History of art Books
University of Texas Press The Accidental Archives of the Royal Chicano Air
Book SynopsisEmploying a creative mix of real and fictive events, objects, and people that subverts assumptions about the archiving and display of historical artifacts, this innovative book both documents and evokes an arts collective that played a significant role in the Chicano movement.Trade ReviewThe Accidental Archives of the Royal Chicano Air Force deftly transforms the Sacramento-based, Chicanx art collective’s history into an assemblage of artworks, essays, and documents based on a decade’s worth of material gleaned from interviewing, befriending, and working with its members...Sauer’s engagingly unique book is a welcome alternative to traditional narratives and academic archives. In it, she skillfully takes on the challenge of wrangling a history largely gleaned from conversations. While Sauer admits that the texts should not be 'looked upon as sources of historical truth,' her book nevertheless succeeds in channeling the RCAF’s spirit and voice while also helping to reclaim their role in both California and Chicanx history. * US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal *
£29.45
University of Texas Press The Burden of the Ancients
Book SynopsisDrawing on a wealth of evidence that ranges from Pre-Columbian texts to ethnographic accounts of contemporary rituals, a leading scholar traces the extensive continuity of pre-Hispanic elements in Maya ceremonies of world renewal.Trade ReviewAn important new contribution to the general study of enduring, ancient Maya traditions adapted to serve in modern times. * Choice *That the Maya continued to practice traditional beliefs within their Christianity is not novel, but the details, interviews, photos, and descriptions contained in this book's chapter's contribute a new and exciting window through which to glimpse this blending of worldviews. As a result, the work would be a beneficial read to all with scholarly interests in the Maya. * Hispanic American Historical Review *Christenson's distinct contribution lies in documenting the specific degree of blending of two entire ritual cycles rather than individual elements. For the Mesoamericanist, Christenson's book is well worth reading for his method and its content. * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *Much has been written about Mayan beliefs but little with the historical depth and ethnographic detail that Allen J. Christenson brings to The Burden of the Ancients...Christenson fills the book with personal ethnographic anecdotes that add richness to both the historical chapters and the contemporary descriptions of the Tz’utujil Mayas of Santiago Atitlán...This is an impressive work of scholarship. * Ethnohistory *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Pre-Columbian Rituals of World Renewal in Yucatan 2. New Year’s Ceremonies in the Maya Highlands 3. Easter and the Spanish Conquest 4. Post-Conquest Ceremonies of World Renewal 5. Holy Monday 6. Holy Tuesday 7. Holy Wednesday 8. Holy Thursday 9. Good Friday 10. Aftermath and Conclusions Bibliography Index
£66.60
University of Texas Press Flatbed Press at 25
Book SynopsisA visual feast for connoisseurs of contemporary printmaking, this lavishly produced volume presents a twenty-five-year retrospective of one of America’s premier artists’ printshops and the prominent and emerging artists who have worked there.Table of Contents Acknowledgments 1. Received, Printed, Impressed: Twenty-Five Years of Flatbed Press (Susan Tallman) 2. Thirty-Six Artists at Flatbed Press 3. Prints from Flatbed Press 4. Flatbed Press Chronology, 1989–2014 Appendix 1. Documentation of the Prints Appendix 2. List of Flatbed Press Artists Appendix 3. List of Flatbed Press Printers Appendix 4. Glossary of Printmaking Terms
£48.60
University of Texas Press Spectacular Wealth
Book SynopsisDrawing on archival research, this illuminating study shows how residents of all ethnicities in three colonial boomtowns used festivals to redefine wealth and present themselves as more than subjects of European power.Trade Review"In this carefully researched and thoughtfully crafted book, Lisa Voigt makes a compelling case against José Antonio Maravall's argument that civic festivals were among the key practices used by church and crown to direct the culture of the Hispanic world during the Baroque period." * Bulletin of the Comediantes *"[A] richly researched, methodologically original, and lucidly-written study of eighteenth-century Baroque festival culture in South America." * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *"Spectacular Wealth is an exceptionally well-documented and beautifully written book. In sum: a model of critical clarity." * Renaissance Quarterly *"Spectacular Wealth challenges us to analyze the multiplicity of the interventions and interpretations enacted in these festivals and to transcend the borders of any one empire on our scholarship." * Hispanic American Historical Review *"A well-constructed and complex narrative...Voigt has succeeded in bringing together first-hand eighteenth-century festival accounts with secondary sources and theories on diverse aspects of culture in colonial South America into a seamless narrative." * Portuguese Studies *"An important contribution to the discussion of race, religion, and wealth in colonial Latin America seen through festive cultural celebrations…Voigt does an outstanding job of truly integrating colonial Brazil in the examination of Spanish American colonial texts by looking at the important interconnections that exist among both." * Revista de Estudios Hispánicos *Table of Contents Introduction Part 1: Texts Chapter 1. In Praise of Follies: Creole Patriotism in the Festivals of Arzáns’s Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí Chapter 2. Celebrating Minas Gerais in Triunfo Eucharistico and Aureo Throno Episcopal Part 2: Celebrants Chapter 3. Festive Natives in Potosí, from Audience to Performance Chapter 4. “Nos Pretos como no Prelo”: Afro-Brazilians in Festivals, from Performance to Print Conclusion: Spectacular Tributes Notes Works Cited Index
£21.59
University of Texas Press At the Crossroads
Book SynopsisOffering a unique look at the controversies surrounding Diego Rivera's mural Man at the Crossroads, this book examines how Rivera's artwork represented conflicting ideas during the 1930s and how art is leveraged to enact change.Trade Review"Paquette's tight focus constructs a richly archival social history of one of the most famous works of Mexican art executed by one of its most canonical artists." * Latin American Research Review *"A strongly supported, clearly written account that brings together the views of previous authors which [Paquette] uses as a springboard for her own." * Bulletin of Latin American Research *"Paquette's microhistorical approach, attention to detail, and, most importantly, sensitivity to the nuance and instability of discourse in concept, word, and image make At the Crossroads an innovative and very welcome addition to the scholarly literature on Rivera, the Mexican mural movement, art and politics in the 1930s, and US-Mexican relations." * Hispanic American Historical Review *
£21.59
University of Texas Press Portable Borders
Book SynopsisAfter World War II, the concept of borders became unsettled, especially after the rise of subaltern and multicultural studies in the 1980s. Art at the U.S.-Mexico border came to a turning point at the beginning of that decade with the election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Beginning with a political history of the border, with an emphasis on the Chicano movement and its art production, Ila Sheren explores the forces behind the shift in thinking about the border in the late twentieth century.Particularly in the world of visual art, borders have come to represent a space of performance rather than a geographical boundary, a cultural terrain meant to be negotiated rather than a physical line. From 1980 forward, Sheren argues, the border became portable through performance and conceptual work. This dematerialization of the physical border after the 1980s worked in two opposite directions—the movement of border thinking to the rest of the world, as well as the importationTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: The Conceptual BorderChapter 2: The Portable BorderChapter 3: Re-Inscribing the BorderChapter 4: Post-Border?EpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex
£16.14
University of Texas Press Picturing the Proletariat
Book SynopsisSpanning the late Porfiriato to the end of the Cardenista reforms, this is a multifaceted exploration of the production of visual narratives that offered competing interpretations of gender, class, nationalism, and internationalism that came to define modern Mexican identity.Trade ReviewElegantly written...[Lear's] critical reading of the images is as sensitive to issues of gender as to distinctions of political affiliation and economic theory, and the study makes an important contribution to both visual culture studies and labor history. * CHOICE *With his focus on labour, interdisciplinary approach, and deep research, Lear has produced an original historical study that not only expands our knowledge of Mexico's revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras, but one that also provides engaging insights for those who study art history and labour history as well. * Bulletin of Latin American Research *Lear's interdisciplinary study will appeal to historians of art, labor, and twentieth-century Mexican cultural history…[Picturing the Proletariat] further demonstrates the commitment of middle-class Mexicans—teachers, professionals, students, and intellectuals—to fight for social justice on behalf of working people. * American Historical Review *Written in an engaging style and including a generous sampling of prints, Picturing the Proletariat is a major contribution to Mexican cultural history, to the history of Mexican art, and to the history of working-class culture generally. It will make readers better appreciate the influences that shaped Diego Rivera’s exalted representations of the proletarian man. * Labor: Studies in Working-Class History *[Lear's] illustrations…carry his narrative as well as the written text. His is a unique study of a popular culture in a society undergoing radical renovation. * New Politics *A piece of lucid and informative history…a fine, original, well-crafted study of the Mexican art and artists during the radical decades of the Mexican revolution. * Latin American Research Review *Even though [art, labor, and politics] dominate the historiography on modern Mexico, this thoroughly research and copiously illustrated book is a welcome addition. John Lear offers expert analysis of visual culture, a feature often lacking in the historical literature on labor politics...Lear's book will...reward experts and novices alike as the topic is inherently fascinating, and the illustrations exemplify the best of Mexico's proletarian art. * Hispanic American Historical Review *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction. Allegories of Work One. Saturnino Herrán, José Guadalupe Posada, and the Working Class on the Eve of Revolution Two. Workers and Artists in the 1910 Revolution Three. El Machete and Cultural and Political Vanguards Four. Consuming Labor: Revista CROM, Art Education, and La Lectura Preferida Five. Cardenismo, the Popular Front, and the League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers Six. The Mexican Electricians Union, the Art of the Strike and the Spanish Civil War Seven. "Unity at all costs!" and the End of Revolution Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index
£999.99
University of Texas Press Lettered Artists and the Languages of Empire
Book SynopsisUsing extensive and largely unpublished archival documentation, this major new work recovers the first century of artistic practice in colonial Quito, one of colonial South America's most important artistic centers.Trade ReviewBased on extensive archival research, [Webster's] study brings to light a veritable trove of new documents, in so doing radically altering understanding of the art profession in colonial Quito. . . . She challenges many assumptions about colonial Ecuadorian artists and makes a compelling argument for the vital role they played as cultural intermediaries who were masters of both the literary pen and the painterly brush. . . . Webster's prose is compelling and elegant. * CHOICE *Lettered Artists and the Languages of Empire will richly challenge students' established points of reference, in which task it is helped by its lucid language and clear organization...promises to be a premier English-language resource, and likely the most thoroughly researched one, on the art of colonial Quito for years to come. * Hispanic American Historical Review *An extremely important contribution to viceregal scholarship…[Webster's] meticulous study…importantly demonstrates the integraton of artists, materials, and languages that flourished from the very beginning of Quito's colonial existence. * Renaissance Quarterly *[A] significant new study of painters in early colonial Quito…Verdi Webster does the important work of recognizing quiteño artists, many of whose names are unfamiliar, as learned makers, entrepreneurs, and landowners. * Sixteenth Century Journal *This magnificent book is directed at a specialist audience; however, its contents will also be relevant to Latin Americanist historians of the period and to students of literacy in general. It contains superb color plates and is written in fluid prose. * The Americas *[Lettered Artists and the Languages of Empire] offers a compelling and innovative insight on the work of painters in sixteenth and seventeenth century Quito…By reconsidering in depth and with attention the extensive presence of indigenous painters in Quito and the vitality of their style comparatively to Western canons, Webster invites her readers to reconsider the interactions between ethnic groups in colonial Ecuador, offering a more complex and nuanced portrait of the relationship between colonial subjects and Spanish rulers. * Confraternitas *The painters of Quito were interpreters and intermediaries who communicated to multiple audiences and whom the languages of empires shaped in their creations and professional practices...Webster makes these lettered artists vital in their context, painting, and profession. * Renaissance and Reformation *It is an understatement to say that Susan Verdi Webster’s new book exponentially expands our knowledge of early colonial Quito artists, their working practices, and their socio-cultural milieu...Webster’s new book overturns previous notions about the anonymity of artists in early colonial Quito. * Ethnohistory *More than a Vasari-like gallery of greats, Webster reveals a whole hidden sector of colonial society, changing over time and venturing out to test new methods and forms, but also embedded within a Euro-Andean socio-cultural matrix. In more than just mining the archives for 'smoking gun' evidence of this or that interpretation of a puzzling piece, Webster deploys a lifetime’s worth of archival and other evidence to portray a dynamic city of diverse and versatile artists rather than the linear origins of a prosaic school...[a] benchmark book. * Revista Hispánica Moderna *This book will soon become a vital resource for scholars of colonial Ecuador and colonial Latin American art more widely…[Webster] provides a deep and well-founded analysis of painting in one colonial city that can now be compared with other areas and used to confirm or complicate prior assumptions. * Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies *A welcome and much-needed contribution to the field...In Lettered Artists and the Languages of Empire, Susan Verdi Webster rewrites the history of art in Quito during the early colonial period...The rich information collected in this volume not only corrects the art historical record, it also provides new and valuable material for scholars. * The Art Bulletin *An exhaustive and intensely illuminating excavation of Quito’s archives...Webster’s documentation of the artists active in Quito through the mid-seventeenth century will provide an enduring touchstone for future investigation...Illuminating the local intricacies of a global center, her study offers a nuanced story of early modern Andean mobilities, ambitions, and conceits. * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Contexts Chapter 1. Lettered Painters and the Languages of Empire Chapter 2. Materials, Models, and the Market Chapter 3. The Objects of Painting Chapter 4. Painters and the Profession Part II. Painters Chapter 5. First Generations, ca. 1550–1615 Chapter 6. Pintar la figura de la letra: Andrés Sánchez Gallque and the Languages of Empire Chapter 7. Later Generations, 1615–1650 Chapter 8. Mateo Mexía and the Languages of “Style” Final Considerations Appendix. Selected Transcriptions of Painting Contracts A. Melchor de Alarcón, Choir Books, 1572 B. Diego de Robles and Luis de Ribera, Virgin of the Rosary, 1586 C. Andrés Sánchez Gallque, Chimbo Altarpiece, 1592 D. Lucas Vizuete, Easel Paintings, 1626 E. Miguel Ponce, Altarpiece and Paintings, 1633 Glossary Notes Bibliography Index
£35.10
University of Texas Press Creating Patzcuaro Creating Mexico
