scholars and artists contributing to the discussion of Black futurity in the 21st century."
The Brilliance of the Color Black Through the Eyes of Art Collectors by
Art historian, art collector, curator, and writer Charles Moore takes you on an exquisite journey through the world of the Black artists who revolutionized contemporary art and the patrons who dedicated their lives to collecting their works.
The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In
n a definitive collection of original essays, scholars cover the span of Bechdel's career, placing her groundbreaking early work within the context of her more well-known recent projects.
Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid by
"The remarkable story of Sins Invalid, a performance project that centres queer disability justice."
the déjà vu: black dreams & black time by
"Gabrielle Civil mines black dreams and black time to reveal a vibrant archive of black feminist creative expressions. Emerging from the intersection of pandemic and uprising, the déjà vu activates forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech, and lyric essay into performance memoir."
How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity by
"Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly." So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as "rage," and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms.
Iconic Works of Art by Feminists and Gender Activists
In this book, contributors identify and explore a range of iconic works - "Mistress-Pieces" - that have been made by feminists and gender activists since the 1970s.
The Idea of the Avant Garde – And What It Means Today 2
The first volume of 'The Idea of the Avant Garde--And What It Means Today' provided a lively forum on the kinds of radical art theory and partisan practices that are possible in today's world of global art markets and creative industry entrepreneurialism. This second volume presents the work of another fifty artists and writers, exploring the diverse ways that avant-gardism develops reflexive and experimental combinations of aesthetic and political praxis.
Jewish Primitivism by
This book offers a new assessment of modern Jewish art and literature and shows how Jewish primitivism troubles the boundary between observer and observed, cultured and "primitive," colonizer and colonized.
Keith Haring's Line: Race and the Performance of Desire by
In one of the first book-length treatments of Haring's artistry, Ricardo Montez traces the drawn and painted line that was at the center of Haring's artistic practice and with which the artist marked canvases, subway walls, and even human flesh. Keith Haring's Line unites performance studies, critical race studies, and queer theory in an exploration of cross-racial desire in Haring's life and art.
Lessons from a Multispecies Studio: Uncovering Ecological Understanding and Biophilia through Creative Reciprocity by
A highly original book in which the author proposes an expanded field of aesthetics, guided by her philosophy and approach to working, through the ways that philosophy can be manifested in art. She demonstrates the depth and complexity that she brings to her work through a sustained and committed relationship to working with animals across multiple projects.
Love and Abolition: The Social Life of Black Queer Performance by
Examines queer performance and affective response in the Black radical tradition-using work by James Baldwin, Ntozake Shange, Sharon Bridgforth, and vanessa german-to demonstrate how love animates the contemporary prison abolition movement."
Museum of the Future: Now What?
What is the function of the museum in culture today? Leading culture makers offer perspectives for the new era ahead.
The Otherness of the Everyday: Twelve Conversations from the Chinese Art World during the Covid-19 Pandemic by
Jiang Jiehong seeks to understand the Covid-19 pandemic through interviews with leading figures of the Chinese art world during the summer of 2020.
Performance and Migration
TAs people from all backgrounds and cultures criss-cross the globe with an ever-growing series of pushes and pulls guiding their movements, this book explores contemporary artists who have responded to various forms of migration in their theatre, performance and multimedia work.
Pop Art and Beyond: Gender, Race, and Class in the Global Sixties
The first scholarly exploration of the role of gender, race and class, and their intersection in the production, reception and politics of global manifestations of pop during the Long Sixties.
Sex Ecologies
The first compendium of writing and art to present the case for the role of sex in environmental and social justice. Sex Ecologies explores pleasure, affect, and the powers of the erotic in the human and more-than-human worlds. Arguing for the positive and constructive role of sex in ecology and art practice, these texts and artistic research projects attempt nothing short of reclaiming the sexual from Western erotophobia and heteronormative narratives of nature and reproduction.
The Soul of a Nation Reader: Writings By and About Black American Artists, 1960-1980
"A comprehensive compendium of artists and writers confronting questions of Black identity, activism and social responsibility in the age of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, based on the landmark traveling exhibition."
What Are Exhibitions for? An Anthropological Approach by
Why do people go to exhibitions, and what do they hope to gain from the experience? What would happen if people were encouraged to move freely through exhibition spaces, take photographs and be playful? In this book, Inge Daniels explores what might happen if people and objects were freed from the regulations currently associated with going to an exhibition.