Art: Books and Ebooks

In paintings, murals, and book illustrations, Aaron Douglas produced the most powerful visual legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. Presenting more than 90 illustrations of Douglas' works and the commentary of critics and historians, this book focuses on the artist's career from the 1920s through the 1940s in relation to American modernism.

*Full-text available at EBSCOhost*
ART IN BATTLE deals with battles over art initiated by Nazi policies and European conquests on several arenas. Expounding the problems of the overfamiliar dichotomy of “Degenerate“ versus “Great German“ art, it examines propaganda exhibitions in occupied Norway as well as hitherto unseen art by soldiers stationed in Norway. This exceptional catalog both documents this ground-breaking show and assembles leading experts on the history and ideology of Nazi cultural campaigns in both Germany and Norway to initiate a fresh discussion of the relationships between center and periphery within the artworlds of the Third Reich. Beyond historical re-assessment, this project also asks more pressingly: How do we encounter these battles over art today?

*Full-text available at EBSCOhost*
During the 1960s and 1970s, a cadre of poets, playwrights, visual artists, musicians, and other visionaries came together to create a renaissance in African American literature and art. This charged chapter in the history of African American culture—which came to be known as the Black Arts Movement—has remained largely neglected by subsequent generations of critics. New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement includes essays that reexamine well-known figures such as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, Betye Saar, Jeff Donaldson, and Haki Madhubuti. In addition, the anthology expands the scope of the movement by offering essays that explore the racial and sexual politics of the era, links with other period cultural movements, the arts in prison, the role of Black colleges and universities, gender politics and the rise of feminism, color fetishism, photography, music, and more. An invigorating look at a movement that has long begged for reexamination, this collection lucidly interprets the complex debates that surround this tumultuous era and demonstrates that the celebration of this movement need not be separated from its critique.

*Full-text available at EBSCOhost*
In 1927, the Chicago Art Institute presented the first major museum exhibition of art by African Americans. Designed to demonstrate the artists'abilities and to promote racial equality, the exhibition also revealed the art world's anxieties about the participation of African Americans in the exclusive venue of art museums -- places where blacks had historically been barred from visiting let alone exhibiting. Since then, America's major art museums have served as crucial locations for African Americans to protest against their exclusion and attest to their contributions in the visual arts.In Exhibiting Blackness, art historian Bridget R. Cooks analyzes the curatorial strategies, challenges, and critical receptions of the most significant museum exhibitions of African American art.