Book SynopsisPresenting extensive archival research in a lively narrative, this study reveals how celebrated Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas mobilized cultural patronage and tourism in a project of nation building during the 1930s.Trade Review[Jolly's] thorough study on the Mexican town of Pátzcuaro reveals just how constructed geographic identities are through an attention to the players and politics involved in promotional projects...Jolly’s study reminds us that when we visit a charming colonial town or a rustic Indigenous village market, we enter spaces that have been extensively edited, that are anything but natural or neutral...While Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico provides a compelling way of understanding modern Mexico, its approach is of value for implementation elsewhere in Latin America and beyond...While complex and nuanced in its articulation, this book reminds us of something quite simple: that images and spaces in the service of statecraft wield incredible power, but this power remains open to negotiation and contestation. * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico is a much welcomed addition to Mexican regional history…[Jolly] brings to light how the periphery informed nation-state building. * The Public Historian *Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico makes important contributions to our understanding of 1930s Mexico, tourism development, art history, and the role of cultural policy in nation building. The book is essential for scholars interested in these fields and accessible for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. * Hispanic American Historical Review *A fascinating journey into art and tourism in Pátzcuaro...a welcome contribution to our understanding of regional art institutions and monuments, the interdisciplinary study of Mexican nation- and region-formation during the 1930s, and most importantly, the emergence of domestic tourism in postrevolutionary Mexico. * The Americas *Jolly's acute book is successful in giving us a comprehensive view of the mechanisms by which the image of Pátzcuaro was created through a process of power engineering...Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico demonstrates how history, art, and tourism can be combined and serve as a technology of governance. * caa.reviews *Through her consideration of visual culture, Jolly links the regional to the national (and the national to the regional), and thus effectively illuminates the ways in which the molding of Pátzcuaro's local identity contributed to Mexico's nation building overall. Jolly offers a significant study, but her colorful discussion of Pátzcuaro's art, murals, architecture, and streets ensure a lively read as well. * American Historical Review *As a compelling account of the creation of a particular historical and cultural narrative for Pátzcuaro in the context of building a national Mexican identity, Jolly's book constitutes both an excellent scholarly contribution and a fascinating and insightful story well worth reading. * Monthly Review *[A] magisterial study of cultural patronage and the construction of regional identity in Pátzcuaro...one of the most interesting new books on the history of modern Mexican art to appear in the past several years...It will long stand as the definitive account of this particular time and place...Jolly’s book sets a high bar for future scholars who seek to excavate the histories of these and other sites, where regional differences remain resilient, notwithstanding the forces of industrialisation and globalisation. * Bulletin of Latin American Research *Jolly’s study makes a useful contribution to research on and understanding of postrevolutionary nation-building and tourism in terms of the immense ideological power of public art, memorials, monuments and statues in Mexico. * Journal of Latin American Geography *[A] wonderful book…Richly illustrated...Jolly skillfully highlights the connections between the regional and the national…[and] skillfully interrogates elite ideas about Indians and race as Pátzcuaro’s indigenous past and present were propped up as tourist attractions. * Latin American Research Review *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Seeing Lake Pátzcuaro, Transforming Mexico Chapter 2. Creating Pátzcuaro Típico: Architecture, Historical Preservation, and Race Chapter 3. Creating the Traditional, Creating the Modern Chapter 4. Creating Historical Pátzcuaro Chapter 5. Creating Cárdenas, Creating Mexico Notes Bibliography Index
£66.60
University of Texas Press The Beast Between
Book SynopsisThe first book to focus on the multifaceted images of deer and hunting in ancient Maya art, from the award-winning author of To Be Like Gods: Dance in Ancient Maya Civilization.Winner, CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2019The white-tailed deer had a prominent status in Maya civilization: it was the most important wild-animal food source at many inland Maya sites and also functioned as a major ceremonial symbol. Offering an in-depth semantic analysis of this imagery, The Beast Between considers iconography, hieroglyphic texts, mythological discourses, and ritual narratives to translate the significance and meaning of the vibrant metaphors expressed in a variety of artifacts depicting deer and hunting.Charting the importance of deer as a key component of the Maya diet, especially for elites, and analyzing the coupling of deer and maize in the Maya worldview, The Beast Between reveals a close and long-term interdependenceTrade Review"The author makes important contributions here, especially to ongoing efforts to recover poorly understood aspects of ancient Maya mythology as revealed through scenes on painted pottery. Profusely illustrated, well written, and amply documented, this book can also serve as a rewarding entrée into broader subjects of ancient and modern Maya culture from archaeological, art historical, and ethnographic perspectives." * CHOICE *"[The Beast Between] provides an important addition to the overlapping fields of art history, anthropology, archaeology, and Maya studies...This book provides the definitive starting point for an important dialogue regarding the meaning of the deer in Maya iconography and semiology...Even as it highlights future avenues of research, Looper’s work presents the first thorough and wide-ranging look at the deer in the Maya world from the ancient to modern periods. As such, this volume provides important insights into deer use among the Maya and will frame and influence all subsequent considerations of this often understudied and underappreciated creature for years to come." * caa.reviews *"Much can be learned from this richly varied book, and it certainly contains numerous starting points for further investigation." * Anthropos *Looper’s detailed and eloquent volume reveals the complexity of the deer image in the Maya world, which could be used and read in multiple ways to construct meaning. It might also be of interest to those working in other regions and time periods where wild animals appear to have had a particularly special place, such as later prehistoric Europe. * Antiquity *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Deer Life: The Maya Ethnobiology of Deer Chapter 2. Bones to Picks: The Classic Maya Use and Depiction of Durable Deer Remains Chapter 3. Big Bucks: Deer and Social Status Chapter 4. Wearing the Horns: Deer, Sexuality, and Fertility in “Dying God” Scenes Chapter 5. Locking Horns: Deer Hunting, Warfare, the Ballgame, and Male Rites of Passage Chapter 6. Hart’s Devotion: The Siip in Classic and Postclassic Maya Society Chapter 7. A Sinking Hart: The Solar Symbolism of Deer in Maya Art Chapter 8. Deer Departed: Cervid Spirits of Death and Disease Epilogue. Out of the Woods: Deer and Borders Notes Bibliography Index
£45.00
University of Texas Press The Value of Aesthetics
Book SynopsisAn ethnographic study of the economic and cultural impact of aesthetics, focusing on an internationally renowned workshop where Oaxacan woodcarvings, or alebrijes, are highly profitable.Trade Review[Cant] sheds light on the effects of globalization by delving into the specific case of the wood carving market in San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca. * Mid Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies *Cant’s book is a welcome addition to a rich field of study, and it will take its place alongside the many volumes that preceded it. Readers in anthropology, Latin American studies, and art as well as art history, economics, and tourism will find much to recommend in The Value of Aesthetics. Cant’s style is accessible for readers at a variety of levels, from the beginner just learning about Oaxaca and craft production to the seasoned scholar engaged in the critical analysis of the role and meaning of ethnic crafts in a globalizing market system. * American Ethnologist *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. The Alluring Thing Itself Chapter 2. Aesthetics of Work in Woodcarving Chapter 3. Authorship and Its Consequences Chapter 4. Artesanías into Ethnic Art Chapter 5. The Art of Indigeneity Chapter 6. The Allure of Art and Intellectual Property Conclusion: At the End of the Aura Appendix: A Note on Names References Index
£21.59
University of Texas Press Collecting Black Studies
Book SynopsisToday Black Studies at the University of Texas boasts approximately 900 objects from sub-Saharan Africa, over 200 contemporary works from African American and Afro-Caribbean artists, and more than 100 pieces jointly held with other collecting entities. This book gathers and presents these holdings.
£35.10
University of Texas Press Pictured Politics
Book SynopsisFeaturing almost eighty illustrations from between 1590 and 1830, Pictured Politics is the sole study in English or Spanish to examine the role of portraiture in constructing the history of South American colonialism.Trade ReviewEngel’s book is a welcome addition to the scholarly dialogue about portraiture, one that brings the complexities of colonial relationships to bear on the discussion of a genre viewed as embodying power. Pictured Politics will appeal to specialists and students of colonial art and portraiture studies. Most of the images she analyzes have never been reproduced in an English language art history text. Their appearance within Engel’s book widens our understanding of portraits produced in the eighteenth century and the ways in which they were employed and displayed in a colonial context. Engel treats this understudied material in richly nuanced ways with compelling discussion. * Journal18 *Pictured Politics provides a model for studying the ways in which local and imperial concerns converged in artistic patronage and serves as a fine example of how interviceregal comparison can be revealing and, at the same time, generate new research questions. * caa.reviews *Engel’s work makes important contributions to the understanding of South American colonial art and that of the early nineteenth century...Pictured Politics is the first stand-alone analysis of South American portraiture. As such, Emily Engel’s research offers insights beyond the physical portraits’ stylistic traits and icono-graphic content, helping the reader see what cannot be seen, by examining portraiture as more than just historical artifacts. Her comprehensive analyses of the sociopolitical roots of this genre over time reveal deep material relationships that intricately intertwined portraiture with complex regional and local notions of authority. * Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe *Pictured Politics makes an exemplary contribution to one of the least studied aspects of the history of Hispanic viceregal art: portraiture in South America...a nuanced and deep reading of the official—in other words, corporate, and predominantly male—portrait in the primary political and commercial centres of South America. * Hispanic Research Journal *Pictured Politics offers a new and much-needed reframing of official portrait series that have rested in the background of colonial art history. It offers provocative conclusions and will undoubtedly inspire further research. Moreover, the book will hopefully help secure the preservation of surviving examples of these important records of colonial history. * H-Net Reviews *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Art and Authority in Late Colonial South American Portraiture Chapter 1. New Pictorial Practices: Early Official Portraits in Viceregal Peru Chapter 2. Visualizing Empire’s History: Royal Portraits in the Iberoamerican World Chapter 3. Picturing Viceregal Authority in the Lima City Council Chapter 4. Municipal Collecting: Viceregal Portraits in Bogotá and Buenos Aires Chapter 5. Portrayal in a Time of Transition: Early Nineteenth-Century Portraits Epilogue: The Afterlife of Official Portraits Notes Bibliography Index
£45.00
University of Texas Press Chican Artivistas
Book SynopsisA Grammy Awardwinning singer and scholar explores how Chican@ artivistas in East Los Angeles, from 1995 to the present, have created a unique community of process-based political engagement influenced by the Zapatista and Fandango movements.Trade ReviewPart academic treatise...and part testimonio, [Chican@ Artivistas] seamlessly weaves together Chicana feminist theory, ethnomusicology and Gonzalez’s intimate experiences. In the process, it offers a glimpse into the vibrant art scene of 1990s East L.A. and the development of a Chicana artivist. * Los Angeles Times *This compact, powerful book could only have been written by Martha Gonzalez...[Chican@ Artivistas] book stands out in various ways. The text is carefully crafted with a scriptural economy few academics achieve, while not sacrificing rigor and complexity. Gonzalez is strategic in prose and presentation, disruptive of received narratives, and transgressive of disciplinary boundaries. Furthermore, she uncovers a remarkable assortment of concepts and questions for further development by scholars in various disciplines and fields...This work will be widely read in Chicanx/Latinx studies, feminist studies, and music theory circles. It is of particular interest to students of recent music history, Zapatista studies scholars, and those researching neoliberalism and active resistance to it into the twenty-first century. * H-Socialisms *Moving from her upbringing with her musician father to the Zapatista movement to the rise of Quetzal, Gonzalez shows how music is 'a conduit of freedom and a malleable tool for those who envision social change.' Moreover, she demonstrates how art practices can be used 'to go beyond resistance, into actively building on the dream and tangible enactments of new worlds.' * L.A. Taco, "The 2020 L.A. Taco Book Guide" *As an interdisciplinary text, Chican@ Artivistas contributes to the fields of Chicana/o, feminist, music, and performance studies, translocal and transnational studies, and scholarship on US-Mexico fandango music. The book offers a nuanced view of Chicana/o ethnic and political identities, subjectivities, and social justice projects that have been overlooked in Chicana/o music genealogies and social activism...This text will be a useful pedagogical tool for presenting rigorous ideas in accessible language to undergraduate and graduate students in various fields while also serving more expansive communities including artists, musicians, and social activists. * Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies *Beyond documenting an important historical period of Chicana/o music-making, the book makes other contributions of note...The book is also unique in its presentation of music culture not centered on genre or style but rather on the sociopolitical context from which the practices that Gonzalez documents and theorizes emerge...Chican@ Artivistas is a valuable text for students and scholars of Chicanx/Latinx music and culture. * Chiricú Journal *I recommend Chican@ Artivistas for scholars and cultural workers interested in convivencia, fandango jarocho, music that emerges from cultural practices, and artivism or Chican@ artistic social practice. It is a valuable text for both undergraduate and graduate students and for scholars of Chican@ and Latin@ music and culture, ethnic studies, ethnomusicology, women and gender studies, and the study of social movements. * New Mexico Historial Review *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Music Misunderstood Chapter 2. Chican@ Artivistas: Resistance to Capital Market Systems and the Mind/Body Split Chapter 3. The Popular Resource Center and Centro Regeneración in Highland Park Chapter 4. The Big Frente Zapatista: Using Art as a Tool of Critical Dialogue Chapter 5. Fandango Jarocho as a Decolonial Tool Chapter 6. Los Guardianes de la Convivencia Conclusion. Imaginaries: The Grammy and the Graduate Student Notes Discography Bibliography Index
£62.90
University of Texas Press Vital Voids
Book SynopsisAn innovative study argues that in Mesoamerica, holes were conceived and produced as conduits of vital forces and material abundance, prerequisites for the emergence of life.Trade Review[Finegold] demonstrates—convincingly, and in engaging prose—that the sustained analysis of holes provides insight into the ways in which ancient Mesoamericans conceived of cavities as teeming with vital energies or pregnant with the possibility of emergence...there is a satisfying rhythm and structure to this book, which moves through an impressive array of ideas but keeps returning, almost poetically, to the place it started: a beautifully painted Late Classic Maya plate rife with meaning and replete with a small drilled hole. Finegold charts a new and productive path for thinking about voids as procreative spaces that were integral to Mesoamerican creation narratives, ritual behavior, individual identities, and expressions of social order. For this reason, this book should be of interest to readers beyond the confines of Mesoamerica who, like Finegold, see potential in a void. * caa.reviews *[A] wonderfully illustrated book...Finegold has offered us a well-written, well-illustrated book on a topic that has received relatively little attention...Finegold manages to pierce a productive hole in our previous frame of understanding, allowing for a new and creative reinterpretation of a Mesoamerican cultural tradition and the underlying worldview. * 21: Inquires into Art, History, and the Visual *One of the great contributions of this volume...is to provide a model for using deep object reading—integrating material, iconographic, and sociohistorical interpretations of a single ceramic dish—as a springboard into uniquely Mesoamerican philosophical systems of aesthetics, ontology, and metaphysics. Finegold’s arguments also open the door to a further consideration of voids in Mesoamerican material culture (and they are everywhere once one begins to look for them), acknowledging that his text does not and could not cover the full scope of the subject. The implications of his central thesis are far-reaching and will no doubt spark further debate and exploration by other scholars. * Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Chapter 1. What’s in a Hole? Material Culture and Interpretation Chapter 2. Perforated Vessels: Revitalizing the Discourse Surrounding “Kill Holes” Chapter 3. Cavities in the Living Earth Chapter 4. The Act of Drilling Chapter 5. Perforating the Body Chapter 6. Conclusions: Beyond the Resurrection Plate Notes Bibliography Index
£45.00
University of Texas Press Playing with Things
