Commemorate Black History Month with these 2019 Staff Picks

Betye Saar: Uneasy Dancer

Published by Fondazione Prada.
Edited with text by Mario Mainetti, Chiara Costa, Elvira Dyangani Ose. Foreword by Miuccia Prada, Patrizio Bertelli. Text by Richard J. Powell, Deborah Willis, Kellie E. Jones.

Uneasy Dancer brings together over 80 works including installations, assemblages, collages and sculptures by the pioneering Los Angeles artist Betye Saar (born 1926) produced between 1966 and 2016. This handsomely designed volume presents Saar’s work as a copiously illustrated timeline, with numerous documentary images and exhibition details.

“Uneasy Dancer” is an expression Saar has used to define both herself and her artistic practice: “my work moves in a creative spiral with the concepts of passage, crossroads, death and rebirth, along with the underlying elements of race and gender.” Through her use of found objects, personal memorabilia and derogatory images that evoke denied or distorted narratives, Saar developed a powerful social critique that challenges racial and sexist stereotypes deeply rooted in American culture.

PUBLISHER
Fondazione Prada

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.5 x 10 in. / 320 pgs / 500 duotone.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/28/2017
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Catalog: SPRING 2017 p. 114   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788887029673 SDNR30
List Price: $55.00 CDN $72.50

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Black Fire! New Spirits!

Images of a Revolution: Radical Jazz in the USA 1960-75

Published by Soul Jazz Books.
Edited by Stuart Baker.

At the start of the 1960s, jazz entered a unique period of revolution as African-American musicians redefined the art form in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, Afro-centric rhythm and thought and an ideology of black economic empowerment. John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler and others developed a new cosmology of sound that was as revolutionary as the social and political changes that took place in America throughout the decade. From the musical explorations of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman to the collective and community concerns of Chciago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the black science fiction of Sun Ra, the new jazz musicians created a musical and cultural landscape from which jazz never looked back. This large-format deluxe hardback book features hundreds of stunning photographs of the new jazz musicians in the USA throughout the 1960s, presented with an introductory essay and biographies on the many artists included in the book.

PUBLISHER
Soul Jazz Books

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 12.5 x 12.5 in. / 192 pgs / 75 color / 125 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 5/31/2014
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Catalog: SPRING 2014 p. 65   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780957260016 TRADE
List Price: $49.95 CDN $67.50

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In stock

Charles White: Black Pope

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Text by Esther Adler.

The Chicago-born artist Charles White (1918–79) was celebrated during his lifetime for depictions of African-American men, women and children that acquired the name “images of dignity. White’s draftsmanship, his direct address of the social and political concerns of his time, and his commitment to media that gave his art wide circulation established him as a major artist, and one with significant influence both on his contemporaries and on later generations.

Beginning with White’s early days as an artist in the Chicago of the 1930s and ’40s, moving through his time spent developing his craft in New York in the late 1940s and ’50s, and closing with his final decades as a revered figure in Los Angeles, Charles White: Black Pope explores the artist’s practice and strategies through consideration of key works. It devotes particularly close examination to his late masterwork Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man)," in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. By creating visually compelling, ideologically complex works that engage audiences on many levels, White established himself as a key figure of his time, one whose work continues to resonate today."

Esther Adler is Assistant Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

PUBLISHER
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9 x 10.5 in. / 72 pgs / 35 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/24/2017
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Catalog: SPRING 2017 p. 88   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781633450271 TRADE
List Price: $26.95 CDN $37.00

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In stock

Gordon Parks: The New Tide

Early Work 1940–1950

Published by Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/National Gallery of Art.
Edited by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip Brookman. Foreword by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Earl A. Powell III. Introduction by Sarah Lewis. Text by Maurice Berger, Philip Brookman, Richard J. Powell, Deborah Willis.

The emergence of a social conscience in rarely seen images from Parks' formative years

PUBLISHER
Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation/National Gallery of Art

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 9.75 x 11.5 in. / 304 pgs / 42 color / 126 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/20/2018
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Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 16   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783958294943 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CDN $92.00

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In stock

Jack Whitten: Odyssey

Sculpture 1963–2017

Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co..
Text by Katy Siegel, Kelly Baum, Jack Whitten, Richard Shiff, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kellie Jones. Interview with Courtney Martin.

