Description
Book SynopsisSelections of writing by the influential art critic and curator Kellie Jones reveal her role in bringing attention to the work of African American, African, Latin American, and women artists.
Trade Review“
EyeMinded is an impressive collection of essays by Kellie Jones, a much sought after scholar, prolific writer, and extraordinary curator whose works I have admired for many years. She began her career in the mid-1980s, uncovering and recovering African and African American artists by organizing exhibitions, writing essays, and lecturing on some of the then lesser-known artists. I believe that she was instrumental in introducing to a larger and contemporary public the works of black artists of the African diaspora, including some of the most noted artists working today.”—
Deborah Willis, author of
Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present“Kellie Jones, supported by a remarkable family of artists and intellectuals, has provided a plethora of razor-sharp insights and creative testimonials to the greater arts and scholarly communities for years. As this important book makes amber clear, Professor Jones’ astute observations and in-depth analyses of African American art are invaluable resources to contemporary studies and, arguably, equivalent to the notable essays of art history’s earlier, admired critics and chroniclers.”—
Richard J. Powell, author of
Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture“This extraordinary collection reveals Kellie Jones as a discerning architect of the multicultural art landscape of the last few decades. Informed by her keen eye and incisive intellect, Jones’s definitive takes on artists, including Lorna Simpson, Martin Puryear, and David Hammons, make this book a must-read for anyone interested in American art from the 1980s forward. And then, on top of Jones’s own shimmering intellectual accomplishment in these pages,
EyeMinded is something else as well: a conversation between an American family of arts and letters as illustrious as the Lowells or the Jameses. This book will stand apart for that reason alone, for few American families have contributed so richly to the arts, letters, and sounds of their generations as the Joneses. Here comes Dr. Kellie Jones, ‘eye-minded,’ and she’s bringing her people with her.”—
Elizabeth Alexander, Yale University
“
EyeMinded is at the top of my summer reading list.” -- Lauren Haynes * Studio Magazine *
“Kellie Jones has had a fascinating life in art. This collection of essays offers vivid glimpses into the childhood and professional experience of this noted art historian and curator. . . . Everything Kellie Jones and her brilliant family have to say on art and life is both welcome and stimulating.” -- Michele Wallace * International Review of African American Art *
“Kellie Jones’ superb book,
EyeMinded, traces the relationship between the visual and the social in contemporary art and, by so doing, teaches us how to see. . . . The book is a must-read for art historians and museum curators, just as for those within the field of cultural studies who aspire to an interdisciplinary approach.” -- Liana Giorgi * New York Journal of Books *
“
EyeMinded is compelling testimony to the ways in which Kellie Jones was able to both contribute to, and comment on, the astonishing quantum shifts in art and curatorial practices that the 1980s and 1990s gave rise to. . . . [A] major contribution to aspects of art history that too often are relegated to the periphery within both the academy and contemporary art criticism. In this regard, we have much to thank Jones for, as this volume will be an indispensable aid to students, professors, and general audiences, many of whom might not have easy access to Jones’s writings, in their original form and assorted contexts.” -- Eddie Chambers * Journal of American Studies *
"Scholarly but also deeply personal, it shows the particular way Jones conceives, or reconceives, the undertaking of art history.
EyeMinded was not so much written as curated, an assemblage of reviews, interviews, essays, photographs—and, most interesting of all, essays by Jones’ parents, sister and husband." -- Rand Richards Cooper * Amherst Magazine *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. "Art in the Family" 1
Part One. On Diaspora
1. EyeMinded: Commentary / Amiri Baraka 37
2. Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note / Amiri Baraka 41
3. A.K.A. Saartjie: The Hottentot Venus in Context (Some Reflections and a Dialogue) 1998/2004 43
4. Tracey Rose: Postapartheid Playground 69
5. (Un)Seen and Overheard: Pictures by Loran Simpson 81
6. Life's Little Necessities: Installations by Women in the 1990s 125
7. Interview with Kcho 135
8. The Structure of Myth and the Potency of Magic 145
Part Two. In Visioning
9. Seeing Through: Commentary / Hettie Jones 159
10. In the Eye of the Beholder / Hettie Jones 163
11. To/From Los Angeles with Betye Saar 165
12. Crown Jewels 177
13. Dawoud Bey: Portraits in the Theater of Desire 187
14. Pat Ward Williams: Photography and Social/Personal History 207
15. Interview with Howardena Pindell 215
16: Eye-Minded: Martin Puryear 235
17. Large As Life: Contemporary Photography 241
18. An Interview with David Hammons 247
Part Three. Making Multiculturalism
19. Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky & Then Fly and Touch Down: Commentary / Lisa Jones 263
20. How I Invented Multiculturalism / Lisa Jones 273
21. Lost in Translation: Jean-Michel in the (Re)Mix 277
22. In the Thick of It: David Hammons and Hair Culture in the 1970s 297
23. Domestic Prayer 305
24. Critical Curators: Interview with Kellie Jones 309
25. Poets of a New Style of Speak: Cuban Artists of This Generation 317
26. In Their Own Image 329
27. Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: What's Wrong with This Picture? 341
28. Blues to the Future 343
Part Four. Abstract Truths
29. Them There Eyes: On Connections and the Visual: Commentary / Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. 349
30. Free Jazz and the Price of Black Musical Abstraction / Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. 353
31. To the Max: Energy and Experimentation 363
32. It's Not Enough to Say "Black is Beautiful": Abstraction at the Whitney, 1969–1974 397
33. Black West: Thoughts on Art in Los Angeles 427
34. Brothers and Sisters 459
35. Bill T. Jones 469
36. Abstract Expressionism: The Missing Link 473
37. Norman Lewis: The Black Paintings 483