Book SynopsisWinner, Association for Latin American Art-Arvey Foundation Book Award, 2022More than a thousand years ago on the north coast of Peru, Indigenous Moche artists created a large and significant corpus of sexually explicit ceramic works of art. They depicted a diversity of sex organs and sex acts, and an array of solitary and interconnected human and nonhuman bodies. To the modern eye, these Moche sex pots, as Mary Weismantel calls them, are lively and provocative but also enigmatic creations whose import to their original owners seems impossible to grasp. In Playing with Things, Weismantel shows that there is much to be learned from these ancient artifacts, not merely as inert objects from a long-dead past but as vibrant Indigenous things, alive in their own inhuman temporality. From a new materialist perspective, she fills the gaps left by other analyses of the sex pots in pre-Columbian studies, where sexuality remains marginalized, and in sexuality studies, where non-Western art is lTrade ReviewWhat this book does very well is envision how these ceramic vessels were a part of people’s lives—their materiality and lively interaction with human bodies, as well as their social connections to the living and the dead that express notions of how life is generated, nurtured, and ensured...[Playing with Things provides] insights into how scholars can approach with fresh eyes subjects that we think we know. * Latin American Antiquity *Refereshing...This is an academic work – thoroughly researched, footnoted, and at times quite theoretical – but Weismantel’s style remains accessible, easy to understand, and rarely mired down in jargon. * Queer as Fact *Weismantel draws from a vast corpus of theory and ethnographic literature to support her arguments but does not dwell on usual concerns of Moche scholars, including ceramic chronology or regional and temporal variation within the Moche sphere...she offers fresh ideas and innovative approaches. The text is witty, engaging, and insightful and will be of interest within and beyond the broader field of anthropology. This book also demonstrates the potential of a fully integrated four-field anthropology in which specialists have the courage and inquisitiveness to venture past the traditional territorial boundaries of the subdisciplines. * Journal of Anthropological Research *Playing with Things provides groundbreaking interpretations of the Moche sex pots and presents frameworks important for material and visual culture studies. * caa.reviews *[Playing with Things] is written in smart, accessible prose that clearly conveys [Weismantel's] nuanced and innovative readings of what is arguably some of the most complex material evidence from the pre-Columbian world...The title Playing with Things perfectly encapsulates the author’s novel and at times nearly whimsical approach to the objects—the freshness of interpreting the bottles by picking them up, smelling them, or listening to them never distracts from Weismantel’s deep understanding of the bottles and especially their iconography...Playing with Things should be read by anyone working on the Indigenous cultures of the New World, past or present, and by scholars within Indigenous Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Latin American Studies. It will upend, in the most enjoyable way, many long-held notions about what can be learned from unprovenienced art and hopefully inspire a much deeper appreciation for the potential of meticulous scholarly study to recover culturally meaningful information about the intricate worlds of Indigenous sexualities. * American Anthropologist *Weismantel's ethnographic training leads to rich interpretations about these vessels but also about ourselves. These sex pots are archaeological artifacts, but Weismantel approaches them from a place where they were and continue to be vibrant, once part of ancient social lives and still evoking strong reactions from museum visitors...Weismantel proposes a fresh, new, and innovative take on the Moche sex pots that have been of interest for decades. Her active engagement with scholarship on queer theory, materiality, and indigenous worldviews reinvigorates interpretations about the life-giving qualities of the sex pots as functional vessels and sacred instantiations of circulating fluids. * Canadian Journal of Archaeology *Profoundly insightful and an utter delight to read…[Weismantel's] brilliantly effective, inquisitive practice invites readers to play with her as she manipulates the pots, and in this tactile, whole-bodied experience, the vessels cease to be static artifacts and come to life as the socially engaged objects they are. * Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Note to the Reader Introduction: The Moche Sex Pots 1. Modern Moche 2. Pots Play Jokes 3. Pots Make Babies 4. Pots Give Power 5. Pots Hold Water Epilogue: Acolonial Things Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index
£78.30
University of Texas Press Playing with Things
Book Synopsis Winner, Association for Latin American Art-Arvey Foundation Book Award, 2022 More than a thousand years ago on the north coast of Peru, Indigenous Moche artists created a large and significant corpus of sexually explicit ceramic works of art. They depicted a diversity of sex organs and sex acts, and an array of solitary and interconnected human and nonhuman bodies. To the modern eye, these Moche sex pots, as Mary Weismantel calls them, are lively and provocative but also enigmatic creations whose import to their original owners seems impossible to grasp. In Playing with Things, Weismantel shows that there is much to be learned from these ancient artifacts, not merely as inert objects from a long-dead past but as vibrant Indigenous things, alive in their own inhuman temporality. From a new materialist perspective, she fills the gaps left by other analyses of the sex pots in pre-Columbian studies, where sexuality remains marginalized, and in sexuality stTrade ReviewWhat this book does very well is envision how these ceramic vessels were a part of people’s lives—their materiality and lively interaction with human bodies, as well as their social connections to the living and the dead that express notions of how life is generated, nurtured, and ensured...[Playing with Things provides] insights into how scholars can approach with fresh eyes subjects that we think we know. * Latin American Antiquity *Refereshing...This is an academic work – thoroughly researched, footnoted, and at times quite theoretical – but Weismantel’s style remains accessible, easy to understand, and rarely mired down in jargon. * Queer as Fact *Weismantel draws from a vast corpus of theory and ethnographic literature to support her arguments but does not dwell on usual concerns of Moche scholars, including ceramic chronology or regional and temporal variation within the Moche sphere...she offers fresh ideas and innovative approaches. The text is witty, engaging, and insightful and will be of interest within and beyond the broader field of anthropology. This book also demonstrates the potential of a fully integrated four-field anthropology in which specialists have the courage and inquisitiveness to venture past the traditional territorial boundaries of the subdisciplines. * Journal of Anthropological Research *Playing with Things provides groundbreaking interpretations of the Moche sex pots and presents frameworks important for material and visual culture studies. * caa.reviews *[Playing with Things] is written in smart, accessible prose that clearly conveys [Weismantel's] nuanced and innovative readings of what is arguably some of the most complex material evidence from the pre-Columbian world...The title Playing with Things perfectly encapsulates the author’s novel and at times nearly whimsical approach to the objects—the freshness of interpreting the bottles by picking them up, smelling them, or listening to them never distracts from Weismantel’s deep understanding of the bottles and especially their iconography...Playing with Things should be read by anyone working on the Indigenous cultures of the New World, past or present, and by scholars within Indigenous Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Latin American Studies. It will upend, in the most enjoyable way, many long-held notions about what can be learned from unprovenienced art and hopefully inspire a much deeper appreciation for the potential of meticulous scholarly study to recover culturally meaningful information about the intricate worlds of Indigenous sexualities. * American Anthropologist *Weismantel's ethnographic training leads to rich interpretations about these vessels but also about ourselves. These sex pots are archaeological artifacts, but Weismantel approaches them from a place where they were and continue to be vibrant, once part of ancient social lives and still evoking strong reactions from museum visitors...Weismantel proposes a fresh, new, and innovative take on the Moche sex pots that have been of interest for decades. Her active engagement with scholarship on queer theory, materiality, and indigenous worldviews reinvigorates interpretations about the life-giving qualities of the sex pots as functional vessels and sacred instantiations of circulating fluids. * Canadian Journal of Archaeology *Profoundly insightful and an utter delight to read…[Weismantel's] brilliantly effective, inquisitive practice invites readers to play with her as she manipulates the pots, and in this tactile, whole-bodied experience, the vessels cease to be static artifacts and come to life as the socially engaged objects they are. * Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Note to the Reader Introduction: The Moche Sex Pots 1. Modern Moche 2. Pots Play Jokes 3. Pots Make Babies 4. Pots Give Power 5. Pots Hold Water Epilogue: Acolonial Things Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index
£24.69
University of Texas Press Resurrecting Tenochtitlan
Book SynopsisHonorable Mention,ALAA-Arvey Foundation Book Award,Association of Latin American Art Finalist,2024 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award,College Art AssociationHow Mexican artists and intellectuals created a new identity for modern Mexico City through its ties to Aztec Tenochtitlan. After archaeologists rediscovered a corner of the Templo Mayor in 1914, artists, intellectuals, and government officials attempted to revive Tenochtitlan as an instrument for reassessing Mexican national identity in the wake of the Revolution of 1910. What followed was a conceptual excavation of the original Mexica capital in relation to the transforming urban landscape of modern Mexico City. Revolutionary-era scholars took a renewed interest in sixteenth century maps as they recognized an intersection between Tenochtitlan and the foundation of a Spanish colonial settlement directly over it. Meanwhile, Mexico City developed with modern roads and expanded civic areas as agents of nationalism promoted concepts like indigenismo, the embrace of Indigenous cultural expressions. The promotion of artworks and new architectural projects such as Diego Rivera's Anahuacalli Museum helped to make real the notion of a modern Tenochtitlan. Employing archival materials, newspaper reports, and art criticism from 1914 to 1964, Resurrecting Tenochtitlan connects art history with urban studies to reveal the construction of a complex physical and cultural layout for Mexico's modern capital.Trade ReviewLike all important urban centers, Mexico City is composed of layers of history, culture, architecture, and urban and demographic changes, and its historical foundation still plays an important role in Mexico’s political and social life. This book aims to show how these layers and foundational myths affect modern understandings of the city...Deftly weaving together archival documents and maps, graphic ideations of the city’s past and present, and historical accounts, [Resurrecting Tenochtitlan] presents [Mexico City's] complexity as a space of contestation in which different actors vie to articulate their ideological positions within the rapidly changing environment of this historically grounded city. * CHOICE *Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Abbreviations 1. Imagining Tenochtitlan 2. Archaeologists Set the Stage 3. The Civic Art of Early Maps 4. Picturing the Capital, Integrating the Nation 5. The Perfect Tenochtitlan 6. Mexico City: Yesterday, Today, and Always 7. Tenochtitlan Restaged Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£45.00
University of Texas Press The Comitan Valley
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the understudied sculpture of the Maya frontier.Table of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments 1. The Edge of the Maya World: An Introduction 2. Kings and Captives at Tenam Puente 3. Bodies in the Ballcourt: Art and Identity at Tenam Rosario 4. Rulers and Ritual at Chinkultic 5. Art and the Ancestors at Quen Santo 6. Transformation: Comitán and the Postclassic 7. Conclusion: Frontiers, Identity, and the Comitán Style References Index
£45.00
University of Texas Press Super Bodies
Book SynopsisFinalist —San Diego Comic-Con International 2024 Eisner Award in Best Academic/Scholarly WorkAn examination of the art in superhero comics and how style influences comic narratives. For many, the idea of comic book art implies simplistic four-color renderings of stiff characters slugging it out. In fact, modern superhero comic books showcase a range of complex artistic styles, with diverse connotations. Leading comics scholar Jeffrey A. Brown assesses six distinct approaches to superhero illustration—idealism, realism, cute, retro, grotesque, and noir—examining how each visually represents the superhero as a symbolic construct freighted with meaning. Whereas comic book studies tend to focus on text and narrative, Super Bodies gives overdue credit to the artwork, which is not only a principal source of the appeal of comic books but also central to the values these works embody. Brown argues that superheroes are toTrade ReviewNot surprisingly, this is exceptionally well illustrated for an academic book. It is an important contribution to comics scholarship and will help anyone appreciate the medium more deeply. * CHOICE *Table of Contents 1. How to Draw Superheroes 2. The Superhero and the Dessinateur 3. Idealism and Comic Book Heroes 4. Retro Art and Nostalgia 5. Realism in an Unrealistic Genre 6. Super Cute Manga, Kawaii, and Infantilization 7. Grotesque Bodies and Monstrous Heroes 8. Superhero Noir, More than Just Black and White 9. Drawing Conclusions Works Cited Index
£40.50
University of Texas Press Voices in Aerosol
Book SynopsisHow a city government in central Mexico evolved from waging war on graffiti in the early 2000s to sanctioning its creation a decade later, and how youth navigated these changing conditions for producing art. The local government, residents, and media outlets in León, Mexico, treated graffiti as a disease until the state began sponsoring artistic graffiti through a program of its own. In Voices in Aerosol, the first book-length study of state-sponsored graffiti, Caitlin Frances Bruce considers the changing perceptions and recognition of graffiti artists, their right to the city, and the use of public space over the span of eighteen years (2000–2018). Focusing on the midsized city of León, Bruce offers readers a look at the way negotiations with the neoliberal state unfolded at different levels and across decades. Issues brought to light in this case study, such as graffiti as a threat and graffiti as a sign of gentrification, resoTable of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Glossary Introduction Chapter One. Frisson: Early Graffiti Writers Remapping the City Chapter Two. Noise: Desmadre in Neoliberal Geographies; Youth Voice against Zero Tolerance Chapter Three. Harmonization: Convivencia and Municipal Overtures to Writers Chapter Four. Amplification: Cultivating Acceptance through the Mural as Civic and Affective Form Chapter Five. Resonance: Urban Art and Good Vibrations Conclusion. Susurration: Cross-Border Institutional Attunements and Social Infrastructure; León as Global Example Notes Index
£40.50
University of Texas Press Home Heat Money God
Book SynopsisThematically focused analysis of modern architecture throughout Texas with gorgeous photographs illustrating works by famous and lesser-known architects. In the mid-twentieth century, dramatic social and political change coincided with the ascendance and evolution of architectural modernism in Texas. Between the 1930s and 1980s, a state known for cowboys and cotton fields rapidly urbanized and became a hub of global trade and a heavyweight in national politics. Relentless ambition and a strong sense of place combined to make Texans particularly receptive to modern architecture’s implication of newness, forward-looking attitude, and capacity to reinterpret historical forms in novel ways. As money and people poured in, architects and their clients used modern buildings to define themselves and the state. Illustrated with stunning photographs by architect Ben Koush, Home, Heat, Money, God analyzes buildings in big cities and small towns by world-famou
£31.50
Duke University Press Picassos Demoiselles
Book SynopsisEminent art historian Suzanne Preston Blier uncovers a previously unknown history of the influences and creative process of Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, one of the twentieth century's most important, celebrated, and studied paintings.Trade Review"Blier uses a host of techniques including formal analysis, textual analysis, and broader global image culture to dig deep into this one painting. Most exciting is when she points out obvious but overlooked information in widely known documentation, including period photographs of Demoiselles in process that show how Picasso developed the composition. Ultimately, Blier offers a reading thoroughly of our time—one in which women are empowered and time and space compressed." -- Maggie Taft * Booklist *"Blier offers a wide-ranging account of the genesis, sources, and context for Picasso’s influential masterpiece. In both cases it is especially timely and meaningful to have women shaping the conversation. . . . Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- E. Baden * Choice *"The book, which features hundreds of illustrations . . . is full of a vast and intriguing array of highways and forays into every possible connection that might suggest itself to construct this argument. As a Black feminist, I found most persuasive Blier’s proposition to table the idea of Les demoiselles as a brothel scene and see it, rather, as a reference to the turn-of-the-century fascination with the portrayal of racial types." -- Michele Wallace * Artforum *“Every age has had its own interpretation of the Demoiselles d’Avignon and with it, its own narrative of Modernism.... Blier's interpretation is doubly interesting, directed as it is at cultural and gender identities and is, without doubt, the one which corresponds ... to our present.” -- Maite Méndez Baiges (translated by Diana Mathieson) * African Studies Quarterly *“What makes Blier’s book truly remarkable is not only its attention to the details surrounding Picasso’s life and work in the years when he painted Les Demoiselles but also her forensic approach to the subject.” -- Simon Gikandi * Art Journal *“Picasso’s Demoiselles is ... a lighthearted, even playful, book.... Blier is an extraordinary writer; her scholarly production is legendary, and her publications have shaped the field of African studies.” -- Monica Blackmun Visonà * Art Journal *Table of ContentsPreface ix Introduction 1 1. Setting, Sources, Titles, and Time 19 2. The Making of a Painting 52 3. Art in the Flesh 81 4. The Sorcerer's Apprentice 111 5. L'Oiseau du Bénin 152 6. The Global Brothel 185 7. Le Bordel Philosophique 222 Conclusions. The Creative Nexus 264 Acknowledgments 297 Sketchbooks: New Dating 300 Chronology 305 List of Illustrations 312 Notes 333 References 365 Index 415
£84.15
Duke University Press The Romare Bearden Reader