Jack Whitten was one of the most important artists of his generation. His paintings range from figurative work addressing civil rights in the 1960s to groundbreaking experimentation with abstraction in the '70s, '80s and '90s to recent work memorializing black historical figures such as James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Whitten began carving wood in the 1960s in order to understand African sculpture, both aesthetically and in terms of his own identity as an African American, and continued developing this practice throughout his life. For the first time ever, these revelatory works are collected in Odyssey, accompanying a landmark exhibition coorganized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Odyssey features the sculptures made by Whitten over the past 50 years, as well as the Black Monolith series of paintings, and Whitten's own archival photographs documenting his life and process. The catalog includes major new texts from exhibition curators Katy Siegel and Kelly Baum, as well as contributions from philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, art historians Richard Shiff and Kellie Jones, a lengthy biographical interview with Whitten by art historian Courtney J. Martin and the essay "Why Do I Carve Wood?" by the artist himself.

Gorgeously illustrated with hundreds of illustrations and never-before-published photographs, Odyssey is a landmark exploration of one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, and a monument to a life and career that, as described by the Washington Post, "enriched the abstract tradition in Western art with fresh political and spiritual content."

PUBLISHER
Gregory R. Miller & Co.

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.5 in. / 192 pgs / 161 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 6/12/2018
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Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 43   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781941366172 TRADE
List Price: $55.00 CDN $72.50 GBP £50.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Edited by Leah Dickerman, Elsa Smithgall. Text by Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams, Kevin Young.

Lawrence's landmark series on African American migration in context

PUBLISHER
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9.5 x 12 in. / 192 pgs / 77 color / 25 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/28/2017
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DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2017 p. 15   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781633450400 TRADE
List Price: $35.00 CDN $47.50

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Jamel Shabazz: Sights in the City, New York Street Photographs

Published by Damiani.
Introduction by Marla Hamburg Kennedy. Interview by Cheryl Dunn.

During the summer of 1980, under the direction of his photographer father, Jamel Shabazz armed himself with a Canon AE1 SLR camera and began to photograph the landscape of his native New York City. Photographing in the streets put Shabazz right in the heart of all of the action; he carried his camera everywhere he went, from Harlem to Times Square, the Lower East Side to downtown Brooklyn, always set and at the ready. Like a fisherman seeking a fruitful catch, Shabazz ventured into locations full of life and uncertainty in hopes of capturing a unique moment. Consisting of 120 color and black-and-white photographs taken between 1985 and the 2000s, most of which have never been published, Sights in the City is the testament of Shabazz’s visual journey.

New York–based Jamel Shabazz (born 1960) is a documentary, fashion and street photographer. Since first picking up the camera nearly 40 years ago he has authored seven monographs (including the popular volume Back in the Days) and exhibited worldwide; his work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, The Smithsonian and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

PUBLISHER
Damiani

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 11.5 x 9.15 in. / 160 pgs / 70 color / 50 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 4/25/2017
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Catalog: SPRING 2017 p. 28   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788862085229 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CDN $67.50

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In stock

Jill Freedman: Resurrection City, 1968

Published by Damiani.
Edited by Steven Kasher. Text by Jill Freedman, John Edwin Mason, Aaron Bryant.

The climax of Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign

PUBLISHER
Damiani

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 12 in. / 176 pgs / 141 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/27/2018
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Catalog: SPRING 2018 p. 39   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788862085830 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CDN $60.00

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In stock

Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me

Published by Wexner Center for the Arts.
Foreword by Sherri Geldin. Text by Nicole R. Fleetwood, Michael Goodson, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Antwaun Sargent.

Presenting paintings of some of the artist's key models and muses, I Can't See You Without Me illuminates the work of Brooklyn painter Mickalene Thomas (born 1971). Culling from art history and popular culture, Thomas creates scintillating portraits that deconstruct the highly charged connections between sitter, artist and viewer. Whether depicted as classically composed 19th-century odalisques, Afro-adorned vixens of blaxploitation films or as a powerful maternal figure yearning for social mobility, the recurring models in Thomas' compositions (almost exclusively women of color) convey a spirit of strength and self-confidence. Across this archetypal array, it is both their contradictions and kinships that make the black female body such fertile terrain for the artist's ongoing investigations. By casting herself, her late mother and other formidable women in her life as models, muses and collaborators, Thomas particularizes her distinctive oeuvre of portraiture. Focused yet expansive, the catalog both reasserts and further contextualizes issues of identity, sexuality and agency in Thomas' work that have only become more nuanced and palpable over time.