Book SynopsisThe Romare Bearden Reader brings together a collection of newly written essays and canonical writings by novelists, poets, historians, critics, and playwrights, as well as Bearden's most important writing, making it an indispensable volume on one of the giants of twentieth-century American art.Trade Review"Jazz music, politics, and black culture are the primary themes ofBearden's paintings and collages, while his writing-including the eight examples in this collection-lay bare his aesthetic values and practices. Essays by twenty contributors, from scholar Robert G. O'Meally to novelists Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, contextualize Bearden's oeuvre and assess his impact on twentieth-century African American culture." * Art in America *"The varied voices here make this a go-to resource for constructing Bearden's enigmatic, seductively structured art. . . . This is the finest overall consideration of Bearden's ouevre yet, and a fulsome tribute to a justly revered artist." -- Douglas F. Smith * Library Journal *"Relatively few titles provide in-depth explorations of the intellectual lives of African American artists. This reader does so in a comprehensive–and compelling–manner, and should be considered an important addition to art and literary criticism collections, useful for artists, musicians, writers, and others." -- Lynora Williams * ARLIS/NA *"A valuable resource for scholars and anyone interested in Romare Bearden, art history, art techniques, the Harlem Renaissance (which Bearden calls the Black Renaissance because not all participants were in Harlem), and black US history.… O'Meally draws together the major themes of Bearden scholarship, providing a useful jumping-off point for insight into Bearden and his work." -- P.A. Mullins * African Arts *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix "Pressing on Life Until It Gave Back Something in Kinship": An Introductory Essay / Robert G. O'Meally 1 Part I. Life and Times Putting Something over Something Else / Calvin Tomkins 31 Interview with Romare Bearden / Henri Ghent 54 Part II. Writings The Negro Artist and Modern Art / Romare Bearden 87 The Negro Artist's Dilemma / Romare Bearden 91 The Journal of Romare Bearden: 1947 to 1949 / Romare Bearden 99 Rectangular Structure in My Montage Paintings / Romare Bearden 121 The Twenties and the Black Renaissance / Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson 133 The 1930s: An Art Reminiscence / Romare Bearden 156 Humility / Romare Bearden 162 Encounters with African Art / Romare Bearden 164 Part III. Reflections on a Layered Legacy Bearden: Black Life on Its Own Terms / August Wilson 175 Abrupt Stops and an Unexpected Liquidity: The Aesthetics of Romare Bearden / Toni Morrison 178 The Genius of Romare Bearden / Elizabeth Alexander 185 The Art of Romare Bearden / Ralph Ellison 196 Bearden / Ralph Ellison 204 Between the Shadow and the Act / John Edgar Wideman 209 Romare Bearden: African American Modernism at Mid-Century / Kobena Mercer 217 Bearden Plays Bearden / Albert Murray 236 The Political Bearden / Brent Hayes Edwards 256 Circe in Black: Homer, Toni Morrison, Romare Bearden / Farah Jasmine Griffin 270 Conjure and Collapse in the Art of Romare Bearden / Rachael Delue 281 Changing, Conjuring Reality / Richard Powell 296 Romare Bearden's Li'l Dan the Drummer Boy: Coloring a Story of the Civil War / Robert Burns Stepto 307 Impressions and Improvisations: A Look at the Prints of Romare Bearden / Mary Lee Corlett 315 Bearden's Caribbean Dimension / Sally Price and Richard Price 351 Sheer Mastery: Romare Bearden's Final Year / Myron Schwartzman 363 Romare Bearden, an Idelible Imprint / David C. Driskell 379 Selected References 389 Index 393
£84.15
Duke University Press AFRICOBRA
Book SynopsisPainter, photographer, and cofounder of AFRICOBRA Wadsworth A. Jarrell tells the definitive history of the group’s creation, history, and artistic and political principles and the ways it captured the rhythmic dynamism of black culture and social life to create uplifting art for all black people.Trade Review“What an amazing testimony from a founding member of one of the most important artists' collectives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries! Kudos to Wadsworth A. Jarrell for his thoroughly engaging and art historically significant memoir.” -- Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art & Art History, Duke University“The principles and philosophy of the collective AFRICOBRA in many ways defined the parameters of art making for politically conscious African American artists during the era of Black power. Who can forget their stunning manifesto that emphasized standards such as coolade color, shine, free symmetry, and mimesis at midpoint?! Now Wadsworth A. Jarrell‘s new book brings us a first-person account of this group and period from an artist who was there from the start. Beautifully illustrated, it offers a fresh perspective and significant references, and it serves as an important sourcebook for late twentieth-century practice. As the study of art moves beyond a New York--centric approach, histories coming out of major centers like Chicago are especially important. AFRICOBRA joins a growing body of literature on art making outside New York; it will allow a plethora of new chronicles to be written.” -- Kellie Jones, Columbia University"AFRICOBRA is a timely book as part of a movement that remains current as many art organizations are assessing their complicity in the suppression and appropriation of Black voices. This book will be of interest to scholars of African American art history and American art history in general." -- Laura Haynes * ARLIS/NA *"Lavishly illustrated with images of works by the Jarrells and AfriCOBRA colleagues including his wife, Donaldson, Jones-Hogu, and Nelson Stevens, the book describes the formation of the collective and its first three major exhibitions." -- Steven Litt * The Plain Dealer *“AFRICOBRA is a necessary source for the study of the Black Arts Movement.... Across poetics, analytical prose, art, and archive, Jarrell argues for revisionist readings that challenge standing interpretations of AFRICOBRA as well as the contemporary collective, AFRICOBRA Now.” -- Melanee C. Harvey * CAA Reviews *Table of ContentsIllustrations x Black Art and the Black Aesthetic xv AFRICOBRA: Principles and Philosophy xvii Foreword / Richard Allen May III xxi Acknowledgments xxv Introduction 1 Black in Chicago 19 Genesis 41 The Wall of Respect 49 The Inception 75 A Visual Art Proposal 91 First Cobra Exhibition 109 Recruitment 119 AFRICOBRA I 129 AFRICOBRA II 171 AFRICOBRA III 209 Postscript / Edmund Barry Gaither 241 Exhibitions 247 Reviews and Media Interviews 249 AFRICOBRA in Art Collections 251 AFRICOBRA in Books 253 Notes 255 Artist Biographies 263 Index 271
£22.79
Duke University Press The Romare Bearden Reader
Book SynopsisThe Romare Bearden Reader brings together a collection of newly written essays and canonical writings by novelists, poets, historians, critics, and playwrights, as well as Bearden's most important writing, making it an indispensable volume on one of the giants of twentieth-century American art.Trade Review"Jazz music, politics, and black culture are the primary themes ofBearden's paintings and collages, while his writing-including the eight examples in this collection-lay bare his aesthetic values and practices. Essays by twenty contributors, from scholar Robert G. O'Meally to novelists Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, contextualize Bearden's oeuvre and assess his impact on twentieth-century African American culture." * Art in America *"The varied voices here make this a go-to resource for constructing Bearden's enigmatic, seductively structured art. . . . This is the finest overall consideration of Bearden's ouevre yet, and a fulsome tribute to a justly revered artist." -- Douglas F. Smith * Library Journal *"Relatively few titles provide in-depth explorations of the intellectual lives of African American artists. This reader does so in a comprehensive–and compelling–manner, and should be considered an important addition to art and literary criticism collections, useful for artists, musicians, writers, and others." -- Lynora Williams * ARLIS/NA *"A valuable resource for scholars and anyone interested in Romare Bearden, art history, art techniques, the Harlem Renaissance (which Bearden calls the Black Renaissance because not all participants were in Harlem), and black US history.… O'Meally draws together the major themes of Bearden scholarship, providing a useful jumping-off point for insight into Bearden and his work." -- P.A. Mullins * African Arts *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix "Pressing on Life Until It Gave Back Something in Kinship": An Introductory Essay / Robert G. O'Meally 1 Part I. Life and Times Putting Something over Something Else / Calvin Tomkins 31 Interview with Romare Bearden / Henri Ghent 54 Part II. Writings The Negro Artist and Modern Art / Romare Bearden 87 The Negro Artist's Dilemma / Romare Bearden 91 The Journal of Romare Bearden: 1947 to 1949 / Romare Bearden 99 Rectangular Structure in My Montage Paintings / Romare Bearden 121 The Twenties and the Black Renaissance / Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson 133 The 1930s: An Art Reminiscence / Romare Bearden 156 Humility / Romare Bearden 162 Encounters with African Art / Romare Bearden 164 Part III. Reflections on a Layered Legacy Bearden: Black Life on Its Own Terms / August Wilson 175 Abrupt Stops and an Unexpected Liquidity: The Aesthetics of Romare Bearden / Toni Morrison 178 The Genius of Romare Bearden / Elizabeth Alexander 185 The Art of Romare Bearden / Ralph Ellison 196 Bearden / Ralph Ellison 204 Between the Shadow and the Act / John Edgar Wideman 209 Romare Bearden: African American Modernism at Mid-Century / Kobena Mercer 217 Bearden Plays Bearden / Albert Murray 236 The Political Bearden / Brent Hayes Edwards 256 Circe in Black: Homer, Toni Morrison, Romare Bearden / Farah Jasmine Griffin 270 Conjure and Collapse in the Art of Romare Bearden / Rachael Delue 281 Changing, Conjuring Reality / Richard Powell 296 Romare Bearden's Li'l Dan the Drummer Boy: Coloring a Story of the Civil War / Robert Burns Stepto 307 Impressions and Improvisations: A Look at the Prints of Romare Bearden / Mary Lee Corlett 315 Bearden's Caribbean Dimension / Sally Price and Richard Price 351 Sheer Mastery: Romare Bearden's Final Year / Myron Schwartzman 363 Romare Bearden, an Idelible Imprint / David C. Driskell 379 Selected References 389 Index 393
£22.49
Duke University Press Art for Peoples Sake
Book SynopsisRebecca Zorach traces the little-told story of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, showing how its artistic innovations, institution building, and community engagement helped the residents of Chicago's South and West Sides respond to social, political, and economic marginalization.Trade Review"Both fresh and refreshing, Zorach's book on the Black Arts Movement (BAM) in Chicago engages from the very first paragraph and fires on all cylinders—looking at the subject not only from inside the BAM but also in terms of how it challenged traditional art history. . . . Highly recommended. All readers." -- K. P. Buick * Choice *"Using interviews, archival collections, poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, historic census data, and other documentation, Zorach provides a detailed story of the artists, residents, and educators who worked together to transform Chicago communities struggling with the spatial constraints of systematic racism. . . . This would serve well as a resource on the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, community mural history, and African American art history. It is highly recommended for all libraries." -- Stacy R. Williams * ARLIS/NA Reviews *"Zorach makes a rich contribution to the field of art history that has largely ignored the Black Arts Movement. . . . rt for People’s Sake should be required reading for artists, non-profit organizations, community organizers, and scholars interested in social movements, education, and art history." -- Tracey Johnson * Black Perspectives *"[A] clearly written, engaging study." -- Miguel de Baca * Art History *"With Art for People’s Sake, Rebecca Zorach makes a valuable intervention in art historical discourse. Zorach emphasizes the importance of the Black Arts Movement for better understanding artistic engagement with site-specificity, social practice, and performance art." -- Benjamin Jones * CAA Reviews *"Thoughtfully argued and beautifully written and illustrated, this book will be a vital resource for scholars and students of visual culture, art history, urban history, and communication studies interested in the dynamics of race, collaboration, imagination, and politics. Many of its images (of which there are an astonishing number) are vital to understanding Chicago, the Black Arts Movement, and their dynamic relationship to place, politics, and culture." -- Caitlin Frances Bruce * Winterthur Portfolio *“In this superb addition to scholarship on the Black Arts Movement, Rebecca Zorach captures luminously how black visual artists of the late 1960s and early 1970s strove to situate themselves and their artworks.” -- Daniel Matlin * Journal of American Studies *"Art for People's Sake is an important addition to the new scholarship on radical Black Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. . . . One gets a vital portrait of Black Arts in arguably the most enduring and influential center of the movement." -- James Smethurst * Journal of African American History *Table of ContentsIllustrations vii Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: The Black Arts Movement in Chicago 1 1. Claiming Space, Being in Public 30 2. Cultural Nationalism and Community Culture 85 3. An Experimental Friendship 124 4. The Black Family 179 5. Until the Walls Come Down 215 6. Starring the Black Community 257 Notes 299 Bibliography 349 Index 375
£80.75
Duke University Press Orozcos American Epic
Book SynopsisMary K. Coffey examines José Clemente Orozco's mural cycle Epic of American Civilization, which indicts history as complicit in colonial violence and questions the claims of Manifest Destiny in the United States and the Mexican desire to mend the wounds of conquest in pursuit of a postcolonial national project.Trade Review“Orozco's American Epic is original in its intent, theoretically sophisticated, and clearly elaborated. Mary K. Coffey does not settle for easy interpretations of Orozco's mural but rather dwells purposively on the difficult questions it raises. An outstanding book.” -- Claire F. Fox, author of * Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War *“This is a spectacular piece of scholarship. Any study of Mexican mural painting in the context of Mexico is challenging enough, but adding the extra level of context as a work on US soil would defeat a less ambitious and less courageous scholar than Mary K. Coffey. Any scholar who can speak with great authority on the theories of Benjamin, Freud, and Butler on the same page and then apply those insights to the work of a Mexican painter is a scholar of almost shocking sophistication and intellectual conviction. This book needed to be written, and Coffey has delivered in glorious fashion.” -- Leonard Folgarait, coeditor of * Mexican Muralism: A Critical History *"Coffey’s scholarship is singular in its depth of critical analysis of Orozco’s Epic and, for this reason, will likely be considered among the foremost explorations of the work. . . . This book is highly recommended for every academic library collection." -- Colleen Farry * ARLIS/NA *"Critiquing melancholy through the lenses of performance and critical race studies, decoloniality, and transnationalism, Coffey offers a nuanced interpretation of Orozco’s political art. She presents Orozco’s Epic as a compelling counternarrative that reappraises debates about identity, immigration, and nationalism. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- L. Estevez * Choice *"An engaging read. . . . Coffey’s discussion of these muralists correctly places the book in conversation with Mexican muralist studies more broadly." -- Gregory R. Mesa * Dartmouth Review *"If [Coffey’s] reflections on the notion of prophecy re-open a closed chapter in Mexican historiography, her analysis of the Orozco mural from the standpoint of mass culture will put art historians on the edge of their seats. Without resorting to analogies of 'high and low' . . . she illuminates a field of exchanges and transformations . . . that partakes of the extraordinary formal freedom the painter was gaining through his work." (translated from Spanish) -- Renato González Mello * Nexos *"Four-and-a-half decades later, Mary K. Coffey is now the favorite Professor at Dartmouth College that I never had. Her richly informed and nuanced Orozco’s American Epic on some of this hemisphere’s greatest murals deepens my understanding and affection for the most memorable body of imagery encountered in four unhappy years of my life. ¡Bravo, Maestra!" -- Mike Mosher * Leonardo Reviews *“A meaningful contribution to a growing body of literature on the theme of Mexican muralism on both sides of the border.... Coffey’s sophisticated analysis and vivid description of Orozco’s mural combine a variety of methodologies that make this book timely, complex, and engaging.” -- Maya Jiménez * Panorama *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xv Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 1. Orozco's Melancholy Dialectics 43 2. Colonial Melancholy and the Myth of Quetzalcoatl 79 3. American Modernity and the Play of Mourning 123 4. "Modern Industrial Man" and the Melancholy of Race in America 207 Conclusion 261 Notes 287 Bibliography 325 Index
£75.65
Duke University Press A Fragile Inheritance
Book SynopsisSaloni Mathur investigates the radical work of two seminal figures—New Dehli-based critic and curator Geeta Kapur, and her husband, contemporary multimedia artist, Vivan Sundaram—to show how their approach to artistic practice and theory may inform subsequent generations and serve as a model for artistic politics in our time.Trade Review“This critical retake on the work of Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram offers a deeply informed reading of their joint and separate works but also turns the biographical norm inside out, reading their lives as illuminations of their tempestuous times and not simply as cases or examples of larger processes. It will be read with keen interest by anyone who cares about the making of modern art worlds in places like India.” -- Arjun Appadurai, Paulette Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University“Saloni Mathur's A Fragile Inheritance immerses the reader in the long march of Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram, leading figures of India's avant-garde in criticism and artistic practice. Against the background of the indescribable complexity of India's many languages, political parties, and aesthetic movements, Mathur traces parallel and intersecting careers with a brilliant sense of the improvisatory, provisional, and timely character of their numerous interventions over half a century. Renouncing any claim to survey the art of India, or to provide a progressive narrative of relentless novelty, Mathur provides an in-depth account of works, projects, ideas, and the situations in which they arose. Writing ‘alongside’ rather than ‘about’ the work of these two essential figures, Mathur offers a striking model of engaged critical practice in a project that is far from finished.” -- W. J. T. Mitchell, author of * Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics *“Mathur’s condensation of two difficult-to-summarize careers is a remarkable achievement.... To return to Kapur and Sundaram is a radically generous and participatory act, an invitation to reimagine our limits by slowly going over things we thought we were ready to leave behind." -- Meghaa Ballakrishnen * CAA Reviews *"This densely written book encounters not only fundamental questions of art and its preservation, but also of writing about art, and itself can be seen as an innovative example of the latter. Further, it addresses the sociocultural and political embedding of art in the postcolonial context, touching also upon ethical questions. Therefore, this book is by far not only relevant for readers who want to know about or deal with Kapur and Sundaram." -- Maja Jerrentrup * South Asia Research *Rich and luminous…. A Fragile Inheritance is an essential, thoughtful and riveting work that asks the addressee to co-participate in the making of its meaning. -- Emilia Terracciano * Third Text *"Quite unlike any other study of the art of modern and contemporary South Asia, A Fragile Inheritance is a deeply informative work that stresses the intellectual and political stakes of modern art practice and its discourse in India and the Global South.… Mathur's analysis …, superbly informed by methodological insights and comparative work by other international artists, are among the most accomplished readings of modern art from South Asia, and can be easily assigned as stand-alone essays in undergraduate and graduate university syllabi." -- Iftikhar Dadi * Oxford Art Journal *Table of ContentsPreface vii Introduction: Radical Stakes 1 1. Earthly Ecologies 40 2. The Edifice Complex 72 3. The World, the Art, and the Critic 96 4. Urban Economies 129 Epilogue: Late Styles 160 Notes 185 Bibliography 211 Index 225
£98.60
Duke University Press Orozcos American Epic
Book SynopsisMary K. Coffey examines José Clemente Orozco's mural cycle Epic of American Civilization, which indicts history as complicit in colonial violence and questions the claims of Manifest Destiny in the United States and the Mexican desire to mend the wounds of conquest in pursuit of a postcolonial national project.Trade Review“Orozco's American Epic is original in its intent, theoretically sophisticated, and clearly elaborated. Mary K. Coffey does not settle for easy interpretations of Orozco's mural but rather dwells purposively on the difficult questions it raises. An outstanding book.” -- Claire F. Fox, author of * Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War *“This is a spectacular piece of scholarship. Any study of Mexican mural painting in the context of Mexico is challenging enough, but adding the extra level of context as a work on US soil would defeat a less ambitious and less courageous scholar than Mary K. Coffey. Any scholar who can speak with great authority on the theories of Benjamin, Freud, and Butler on the same page and then apply those insights to the work of a Mexican painter is a scholar of almost shocking sophistication and intellectual conviction. This book needed to be written, and Coffey has delivered in glorious fashion.” -- Leonard Folgarait, coeditor of * Mexican Muralism: A Critical History *"Coffey’s scholarship is singular in its depth of critical analysis of Orozco’s Epic and, for this reason, will likely be considered among the foremost explorations of the work. . . . This book is highly recommended for every academic library collection." -- Colleen Farry * ARLIS/NA *"Critiquing melancholy through the lenses of performance and critical race studies, decoloniality, and transnationalism, Coffey offers a nuanced interpretation of Orozco’s political art. She presents Orozco’s Epic as a compelling counternarrative that reappraises debates about identity, immigration, and nationalism. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- L. Estevez * Choice *"An engaging read. . . . Coffey’s discussion of these muralists correctly places the book in conversation with Mexican muralist studies more broadly." -- Gregory R. Mesa * Dartmouth Review *"If [Coffey’s] reflections on the notion of prophecy re-open a closed chapter in Mexican historiography, her analysis of the Orozco mural from the standpoint of mass culture will put art historians on the edge of their seats. Without resorting to analogies of 'high and low' . . . she illuminates a field of exchanges and transformations . . . that partakes of the extraordinary formal freedom the painter was gaining through his work." (translated from Spanish) -- Renato González Mello * Nexos *"Four-and-a-half decades later, Mary K. Coffey is now the favorite Professor at Dartmouth College that I never had. Her richly informed and nuanced Orozco’s American Epic on some of this hemisphere’s greatest murals deepens my understanding and affection for the most memorable body of imagery encountered in four unhappy years of my life. ¡Bravo, Maestra!" -- Mike Mosher * Leonardo Reviews *“A meaningful contribution to a growing body of literature on the theme of Mexican muralism on both sides of the border.... Coffey’s sophisticated analysis and vivid description of Orozco’s mural combine a variety of methodologies that make this book timely, complex, and engaging.” -- Maya Jiménez * Panorama *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xv Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 1. Orozco's Melancholy Dialectics 43 2. Colonial Melancholy and the Myth of Quetzalcoatl 79 3. American Modernity and the Play of Mourning 123 4. "Modern Industrial Man" and the Melancholy of Race in America 207 Conclusion 261 Notes 287 Bibliography 325 Index
£22.79
Duke University Press Chicano and Chicana Art
Book SynopsisThis anthologywhich includes essays from artists, curators, and criticsprovides an overview of the history and theory of Chicano/a art from the 1960s to the present, emphasizing the debates and vocabularies that have played key roles in its conceptualization.Trade Review"A substantial volume, covering the literature of the movimiento during a period of approximately forty years. The scope offered is far beyond a survey, compiled by four recognized authorities. . . . An impressive resource" -- Clayton C. Kirking * ARLIS/NA Reviews *"This pioneering anthology fills a significant gap in the complex history of Chicana/o art and visual culture. . . . this volume is a required resource for teaching and learning about Chicana/o art, especially as issues of identity, immigration, and inclusion continue to ignite intense debate and controversy in the US. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- L. Estevez * Choice *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Acknowledgments xv Introduction / Jennifer A. González 1 Part I. Definitions and Debates Introduction / Chon Noriega 13 1. Looking for Alternatives: Notes on Chicano Art, 1960-1990 / Philip Brookman 19 2. Con Safo (C/S) Artists: A Contingency Factor / Mel Casas 30 3. El Arte de Chicano: "The Spirit of the Experience" / Gilbert Sanchez Luján 32 4. Notes on an Aesthetic Alternative / Carlos Almaraz 35 5. A Critical Perspective on the State of Chicano Art / Malaquís Montoya and Lezlie Salkowitz-Montoya 37 6. Response: Another Opinion on the State of Chicano Art / Shifra M. Goldman 45 7. Post-Chicano / Rita Gonzalez 54 8. The New Chicano Moment / Josh Kun 58 9. Post-movimiento: The Contemporary (Re)Generation of Chicana/o Art / Tomás Ybarra-Frausto 66 Further Reading 72 Part II. Cultural Reclamation and Vernacular Traditions Introduction / Terezita Romo 75 10. The Politics of Popular Art / Rupert García 81 11. Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility / Tomás Ybarra-Frausto 85 12. Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache / Amalia Mesa-Bains 91 13. Chicano Humor in Art: For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls / Rubén Trejo 100 14. Points of Convergence: Iconography of the Chicano Poster / Terezita Romo 104 15. Graffiti Is Art: Any Drawn Line That Speaks about Identity, Dignity, and Unity . . . That Line Is Art / Charles "Chaz" Bojórquez 117 16. Inventing Tradition, Negotiating Modernism: Chicano/a Art and the Pre-Columbian Past / Victor Zamudio-Taylor 123 17. Negotiated Frontiers: Contemporary Chicano Photography / Jennifer A. González 135 18. Deus ex Machina: Tradition, Technology, and the Chicanafuturist Art of Marion C. Martinez / Catherine S. Ramírez 146 19. Celia Alvarez Muñoz: "Civic Studies" / Roberto Tejada 165 Further Reading 174 Part III. Bodily Aesthetics and Iconologies Introduction / Jennifer A. González 177 20. Mel Casas: Redefining America / Nancy Kelker 183 21. Drawing Offensive/Offensive Drawing: Toward a Theory of Mariconógraphy / Robb Hernández 194 22. The Pachuco's Flayed Hide: Mobility, Identity, and Buenas Garras / Marcos Sánchez-Tranquilino and John Tagg 208 23. Writing on the Social Body: Dresses and Body Ornamentation in Contemporary Chicana Art / Laura A. Pérez 219 24. Ojo de la Diosa: Becoming Divine in Delilah Montoya's Photography / Asta Kuusinen 237 25. Art Comes for the Archbishop: The Semiotics of Contemporary Chicana Feminism and the Work of Alma López / Luz Calvo 250 Further Reading 263 Part IV. Public Practices and Enacted Landscapes Introduction / C. Ondine Chavoya 267 26. The Enacted Environment of East Los Angeles / James T. Rojas 271 27. Space, Power, and Youth Culture: Mexican American Graffiti and Chicano Murals in East Los Angeles, 1972-1978 / Marcos Sánchez-Tranquilino 278 28. Pseudographic Cinema: Asco's No-Movies / C. Ondine Chavoya 292 29. Whose Monument Where? Public Art in a Many-Cultured Society / Judith F. Baca 304 30. La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra: Colorado / Judith F. Baca 310 31. The Donkey Cart Caper: Some Thoughts on Socially Conscious Art in Antisocial Public Space / David Avalos 314 32. Public Audit: An Interview with Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock, and David Avalos / Clyena Simonds 319 Further Reading 331 Part V. Border Visions and Immigration Politics Introduction / Jennifer A. González 335 33. Border Arte: Nepantle, el Lugar de la Frontera / Gloria Anzaldúa 341 34. The Spaces of Home in Chicano and Latino Representations of the San Diego–Tijuana Borderlands (1968–2002) / Jo-Anne Berelowitz 351 35. Straddling la otra frontera: Inserting MiChicana/o Visual Culture into Chicana/o Art History / Dylan Miner 372 36. Borders, Border Crossing, and Political Art in North Carolina / Gabriela Valdivia, Joseph Palis, and Matthew Reilly 394 37. Excerpts from Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol / Enrique Chagoya, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Felicia Rice 402 38. 187 Reasons Why Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border (Remix) / Juan Felipe Herrera 406 Further Reading 410 Part VI. Institutional Frameworks and Critical Reception Introduction / C. Ondine Chavoya 413 39. Los Four / Peter Plagens 417 40. MARCH to an Aesthetic of Revolution / Raye Bemis 420 41. Resisting Modernism: Chicano Art: Retro Progressive or Progressive Retro? / Ralph Rugoff 423 42. Our America at the Smithsonian / Philip Kennicott 427 43. Alex Rivera, Philip Kennicott Debate Washington Post Review of Our America / Philip Kennicott 430 44. What Do We Mean When We Talk about "Latino Art"? / Elizabeth Blair 434 45. Chicano Art: Looking Backward / Shifra M. Goldman 436 46. Readers' Forum Letter to the Editor in Response to Shifra Goldman's Exhibition Review / Judithe Elena Hernández de Neikrug 440 47. Readers' Forum Response to Judithe Hernandez's Letter to the Editor / Shifra M. Goldman 442 48. "All Roads Lead to East L.A.," Goez Art Studios and Gallery / Karen Mary Davalos 444 49. From CARA to CACA: The Multiple Anatomies of Chicano/a Art at the Turn of the New Century / Alicia Gaspar de Alba 455 50. On Museum Row: Aesthetics and the Politics of Exhibition / Chon Noriega 470 51. Strangeways Here We Come / Rita Gonzalez 484 Further Reading 495 Glossary 497 Contributors 501 Index 509 Acknowledgment of Copyrights 531
£26.59
Duke University Press A Fragile Inheritance
Book SynopsisSaloni Mathur investigates the radical work of two seminal figuresNew Dehli-based critic and curator Geeta Kapur, and her husband, contemporary multimedia artist, Vivan Sundaramto show how their approach to artistic practice and theory may inform subsequent generations and serve as a model for artistic politics in our time.Trade Review“This critical retake on the work of Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram offers a deeply informed reading of their joint and separate works but also turns the biographical norm inside out, reading their lives as illuminations of their tempestuous times and not simply as cases or examples of larger processes. It will be read with keen interest by anyone who cares about the making of modern art worlds in places like India.” -- Arjun Appadurai, Paulette Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University“Saloni Mathur's A Fragile Inheritance immerses the reader in the long march of Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram, leading figures of India's avant-garde in criticism and artistic practice. Against the background of the indescribable complexity of India's many languages, political parties, and aesthetic movements, Mathur traces parallel and intersecting careers with a brilliant sense of the improvisatory, provisional, and timely character of their numerous interventions over half a century. Renouncing any claim to survey the art of India, or to provide a progressive narrative of relentless novelty, Mathur provides an in-depth account of works, projects, ideas, and the situations in which they arose. Writing ‘alongside’ rather than ‘about’ the work of these two essential figures, Mathur offers a striking model of engaged critical practice in a project that is far from finished.” -- W. J. T. Mitchell, author of * Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics *“Mathur’s condensation of two difficult-to-summarize careers is a remarkable achievement.... To return to Kapur and Sundaram is a radically generous and participatory act, an invitation to reimagine our limits by slowly going over things we thought we were ready to leave behind." -- Meghaa Ballakrishnen * CAA Reviews *"This densely written book encounters not only fundamental questions of art and its preservation, but also of writing about art, and itself can be seen as an innovative example of the latter. Further, it addresses the sociocultural and political embedding of art in the postcolonial context, touching also upon ethical questions. Therefore, this book is by far not only relevant for readers who want to know about or deal with Kapur and Sundaram." -- Maja Jerrentrup * South Asia Research *Rich and luminous…. A Fragile Inheritance is an essential, thoughtful and riveting work that asks the addressee to co-participate in the making of its meaning. -- Emilia Terracciano * Third Text *"Quite unlike any other study of the art of modern and contemporary South Asia, A Fragile Inheritance is a deeply informative work that stresses the intellectual and political stakes of modern art practice and its discourse in India and the Global South.… Mathur's analysis …, superbly informed by methodological insights and comparative work by other international artists, are among the most accomplished readings of modern art from South Asia, and can be easily assigned as stand-alone essays in undergraduate and graduate university syllabi." -- Iftikhar Dadi * Oxford Art Journal *Table of ContentsPreface vii Introduction: Radical Stakes 1 1. Earthly Ecologies 40 2. The Edifice Complex 72 3. The World, the Art, and the Critic 96 4. Urban Economies 129 Epilogue: Late Styles 160 Notes 185 Bibliography 211 Index 225
£25.19
Duke University Press The Politics of Taste
Book SynopsisIn The Politics of Taste Ana María Reyes examines the works of Colombian artist Beatriz González and Argentine-born art critic, Marta Traba, who championed González''s art during Colombia''s National Front coalition government (1958–74). During this critical period in Latin American art, artistic practice, art criticism, and institutional objectives came into strenuous yet productive tension. While González’s triumphant debut excited critics who wanted to cast Colombian art as modern, sophisticated, and universal, her turn to urban lowbrow culture proved deeply unsettling. Traba praised González''s cursi (tacky) recycling aesthetic as daringly subversive and her strategic localism as resistant to U.S. cultural imperialism. Reyes reads González''s and Traba''s complex visual and textual production and their intertwined careers against Cold War modernization programs that were deeply embedded in the elite''s fear of the Trade Review“Ana María Reyes tackles an important but understudied subject that is absolutely essential to understanding contemporary Colombian politics, culture, and society: the relationship between aesthetics and the Cold War in Colombia. Her analysis of Beatriz González's artistic practices, Marta Traba's art criticism, the institutions where they worked and exhibited, and Colombia's cultural politics and Cold War policies during the National Front period is brilliant and compelling.” -- Mary Roldán, author of * Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946–1953 *“In this exciting and enlightening book, Ana María Reyes provides an entirely new perspective on the art of Beatriz González, on Latin American engagements with pop, and on Marta Traba's assessment of González's work. By offering a clear sense of the cultural dynamics of the Cold War in Colombia and class politics within Bogota during this period, Reyes allows readers to better appreciate González's subject matter, style, color sensibility, and use of appropriation.” -- Mary Coffey, author of * Orozco’s American Epic: Myth, History, and the Melancholy of Race *“Rich, multivalent context as means to weighing Colombian Beatriz González’s early artistic production (1964–70) is exactly what this assistant professor of Latin American art at Boston University offers readers with her monograph The Politics of Taste. The author’s analysis is buttressed by field research including access to the artist’s personal archive, twelve hours of personal interviews with her, and archival work in Medellín, Colombia…. Reyes’s skillfully crafted text is the first single-author monograph on the artist in English.” -- Teresa Eckmann * Art Journal *"Reyes’s study is rich in information, illustrations, and ideas. . . . This book is authoritative, rigorous, and consistently insightful." -- Luis Rebaza-Soraluz * E.I.A.L. *
£75.65
Duke University Press Unfixed