PUBLISHER
Wexner Center for the Arts

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8.5 x 11 in. / 128 pgs / 40 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/20/2018
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Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 54   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781881390572 TRADE
List Price: $39.95 CDN $53.95 GBP £35.00

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In stock

Muhammad Ali: Fighter's Heaven 1974

Photographs by Peter Angelo Simon

Published by Reel Art Press.
Foreword by D.A. Pennebaker.

In this previously unpublished photo-essay, the legendary boxer Muhammed Ali is captured up close and unguarded in the run-up to the "Rumble in the Jungle"

PUBLISHER
Reel Art Press

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.5 x 11 in. / 176 pgs / 105 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/23/2016
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Catalog: FALL 2016 p. 26   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781909526389 TRADE
List Price: $49.95 CDN $67.50

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In stock

Separate Cinema: The First 100 Years of Black Poster Art

Published by Reel Art Press.
Edited by John Duke Kisch, Tony Nourmand. Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Text by John Duke Kisch, Peter Doggett. Afterword by Spike Lee.

This magnificent volume is a celebration of the first 100 years of black film poster art. A visual feast, these images recount the diverse and historic journey of the black film industry from the earliest days of Hollywood to the present day, accompanied by insightful accompanying text, a foreword by black history authority and renowned academic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and an afterword by Hollywood director Spike Lee. These posters have meaning for young and old alike, and possess the power to transcend ethnicity. They capture the spirit and energy of an earlier time, reminding people of the pioneers of the past, those courageous and daring African American filmmakers, entertainers and artists whose dreams and struggles paved the way for future generations. The wealth of imagery on these pages is taken from the Separate Cinema Archive, maintained by archive director John Kisch. The most extensive private holdings of African-American film memorabilia in the world, it contains over 35,000 authentic movie posters and photographs from over 30 countries. This stunning coffee table book represents some of the archive's greatest highlights.

PUBLISHER
Reel Art Press

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.5 in. / 320 pgs / 270 color / 30 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/6/2014
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Catalog: FALL 2016 p. 177   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781909526068 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CDN $60.00

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In stock

Soul of a Nation

Art in the Age of Black Power

Published by D.A.P./Tate.
Edited with text by Mark Godfrey, Zoé Whitley. Contributions by Linda Goode Bryant, Susan E. Cahan, David Driskell, Edmund Barry Gaither, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Samella Lewis.

African American art in the era of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers

PUBLISHER
D.A.P./Tate

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.5 x 10 in. / 256 pgs / 203 color / 33 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 9/26/2017
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D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2017 p. 3   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781942884170 TRADE
List Price: $39.95 CDN $53.95

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Out of stock

Voguing and the Ballroom Scene of New York 1989-92

Photographs by Chantal Regnault

Published by Soul Jazz Books.
Edited by Stuart Baker.

Harlem’s gay ball subculture of the late 1980s is superbly documented in this trove of previously unseen photographs.

PUBLISHER
Soul Jazz Books

BOOK FORMAT
Flexi, 9 x 11.5 in. / 208 pgs / 40 color / 140 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 12/31/2011
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Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 7   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780955481765 TRADE
List Price: $39.99 CDN $53.95

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In stock

Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts

Published by Badlands Unlimited.
By Aruna D'Souza.

In 2017, the Whitney Biennial included a painting by a white artist, Dana Schutz, of the lynched body of a young black child, Emmett Till. In 1979, anger brewed over a show at New York’s Artists Space entitled The Nigger Drawings. In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Harlem on My Mind did not include a single work by a black artist. In all three cases, black artists and writers and their allies organized vigorous responses using the only forum available to them: public protest.

Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts reflects on these three incidents in the long and troubled history of art and race in America. It lays bare how the art world—no less than the country at large—has persistently struggled with the politics of race, and the ways this struggle has influenced how museums, curators and artists wrestle with notions of free speech and the specter of censorship. Whitewalling takes a critical and intimate look at these three “acts” in the history of the American art scene and asks: when we speak of artistic freedom and the freedom of speech, who, exactly, is free to speak?

Aruna D’Souza writes about modern and contemporary art, food and culture; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; how museums shape our views of each other and the world; and books. Her work appears regularly in 4Columns.org, where she is a member of the editorial advisory board, as well as in publications including the Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, Garage, Bookforum, Momus and Art Practical. D'Souza is the editor of the forthcoming Making it Modern: A Linda Nochlin Reader.

PUBLISHER
Badlands Unlimited

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6 x 9 in. / 160 pgs.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 5/22/2018
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D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2018 p. 87   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781943263141 TRADE
List Price: $19.99 CDN $27.95

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In stock