Book SynopsisIn Unfixed Jennifer Bajorek traces the relationship between photography and decolonial political imagination in Francophone west Africa in the years immediately leading up to and following independence from French colonial rule in 1960. Focusing on images created by photographers based in Senegal and Benin, Bajorek draws on formal analyses of images and ethnographic fieldwork with photographers to show how photography not only reflected but also actively contributed to social and political change. The proliferation of photographic imagery—through studio portraiture, bureaucratic ID cards, political reportage and photojournalism, magazines, and more—provided the means for west Africans to express their experiences, shape public and political discourse, and reimagine their world. In delineating how west Africans'' embrace of photography was associated with and helped spur the democratization of political participation and the development of labor and liberation movemenTrade Review“With intimate ethnography, urgent activism, and an intriguing mix of methodological and theoretical tools, Jennifer Bajorek presents a compelling set of arguments about photography's critical role in producing new publics with their own forms of political imagination and civic consciousness. Her book is an absolute pleasure to read and leaves readers with tantalizing possibilities for future scholarship in other sites at the reaches of the French colonial sphere.” -- Elizabeth Harney, coeditor of * Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity, Colonialism *“Jennifer Bajorek offers a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the transformative power of photography all while telling a compelling story packed with detail and brio. Beautifully written, highly original, and built around a core of remarkable images, Unfixed is unquestionably a major contribution.” -- Christopher Pinney, author of * Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs *“Unfixed…moves beyond topics that are by now familiar, even canonical. Grounded in rigorous theoretical inquiry and years of in-depth research in the major cities of Senegal and Benin, the book deftly shifts the field toward new terrain. While past scholarship has been concerned with demarcating the Africanity of photography and has focused on issues of identity formation, portraiture, and the colonial gaze, Bajorek instead challenges us to pay attention to photography’s political significance to Africans.” -- Prita Meier * CAA Reviews *“Bajorek’s approach, observations, and suggestions make Unfixed an insightful and illuminating read—not only for researchers of Black or African Studies, but for anyone concerned with vernacular photography.” -- Daniela Yvonne Baumann * Camera Austria International *“[Unfixed] contributes to the dismantling of the notion of a monolithic canon of photography history.... Unfixed is a richly layered book that explores a wide variety of concepts, raising thought-provoking questions along the way.” -- Jane Darcovich * ARLIS/NA *“Jennifer Bajorek’s book is a remarkable achievement; the product of an inquiry that began in 1999 and grew through seven years of field work in Senegal and Benin, Unfixed unearths the extraordinary and largely uncharted territory of photography’s role in what she describes as the ‘decolonial imagination’ of Francophone West Africa.” -- Jordan Troeller * History of Photography *“Jennifer Bajorek’s Unfixed convincingly and eloquently discusses the role that photography played in fostering decolonial imagination among francophone west Africans. . . . [It is] an engaging and accessible read, a rich resource for scholars and students, and a welcome addition to scholarly works on African photography and decolonization.” -- Haythem Guesmi * Africa Today *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii A Note on Geography, Spelling, and Language xiii Preface xvii Acknowledgments xix Introduction. At Least Two Histories of Liberation 1 Part I. What Makes a Popular Photography? 1. Ça bousculait! (It Was Happening!) 41 2. Wild Circulation: Photography as Urban Media 83 3. Decolonizing Print Culture: The Example of Bingo 117 Part II. Republic of Images 4. Africanizing Political Photography 163 5. The Pleasures of State-Sponsored Photography 203 6. African Futures, Lost and Found 240 Notes 265 Bibliography 307 Index 319
£140.25
Duke University Press Insurgent Aesthetics
Book SynopsisRonak K. Kapadia examines multimedia visual art by artists from societies besieged by the US war on terror, showing how their art offers queer feminist critiques of US global warfare that forge new aesthetic and social alliances with which to sustain critical opposition to the global war machine.Trade Review“At its core, Insurgent Aesthetics reminds us that war and security are—despite the modern ideologies that would declare otherwise—fundamentally racialized social practices that seek to manage their violence in everyday life through controlling what can be felt and known. By looking at the ways diasporic communities interfere with sovereign and statist logics that conserve the knowledge of loss for the national community alone, this exquisitely written book powerfully argues for the insurgent abilities of culture to interrupt, deform, and repopulate our felt and known worlds in ways that force a reckoning and connection with the racialized death and detritus that US security at once creates and tries to disappear.” -- Chandan Reddy, author of * Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the U.S. State *“With its sharp interrogation of US warfare, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism, Insurgent Aesthetics introduces ‘queer calculus’ as an analytic that focuses on the racial violences of US empire and its forever war. By attending to the sensuous, and to the creative praxis and interventions of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic artists, Insurgent Aesthetics is a powerful, queer feminist study of life under US empire. Importantly, Ronak K. Kapadia demonstrates how insurgent strategies of solidarity and rebellion can trouble empire's methodologies and move us toward freedom.” -- Simone Browne, author of * Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness *“ Insurgent Aesthetics is a theoretically-rich piece of cultural studies. … The book offers a powerful reading of art inspired by, and produced during, the post-9/11 era of US military aggression and colonization.” -- Brian Donovan * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“There is much to be learned from Kapadia, whose ambitious monograph traffics between a profound appreciation for the ramifications of US imperialism, an eye for congruencies between divergent strains of comparative ethnic studies, and an enthusiasm for the critical talents of minoritarian cultural production.” -- Eric Vazquez * Lateral *"Fascinating and innovative.... Kapadia’s book is beautifully constructed not only intellectually in the breadth and depth of its analyses but also physically: it is richly illustrated with many of the artistic works that he discusses, a number in full-colour plates.... What is perhaps most important about the book is its insistence that art does not only offer critical perspectives on surveillance and securitization but also brings out the extent to which surveillance practices are themselves inextricably grounded in visual and aesthetic practices." -- Robert Heynen * Surveillance & Society *"Insurgent Aesthetics’s argument about the violence of visuality and the capacity of artists to rethink the aesthetics of warfare track through the entire book; however, each chapter and all the art objects feel fresh and different from the previous. The arguments are sustained also by the inclusion of many colour images from each artist discussed. The book belongs in visual, art, media and performance studies classrooms, as much as in social science contexts studying globalisation, war and imperialism." -- Kareem Khubchandani * Bioscope *"Insurgent Aesthetics is a dazzling contribution to a number of fields. . . . It is a model of scholarly composition, depth and breadth, grace and nuance. It would also be a welcome model for students and scholars across the humanities for its organization, style, substance, analysis, and beauty. But more importantly, Kapadia’s queer calculus is a methodology that can help ensure we don’t become numb from the gas that now governs so much of the world and shows us that our tears may lead to some, new unknown place of collective freedom for all." -- Stephen Dillon * Cultural Studies *“Kapadia has done profound justice to the cultural workers that he features—and his book is a welcome contribution to knowledge production and a living example of what true intersectional scholarship looks like.... Insurgent Aesthetics is itself aesthetically breathtakingly beautiful as a text—and insurgent.” -- Sa'ed Atshan * Arab Studies Quarterly *“As Kapadia points out, many of the artists whose works he explores do not have the kind of mainstream recognition they should have in the international art world. [H]is careful reading of the artists’ works is a model for how an art critic can (and should) write about works by artists with complex genealogies.” -- Alpesh Kantilal Patel * GLQ *"The immensely generative and imaginative work by Ronak Kapadia in Insurgent Aesthetics is of great value for those working within and at the inter- sections of numerous fields; artists of colour will particularly benefit from Kapadia’s expansive readings and theories of contemporary conceptual, performance, and visual art by an essential set of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian diasporic artists and cultural workers." -- Balbir Singh * Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Sensuous Affiliations: Security, Terror, and the Queer Calculus of the Forever War 1 1. Up in the Air: US Aerial Power and the Visual Life of Empire in the Drone Age 44 2. On the Skin: Drone Warfare, Collateral Damage, and the Human Terrain 76 3. Empire's Innards: Conjuring "Warm Data" in the Archives of US Global Military Detention 103 4. Palestine(s) in the Sky: Visionary Aesthetics and Queer Cosmic Utopias from the Frontiers of US Empire 151 Epilogue. Scaling Empire: Insurgent Aesthetics n the Wilds of Imperial Decline 187 Notes 203 Bibliography 271 Index 321
£75.65
Duke University Press Photographic Returns
Book SynopsisIn Photographic Returns Shawn Michelle Smith traces how historical moments of racial crisis come to be known photographically and how the past continues to inhabit, punctuate, and transform the present through the photographic medium in contemporary art. Smith engages photographs by Rashid Johnson, Sally Mann, Deborah Luster, Lorna Simpson, Jason Lazarus, Carrie Mae Weems, Taryn Simon, and Dawoud Bey, among others. Each of these artists turns to the past—whether by using nineteenth-century techniques to produce images or by re-creating iconic historic photographs—as a way to use history to negotiate the present and to call attention to the unfinished political project of racial justice in the United States. By interrogating their use of photography to recall, revise, and amplify the relationship between racial politics of the past and present, Smith locates a temporal recursivity that is intrinsic to photography, in which images return to haunt the viewer and prompt Trade Review“Offering a major contribution to how we think about the relationship between time and photography, Shawn Michelle Smith stuns the reader into seeing familiar texts in new ways. Her scholarship is a model of careful thinking, close reading, clear writing, and historical sensibility. I learned so much from reading this book! It is a spectacular accomplishment.” -- Elspeth H. Brown, author of * Work! A Queer History of Modeling *“Photographic Returns is nothing less than a revelation. Shawn Michelle Smith takes us on a deep dive into the telescoping temporality of photography and, in doing so, fundamentally shifts our understanding of how photographic images register backward and forward in time. The hinge point of her study is its sumptuous reading of contemporary artists' use of photography as a critical apparatus that bends time in ways that connect us to the deeper affects of history. Her haunting, subtle, and truly sensuous analysis of the aftereffects of historical photography fundamentally re-visions our conception of the relationship between photography, history, memory, and temporality.” -- Tina M. Campt, author of * Listening to Images *"The charm in Smith’s writing lies in its ability to pair images (archival, vintage, popular) with reinterpretations by contemporary artists. These visitations—or, as she calls them, returns—magnify the persistent terror of white supremacy in the United States. Her chapters all bring readers to see the obvious and forgotten aspects of antiblack racism. The book positions these photographs as reminders that justice in the United States has not yet arrived." -- Yasmine Espert * Public Books *"Seen through their photographic eyes, racial historical events resurface to inspire, challenge, provoke, and provide metaphoric opportunities that reveal and expand conversations in an attempt to energize the social justice movement in the US. A much-needed addition to the literature on the pressing subject of race, representation, and photography, the book includes extensive and informative notes for each chapter and a 16-page insert of color plates." -- J. Natal * Choice *“Smith’s lucid prose and her focus on contemporary artists’ engagements with pressing social issues will make Photographic Returns appealing to advanced undergraduate students. Her implicit and explicit engagements with key concerns in the history of photography, visual culture studies, American studies, and African American studies will be of interest to graduate students and specialists in these fields.” -- Darius Bost * American Literary History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Photographic Returns 1 1. Looking Forward and Looking Back: Rashid Johnson and Frederick Douglass on Photography 16 2. Photographic Remains: Sally Mann at Antietam 34 3. The Scene of the Crime: Deborah Luster 61 4. Photographic Referrals: Lorna Simpson's 9 Props 93 5. Afterimages: Jason Lazarus 112 6. Photographic Reenactments: Carrie Mae Weems's Constructing History 133 7. False Returns: Taryn Simon's The Innocents 152 Coda. A Glimpse Forward: Dawoud Bey's The Birmingham Project 170 Notes 175 Bibliography 213 Index 229
£18.89
Duke University Press The Process Genre
Book SynopsisSalomé Aguilera Skvirsky theorizes the process genre—filmic genre characterized by its representation of chronologically ordered steps in which some form of labor results in a finished product.Trade Review“Thank goodness there are still film genres to discover! Covering a broad historical and geographical range, from Japan to Chile and from early cinema to YouTube, Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky's study of the cinematic work of work is both meticulously argued and strikingly original.” -- Jonathan Kahana, editor of * The Documentary Film Reader: History, Theory, Criticism *“After reading Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky's original take on the process genre one wonders why this essential cinematic genre had not been an object of systematic study earlier. The book draws on the genre's connection to modernity, cinema, magic, and technique, and it develops a textured reading of Latin American cinema and its discourses on labor. With examples ranging from slapstick to process manuals and art cinema, the book is impressive in its historical and contextual depth and textual deftness. Skvirsky's vivid readings convey the unavoidable interest in following a sequence of concerted steps toward a predefined end—in the cinema.” -- Ivone Margulies, author of * In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema *"[The appeal of the process genre] is impossible to ignore while reading The Process Genre; even Skvirsky's step-by-step accounts of the texts she cites elicit a distinct sense of gratification." -- Madeline Collier * Film Quarterly *"The Process Cinema is the labour of love of a cinephile and academic pursuing a passion; it proves its own point by showing the great ideas that can sprout when humans engage in intellectual work. In this way, it also shows the ethical and political importance of extending this privilege to everyone, whether in the form of work or play." -- Juan Velasquez * Bright Lights Film Journal *"[An] absorptive and accomplished monograph.… Skvirsky's clear organization and approachable writing when engaging thematically rich areas make the book appropriate for undergraduate and graduate courses both as a case study in its entirety and through individual chapters that offer new perspective into the cinematic treatment of topics such as labor, the nation, or affect.… For a book about the appeal of watching a precisely accomplished technique, The Process Genre illuminates the pleasure of reading a well-executed scholarly work." -- Juan Llamas-Rodriguez * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *"A meticulous, carefully reasoned, and riveting polemic that argues that the process film is really about celebrating the centrality of work to human activity." -- Jonathan Buchsbaum * Discourse *“The Process Genre is clearly a labour of love.... The book’s points are accompanied by small black and white frames throughout, but also through a number of grids.... These beautifully produced and reproduced works in themselves add yet more to the great human pleasure of reading this book.” -- Helen Hughes * Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television *"The Process Genre is required reading for those working in the domains of useful cinema, visual anthropology, labor and capitalism, and national cinemas. . . . It is rare to find a book that brings together so many academic audiences and fields that tend to work independently in an opportunity to reorient our scholarship along our common interests. We need more books that do the same." -- Kit Hughes * New Review of Film and Television Studies *Table of ContentsA Note on the Art ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: The Process Genre 1 1. The Process Film in Context 51 2. On Being Absorbed in Work 77 3. Aestheticizing Labor 116 4. Nation Building 146 5. The Limits of the Genre 193 Epilogue: The Spoof That Proves the Rule 219 Notes 239 Bibliography 287 Index 305
£98.60
Duke University Press Embodying Relation
Book SynopsisAllison Moore examines the tensions between the local and the global in the art photography movement that blossomed in Bamako, Mali, in the 1990s, showing contemporary Malian photography to be a rich example of Western notions of art meeting traditional cultural precepts to forge new artistic forms, practices, and communities.Trade Review“Allison Moore's Embodying Relation examines the history of the Bamako art photography movement through its institutions and its aesthetics and the profound effect of transnational encounters on the agency of art photographers in Mali. She provides art historians with a comprehensive analysis of the most important site of photography discourse in Africa, thus bridging the disciplinary boundaries that usually narrate African cultural production outside the pale of art history. Research in photography in Africa provides a great platform for linking African art history to global art history by locating both in a coeval contemporaneity. As such, the importance of Moore's orientation for art history cannot be overemphasized.” -- Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, author of * Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: A Poetics of Relation 1 1. Unknown Photographer (Bamako, Mali) 27 2. Malian Portraiture Glamorized and Globalized 62 3. Biennale Effects: The African Photography Encounters 98 4. Bamako Becoming Photographic: An Archipelagic Art World 145 5. Creolizing the Archive: Photographers at the National Museum 171 6. Promoting Women Photographers 210 7. Errantry, the Social Body, and Photography as the Écho-monde 249 Conclusion 276 Notes 281 Bibliography 325 Index
£140.25
Duke University Press Embodying Relation
Book SynopsisIn Embodying Relation Allison Moore examines the tensions between the local and the global in the art photography movement in Bamako, Mali, which blossomed in the 1990s after Malian photographers Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé became internationally famous and the Bamako Photography Biennale was founded. Moore traces the trajectory of Malian photography from the 1880s—when photography first arrived as an apparatus of French colonialism—to the first African studio practitioners of the 1930s and the establishment in 1994 of the Bamako Biennale, Africa''s most important continent-wide photographic exhibition. In her detailed discussion of Bamakois artistic aesthetics and institutions, Moore examines the post-fame careers of Keïta and Sidibé, the biennale''s structure, the rise of women photographers, cultural preservation through photography, and how Mali''s shift to democracy in the early 1990s enabled Bamako''s art scene to flourish. Moore showTrade Review“Allison Moore's Embodying Relation examines the history of the Bamako art photography movement through its institutions and its aesthetics and the profound effect of transnational encounters on the agency of art photographers in Mali. She provides art historians with a comprehensive analysis of the most important site of photography discourse in Africa, thus bridging the disciplinary boundaries that usually narrate African cultural production outside the pale of art history. Research in photography in Africa provides a great platform for linking African art history to global art history by locating both in a coeval contemporaneity. As such, the importance of Moore's orientation for art history cannot be overemphasized.” -- Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, author of * Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: A Poetics of Relation 1 1. Unknown Photographer (Bamako, Mali) 27 2. Malian Portraiture Glamorized and Globalized 62 3. Biennale Effects: The African Photography Encounters 98 4. Bamako Becoming Photographic: An Archipelagic Art World 145 5. Creolizing the Archive: Photographers at the National Museum 171 6. Promoting Women Photographers 210 7. Errantry, the Social Body, and Photography as the Écho-monde 249 Conclusion 276 Notes 281 Bibliography 325 Index
£35.10
Duke University Press Disordering the Establishment
Book SynopsisIn the decades following World War II, France experienced both a period of affluence and a wave of political, artistic, and philosophical discontent that culminated in the countrywide protests of 1968. In Disordering the Establishment Lily Woodruff examines the development of artistic strategies of political resistance in France in this era. Drawing on interviews with artists, curators, and cultural figures of the time, Woodruff analyzes the formal and rhetorical methods that artists used to counter establishment ideology, appeal to direct political engagement, and grapple with French intellectuals' modeling of society. Artists and collectives such as Daniel Buren, André Cadere, the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel, and the Collectif d'Art Sociologique shared an opposition to institutional hegemony by adapting their works to unconventional spaces and audiences, asserting artistic autonomy from art institutions, and embracing interdisciplinarity. In showing how these artists used art to question what art should be and where it should be seen, Woodruff demonstrates how artists challenged and redefined the art establishment and their historical moment.Trade Review“Lily Woodruff's examination of conceptual painting in France is at once timely and long overdue. She offers a satisfying total narrative of the artworks situated in relation to the changing dynamics of both the state and the market as they came to determine culture without losing focus of the specificity of the aesthetic dimension of these interventions. She situates artwork as a vehicle for an intellectual and sensual proposition charged with capacity. I learned a tremendous amount from this book.” -- Jaleh Mansoor, author of * Marshall Plan Modernism: Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia *“This extraordinarily lucid book is required reading for anyone wondering how the 1960s—and even ‘democracy’ itself—still matters. As Lily Woodruff demonstrates, the top-down instrumentalization of participation was countered in that decade by an artistic landscape ranging from kinetic painting and wearable objects to handheld props and logos. In beautifully readable prose, she replaces French artistic practice in a geopolitical terrain that negotiates both Soviet and Maoist histories, making those practices once again urgently contemporary.” -- Rachel Haidu, author of * The Absence of Work: Marcel Broodthaers, 1964–1976 *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. The Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel's Social Abstractions 31 2. Daniel Buren's Instrumental Invisibility 91 3. André Cadere's Calligrams of Institutional Authority 143 4. The Collectif d'Art Sociologique's Sociological Realism 195 Conclusion 257 Notes 265 Bibliography 293 Index 304
£112.20
Duke University Press Latinx Art
Book SynopsisArlene Dávila draws on numerous interviews with artists, dealers, and curators to explore how and why the contemporary international art market continues to overlook, devalue, and marginalize Latinx art and artists.Trade Review“In this current moment of national rupture surrounding the Latino immigrant it is ironic that the new focus on Latinx artists and communities should come to the forefront as a powerful cultural movement. Arlene Dávila’s new work on Latinx art is a timely examination of the complex issues of cultural definition, art markets, race and representation, and geopolitical reference points. In the embattled world of diverse art and artists Dávila's book provides a map of clarity.” -- Amalia Mesa-Bains, MacArthur fellow and coauthor of * Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism *“Kudos to Arlene Dávila, founding director of the Latinx Project at New York University, and the only person who could have written this groundbreaking new book! First, identifying Latinx, perhaps most importantly, as a political constituency and as a market for art historical appreciation and consumption, Dávila makes the case for a singular recognition and consideration of a massive (and rapidly growing) part of American culture. While highlighting intersectionality in her exploration of Latinx identity, she is an astute documentarian of shared experiences in the American landscape. Yet, this book is a must-have primer for those concerned with trends in international contemporary art.” -- Franklin Sirmans, Director, Pérez Art Museum Miami"An indispensable text that considers the plights of Latinx artists through the lens of race and class disparities in both North and South America. . . . Dávila’s text is a vital resource on Latinx art, complete with a supplemented 'non-comprehensive list of artists everyone should know' and recommendations of Latinx Instagram accounts to follow." -- Valentina Di Liscia * Hyperallergic *"The marketing of modern and contemporary art from Latin America is one of the success stories of the globalist decades, giving a once-niche interest a presence in big North American museums. Exactly the opposite is true of Latinx art, loosely defined as work made by artists of Latin American birth or descent who live primarily in the United States. That lack of institutional support is dictated by the politics of class, economics and race, the cultural anthropologist Arlene Dávila argues in this important broadside of a book." -- Holland Cotter * New York Times *"An outstanding contribution to the field of Latinx art, this book addresses the defining traits of the art category and its place in the contemporary art world. . . . The wide range of Latinx art experts she interviews, from artists, curators, writers, critics and gallerists, draw the contours of a remarkably vibrant cultural field that is still undervalued. Her analysis not only dissects the conditions of Latinx artistic invisibility; it also proposes a path of action to overcome them and to create a more equitable art system." -- Taína Caragol * Smithsonian Magazine *"With deep research and details about the ways in which the market continues to overlook and undervalue the work of Latinx artists, Arlene Dávila’s Latinx Art is one of this year’s most important contributions to the art world as a whole. . . . That this book exists is itself an important milestone in the struggle for equity in the art world." -- Maximilíano Durón * ARTnews *"Arlene Dávila advances a groundbreaking analysis of Latinx art in the way she centers on matters of race, class, and nationality as primordial to understanding this category. . . . As a scholar independent of the art world’s social circuit, Dávila describes in great detail the ingrained power dynamics that deny institutional access to Latinx artists. In doing so, she delivers an unprecedented service to the field, considering the silencing force exerted by hierarchical structures that traverse the art world, and the artists’ reliance on good relations with gatekeepers in order to have any shot at exhibition and market spaces." -- Taína Caragol * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *“Latinx Art is appropriate for new and nonacademic audiences, because Dávila is one of the most accessible scholarly authors. . . . A must-read for Latinx studies students and scholars and beyond.” -- Karen Mary Davalos * Latino Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments & Reader Instructions vii Introduction. Making Latinx Art 1 1. What Is Latinx Art? Lessons from Chicanx and Diasporican Artists 23 2. Exhibiting Latinx Art: On Critics, Curators, and Going "Beyond the Formula" 48 3. Nationalism and the Currency of Categories 79 4. On Markets and the Need for Cheerleaders 104 5. Whitewashing at Work, and Some Ways Out 138 Conclusion: At the Vanguard of Arts and Museum Activism in the Twenty-First Century 168 Appendix A: Noncomprehensive List of Artists Everyone Should Know 177 Appendix B: Additional Resources 185 Notes 189 References 203 Index 223
£72.25
Duke University Press Keith Harings Line
Book SynopsisRicardo Montez traces the drawn and painted line that was at the center of Keith Haring's artistic practice, engaging with Haring's messy relationships to race-making and racial imaginaries.Trade Review“Keith Haring's Line is a brilliant, engaging, and necessary book. Centering the story of Haring's line on the queer people of color with whom Haring collaborated, Ricardo Montez gifts the reader with an intensely productive vocabulary for naming and exploring the relational dynamics that define the practices of a number of artists working across incommensurate forms of difference. Montez's writing does justice to so many neglected figures (like Juan Dubose and graffiti artist LA II) and importantly situates Haring's practice in relationship to performance-centered scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. This is not only the definitive take on Haring, it is the book on Haring's world.” -- Jennifer Doyle, author of * Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art *“A well-written and carefully elaborated study of Keith Haring and the cultural politics of race and desire that spans beyond Haring. Ricardo Montez's careful reading of different ‘scenes’ of interracial desire allows the reader to get close to the nuances of the power dynamics played out within them. Original and compelling.” -- Gavin Butt, author of * Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948-1963 *"Keith Haring’s Line is neither a biography nor a general assessment of Haring’s work as an artist. Rather, it is a queer musing upon the intersections of sex and race in Haring’s work. . . . Montez writes with authority about photography, art, and queer theory, but the passion of this book lies in its interrogation of sex and race." -- Dennis Altman * Gay and Lesbian Review *"Keith Haring’s Line exudes political and aesthetic friction, impressively threading many entry points and tactics. Following in the legacy of his late mentor José Esteban Muñoz (to whom the book is dedicated), Montez brings deliberate specificity to the ubiquitous figure of Haring. By exposing and avoiding the trappings of linearity, singularity, and script, Montez is instead able to present vulnerability, fluidity, and flesh." -- Danilo Machado * Hyperallergic *"Montez's book is a welcome addition to a constellation of projects—some foundational, others newer—that pay fuller, much-needed attention to the exchanges between race and queer desire in New York City's 'Downtown scene' of the early 1980s.… Like Haring's line, Montez's prose is crisp and decisive. In this final chapter and throughout his readings, his beautiful writing invites readers to rethink our scholarly machines, to reimagine what critical writing and our theory-landed prose can do. Keith Haring's Line places its author's affective investments on full display." -- Tyler T. Schmidt * Postmodern Culture *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction. The Call of the Impossible Figure 1 1. Desire in Transit: Writing It Out in New York City 31 2. "Trade' Marks: LA II and a Queer Economy of Exchange 61 3. Theory Made Flesh?: Keeping Up with Grace Jones 83 4. Drips, Rust, and Residue: Forms of Longing 109 Notes 135 Bibliography 141 Index 145
£67.15
Duke University Press Beyond the Worlds End
Book SynopsisT. J. Demos explores a range of artistic, activist, and cultural practices that provide compelling and radical propositions for building a just, decolonial, and environmentally sustainable future.Trade Review“T. J. Demos has for some time charted intertwining artistic and activist responses to environmental catastrophe, and here he is at his best. This book is powerful and necessary.” -- Julia Bryan-Wilson, author of * Fray: Art and Textile Politics *“Beyond the World's End rethinks the complex relationship between political ecology and artistic practice. Written in the clear, provocative prose for which T. J. Demos is already widely admired, this important book operates within the framework of environmental and, by extension, climate justice and provides a glimmer of hope in the midst of the current catastrophe.” -- Alexander Alberro, Barnard College"Amply illustrated and well indexed, the book blends nature-culture binaries and lays out the possibilities for lives beyond the world’s end. This pithy, well-researched volume includes an introduction, seven chapters, and notes, and it will interest students of Afrofuturism, art history, ecofeminism, ecology, social justice, visual culture, and myriad related subjects. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals." -- J. Decker * Choice *“Demos...offer[s] a wealth of information on environmentalist artists and ecocritical thinkers who may not be presented to art audiences elsewhere. [His] venturesome examples of art historical ecocriticism model methodologies of engagement that challenge scholars to apply their own talents and imaginations toward new practices of art history for our time.” -- Suzaan Boettger * Art Bulletin *“Demos’ main contribution to the fields of ecology, art history, and geo-politics is the tangible methods he offers against catastrophism. . . . In Beyondthe World’s End, Demos has produced not only a timely teaching tool, but also a touchstone for the ongoing writings and makings of the not-yet.” -- Kate Keohane * Art History *“Beyond the World’s End is a text of impressive scope and depth, whose thematic urgency needs no introduction. . . . If, as in Fredric Jameson’s famous adage, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism, Demos charts a path here for imagining both, and a different world that can be brought into being in what lies beyond these ends.” -- Matthias Kispert * Moving Image Review & Art Journal *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Introduction. The World's End, and Beyond 1 1. Feeding the Ghost: John Akomfrah's Vertigo Sea 23 2. Blackout: The Necropolitics of Extraction 43 3. The Visual Politics of Climate Refugees 68 4. Gaming the Environment: On the Media Ecology of Public Studio 96 5. Animal Cosmopolitics: The Art of Gustafsson&Haapoga 116 6. To Save a World: Geoengineering, Conflictual Futurisms, and the Unthinkable 137 7. The Great Transition: The Arts and Radical System Change 163 Acknowledgments 195 Notes 199 Index 249
£72.25
Duke University Press Media Primitivism
Book SynopsisDelinda Collier finds alternative concepts of mediation in African art by closely engaging with electricity-based works since 1944.Trade Review“Delinda Collier's Media Primitivism is a remarkable journey into the intellectual development of twentieth-century African art and how art objects themselves resist the categories accorded to them. Theoretically sophisticated and brilliantly argued, Media Primitivism poses a serious challenge to those who like their African art suspended in a primordial past.” -- Steven Nelson, author of * From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture In and Out of Africa *“Media Primitivism is an important book that will resituate both media history and the historiography of African art. Delinda Collier convincingly argues that, from electronic music to world cinema, African technologies are not additions to electricity-based media but function as the very basis of them. The historiography is thrilling, the aesthetic analyses compelling, and the theoretical synthesis at times breathtaking.” -- Laura U. Marks, author of * Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image *“Media Primitivism is a nuanced and singular intellectual project that stands to make an impact across the fields of African art, media studies, and art history. . . . Its most exciting contribution is that it breathes new life into the theoretical possibilities proposed by African art itself.” -- Allison K. Young * African Arts *“Media Primitivism is a compelling book that blends media theory, art history, and African art history in a masterful act of theoretical weaving on the part of its author. . . . Tracing deeper technological histories on the continent . . . proves that the question of Africa (as a place and idea) is not additive to media studies, but a foundational aspect of it.” -- Alexandra M. Thomas * Media-N *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. African Art History and the Medium Concept 1 1. Film as Light, Film as Indigenous 31 2. Electronic Sound as Trance ad Resonance 61 3. The Song as Private Property 93 4. Artificial Blackness, or Extraction as Abstraction 119 5. "The Earth and the Substratum Are Not Enough" 153 6. The Seed and the Field 183 Afterword 211 Notes 215 Bibliography 237 Index
£112.20
Duke University Press Media Primitivism
Book SynopsisDelinda Collier finds alternative concepts of mediation in African art by closely engaging with electricity-based works since 1944.Trade Review“Delinda Collier's Media Primitivism is a remarkable journey into the intellectual development of twentieth-century African art and how art objects themselves resist the categories accorded to them. Theoretically sophisticated and brilliantly argued, Media Primitivism poses a serious challenge to those who like their African art suspended in a primordial past.” -- Steven Nelson, author of * From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture In and Out of Africa *“Media Primitivism is an important book that will resituate both media history and the historiography of African art. Delinda Collier convincingly argues that, from electronic music to world cinema, African technologies are not additions to electricity-based media but function as the very basis of them. The historiography is thrilling, the aesthetic analyses compelling, and the theoretical synthesis at times breathtaking.” -- Laura U. Marks, author of * Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image *“Media Primitivism is a nuanced and singular intellectual project that stands to make an impact across the fields of African art, media studies, and art history. . . . Its most exciting contribution is that it breathes new life into the theoretical possibilities proposed by African art itself.” -- Allison K. Young * African Arts *“Media Primitivism is a compelling book that blends media theory, art history, and African art history in a masterful act of theoretical weaving on the part of its author. . . . Tracing deeper technological histories on the continent . . . proves that the question of Africa (as a place and idea) is not additive to media studies, but a foundational aspect of it.” -- Alexandra M. Thomas * Media-N *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. African Art History and the Medium Concept 1 1. Film as Light, Film as Indigenous 31 2. Electronic Sound as Trance ad Resonance 61 3. The Song as Private Property 93 4. Artificial Blackness, or Extraction as Abstraction 119 5. "The Earth and the Substratum Are Not Enough" 153 6. The Seed and the Field 183 Afterword 211 Notes 215 Bibliography 237 Index
£28.80
Duke University Press Writing in Space 19732019
Book SynopsisWriting in Space, 1973-2019 gathers the writings of conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady, including artist statements, scripts, magazine articles, critical essays on art and culture, and interviews.Trade Review“Lorraine O'Grady's work has always been driven by embodied experiences, questioning the construction of identity and what it means to be human. This extraordinary volume charts O'Grady's fascinating musings on these subjects, tracing and shedding new light on her impressive forty-year career whilst highlighting the urgency and continued relevance of her work in our current moment. O'Grady once told me, ‘Everything I do could be a book’; this publication goes some way toward meeting that possibility.” -- Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries“Lorraine O'Grady is one of the foremost conceptual artists of the last century. Writing in Space, 1973-2019 is an indispensable contribution to our appreciation of the breadth and innovation of her singular practice; it asks us to think beyond rigid boundaries that prevent a nuanced consideration of the mutually transformative power of ‘text’ and ‘image.’ O'Grady's practice creates new worlds, wherein photography, criticism, literature, and history leave the reader with a renewed sense of creative possibility.” -- Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem"This is the first book to offer a comprehensive overview of O’Grady’s writing. Monumental texts, canonical essays, interviews, performance transcripts, and previously unpublished material form the edited volume, affirming both the range and reach of the artist’s significant impact upon an art world that has only belatedly recognized her. . . . The book establishes O’Grady’s literary brilliance that shines through her multifaceted creative practice, as she consistently pushes the art world toward deeper thought and political consciousness." -- Alexandra M. Thomas * Hyperallergic *"Lorraine O’Grady’s importance as a performance artist has tended to overshadow her talent as a writer. Ahead of a Brooklyn Museum retrospective due next year, critic and art historian Aruna D’Souza put together a must-read volume featuring O’Grady’s shrewd musings on her own work, the intersections of Blackness and gender, and notions of visibility." -- Alex Greenberger * ARTnews *"A deeply nourishing account of her life, from the years preceding her full approach to artistry and criticism until recent times. . . . Such a collection, 46 years into O’Grady’s exceptional career, reflects how the art industry has long excluded Black women artists. It is a delicate and difficult read, and a manifestation of the many possibilities embedded in thoughtful collaboration between an artist and editor who have been longtime supporters of each other’s work." -- Tyra A. Seals * Art Papers *"This volume is more than a collection of writing by an important artist whose work and thoughts have very belatedly come to larger attention. It is an extremely eloquent analysis of the New York art world since 1973 by one of the most articulate and profound conceptual artists to address questions of race, class, diasporic identity, non-Western philosophy and aesthetics and female subjectivity." -- Andrea Kirsh * The Art Blog *"For nearly a half century, Lorraine O’Grady has produced a profound body of art and writing that reckons with and contests the logics of anti-Blackness, coloniality, and extraction that underpin cultural institutions. The texts anthologized in her new volume, Writing in Space, 1973–2019, immerse readers in O’Grady’s prescience. . . . The collection spans the four decades of O’Grady’s career with interdisciplinary writings that address questions of formal beauty in concept-driven art, interrogate where and how power operates in every part of the organization of museum space, and highlight Black avant-garde and abstract work." -- Christina Sharpe * Art in America *"An absorbing cover-to-cover read, no surprise considering the artist’s roots in literature." -- Holland Cotter * New York Times *"The book is astonishing for O’Grady’s way with words alone. We see how she refines her own artist biographies and the framing of her process over time. Her performance scripts are so richly detailed that they read like closet dramas." -- Rahel Aima * Bookforum *"[W]onderful and inspiring. . . . The collection of O’Grady’s erudite and charged writings spans 1973 to 2019; each entry contests and reimagines structures of power." -- Lisa Le Feuvre * The Art Newspaper *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: For Those Who Will Know / Aruna D'Souza xix 1. Statements and Performance Transcripts Two Biographical Statements (2012 and 2019) 1Cutting Out the New York Times (CONYT), 1977 (2006) 6Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1955 (1981) 8Rivers, First Draft, 1982: Working Script, Cast List, Production Credits (1982) 11 Statement for Moira Roth re: Art Is . . ., 1983 (2007) 23Body Is the Ground of My Experience, 1991: Image Descriptions (2010) 27 Studies for a Sixteen-Diptych Installation to Be Called Flowers of Evil and Good, 1995–Present (1998) 30 2. Writing in Space Performance Statement #1: Thoughts about Myself, When Seen as a Political Performance Artist (181) 37 Performance Statement #2: Why Judson Memorial? or, Thoughts about the Spiritual Attitudes of My Work (1982) 40 Performance Statement #3: Thinking Out Loud: About Performance Art and My Place in It (1983) 43Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline (1977) 50 Interview with Cecilia Alemani: Living Symbols of New Epochs (2010) 53 Interview with Amanda Hunt on Art Is . . . (2015) 60 On Creating a Counter-confessional Poetry (2018) 64 3. Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity Black Dreams (1982) 69 Interview with Linda Montano (1986) 77 Dada Meets Mama: Lorraine O'Grady on WAC (1992) 84 The Cave: Lorraine O'Grady on Black Women Film Directors (1992) 88 Olympia's Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity (1992/1994) 94Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Feminism (2007) 110 4. Hybridity, Diaspora, and Thinking Both/And On Being the Presence That Signals an Absence (1993) 115 Some Thoughts on Diaspora and Hybridity: An Unpublished Slide Lecture (1994) 119 Flannery and Other Regions (1999) 126 Responding Politicially to William Kentridge (2002) 131 Sketchy Thoughts on My Attraction to the Surrealists (2013) 136 Two Exhibits: The Diptych vs. the Triptych (1998) and Notes on the Diptych (2018) 139 Introducing: Lorraine O'Grady and Juliana Huxtable (2016) 142 5. Other Art Worlds A Day at the Races: Lorraine O'Grady on Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Black Art World (1993) 169 SWM: On Sean Landers (1994) 176 Poison Ivy (1998) 181The Black and White Show, 1982 (2009) 184 Email Q&A with Artforum Editor (2009) 198 My 1980s (2012) 203Rivers and Just Above Midtown (2013, 2015) 213 6. Retrospectives Interview with Laura Cottingham (1995) 219 Interview with Jarrett Earnest (2016) 239 The Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Project, 1980–1983 (2018) 250 Job History (from a Feminist "Retrospective") (2004) 260 First There Is a Mountain, Then There Is No Mountain, Then . . . ? (1973) 269 The Wailers and Bruce Springsteen at Max's Kansas City, July 18 1973 (1973) 278 Notes 287 Index 311 Credits
£75.65
Duke University Press Liquor Store Theatre
Book SynopsisFor six years Maya Stovall staged Liquor Store Theatre, a conceptual art and anthropology video project---included in the Whitney Biennial in 2017---in which she danced near the liquor stores in her Detroit neighborhood as a way to start conversations with her neighbors. In this book of the same name, Stovall uses the project as a point of departure for understanding everyday life in Detroit and the possibilities for ethnographic research, art, and knowledge creation. Her conversations with her neighbors—which touch on everything from economics, aesthetics, and sex to the political and economic racism that undergirds Detroit''s history—bring to light rarely acknowledged experiences of longtime Detroiters. In these exchanges, Stovall enacts an innovative form of ethnographic engagement that offers new modes of integrating the social sciences with the arts in ways that exceed what either approach can achieve alone.Trade Review“For [Maya] Stovall, how we know is the operative question. Through such a simple act, dancing on the sidewalk before these business establishments, she sparks so much one-on-one engagement that has led to long-term dialogues. It is through her performances that she is able to bring into relief what affects the lives of her community: the economic, racial, historic, political, social forces that shape the area's inhabitants and the built environment that surrounds them.” -- Christopher Y. Lew, from the foreword“Maya Stovall's wildly ambitious, experimental, poetic, and multimodal ethnographic engagement reimagines what the ethnographic encounter entails and demands while asking us to reconsider the very nature of scholarly research in urban America.” -- John L. Jackson Jr., Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania“An important contribution to the conversation on performance ethnography and the ethics of representing racialized bodies in urban space, Liquor Store Theatre is a singular type of immersion across ethnography, historiography, geography, and art.” -- Aimee Meredith Cox, author of * Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship *"The interest many will find here is the unexpectedness and complexity of the lives she reveals. Residents share memories and discuss neighborhood changes, talk about their experiences with family and work, housing, shopping, education, transportation, and their understanding of the forces that have shaped their lives. These are individuals, not subjects, and Stovall offers the particularities that good storytelling requires. Once we are able to see them as individuals, the residents of McDougall-Hunt are hard to ignore." -- Andrea Kirsh * Artblog *"Stovall is an anthropologist by training, and this becomes abundantly clear in the first few pages of Liquor Store Theatre, which is meticulously researched and scintillatingly told. . . . The publication of Liquor Store Theatre therefore becomes a space to unpack the true depth of the project, as well as a site for exploring Stovall’s larger research methodology." -- Alice Bucknell * Pin-Up Magazine *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Foreword / Christopher Y. Lew xiii Prologue 1 Introduction 25 1. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2014) 47 2. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2014) 58 3. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2014) 70 4. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2015) 76 5. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2015) 87 6. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2015) 99 7. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 3 (2016) 107 8. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2016) 120 9. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 5 (2016) 133 10. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 6 (2016) 156 11. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 7 (2016) 165 12. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2017) 178 13. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2017) 187 14. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2017) 202 15. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2017) 211 16. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 5 (2017) 217 17. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 6 (2017) 224 18. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 7 (2017) 233 19. Liquor Store Theatre, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2018) 247 Acknowledgments 263 Notes 265 Bibliography 287 Index 299
£112.20
Duke University Press Another Aesthetics Is Possible
Book SynopsisIn Another Aesthetics Is Possible Jennifer Ponce de León examines the roles that art can play in the collective labor of creating and defending another social reality. Focusing on artists and art collectives in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States, Ponce de León shows how experimental practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts have been influenced by and articulated with leftist movements and popular uprisings that have repudiated neoliberal capitalism and its violence. Whether enacting solidarity with Zapatista communities through an alternate reality game or using surrealist street theater to amplify the more radical strands of Argentina''s human rights movement, these artists fuse their praxis with forms of political mobilization from direct-action tactics to economic resistance. Advancing an innovative transnational and transdisciplinary framework of analysis, Ponce de León proposes a materialist understanding of art and politics that briTrade Review“One of the most significant areas of new research in socially engaged art concerns the ways in which this work both challenges existing aesthetic paradigms and calls upon us to develop new ones that can account for its unique complexity as both artistic practice and political praxis. Another Aesthetics Is Possible breaks new ground in this endeavor, offering a materialist concept of the aesthetic, rooted in Marxist theory and anticolonial resistance, along with nuanced readings of key projects developed in the Americas over the past two decades. Sure to be required reading for classes in activist and engaged art as well as postcolonial studies.” -- Grant H. Kester, coeditor of * Collective Situations: Readings in Contemporary Latin American Art, 1995–2010 *“Rather than thinking about art as a response to oppressive political moments, Jennifer Ponce de León points us to artistic practices that force us to read against the systems of domination that authoritarian regimes and liberal ideologies uphold. Another Aesthetics Is Possible makes a profound intervention in fields interested in the intersection of art and politics, serving as a model into the future for anyone interested in truly ameliorating social and economic circumstances for people across the Americas. Engaging and thoroughly provocative.” -- Laura G. Gutiérrez, author of * Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage *"The role of criticism is to enable this impact, to keep the aesthetic practice alive for one, two, three generations afterwards so it persists as a resource for building another world. Another Aesthetics is Possible is an exemplary model of performing this role." -- Michael Dango * Lateral *"With Another Aesthetics is Possible, Ponce de León raises the bar for cultural critics, particularly those on the left, by arguing that they should register and study people’s innovative ways of resisting oppression within the framework of collectively lived experience rather than the fantasy of the narcissist individual." -- Fouad Mami * Cleveland Review of Books *"A vital intervention this book makes is to challenge the notion of the arts as an autonomous production separate from world-defining social struggles. . . . Another Aesthetics Is Possible, like the movements and artists it examines, contributes to the collective work of reorienting our aesthetic frameworks so that we can materialize a livable world beyond the demands of totalitarian neoliberalism." -- Josh Rios * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *"Ambitious and often riveting. . . . Thanks to this theoretical intervention, and buttressed by its thorough case studies, Another Aesthetics is an important contribution to scholarship exploring the relationship between art and capitalism, between aesthetics and politics, and between contemporary art and history." -- Niko Vicario * Hispanic Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Through an Anticolonial Looking Glass 29 2. Historiographers of the Invisible 80 3. Reframing Violence and Justice: Human Rights and Class Warfare 126 4. State Theater, Security, T/Errorism 192 Conclusion: Another Aesthetics—Another Politics—Is Possible 247 Notes 251 Bibliography 279 Index 303
£75.65