new title

Edinburgh University Press are delighted to announce the publication of 'African American Visual Arts' by Celeste-Marie Bernier, the latest title in our BAAS Paperbacks series.

African American Visual Arts examines the quilts, ceramics, paintings, sculpture, installations, assemblages, daguerreotypes, photography and performance art produced by African American artists over a two hundred year period. She draws on archaeological discoveries and unpublished archival materials to recover the lost legacies of artists living and working in the United States.

African American Visual Arts
by Celeste-Marie Bernier

July 2008
Pb 978 0 7486 2356 3 £16.99
280pp, 16 colour illustrations

As the first critical study to provide in-depth case studies of twenty artists, this book introduces readers to works created in response to the Middle Passage, Atlantic slavery, lynching, racism, segregation, and the fight for civil rights. Bernier examines little-discussed panoramas, murals, portraits, textile designs, collages and mixed-media installations to get to grips with key motifs and formal issues within African American art history.

Working within this tradition, artists experiment with cutting edge techniques and alternative subject-matter to undermine racist iconography and endorse a new visual language. They push thematic and formal boundaries to create powerful narratives and epic histories of creativity, labour, discrimination, suffering and resistance. By providing close readings of works by artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, William Edmondson, Howardena Pindell, Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Betye Saar, Horace Pippin and Kara Walker, this book sheds new light on the thematic and formal complexities of an African American art tradition which still remains largely shrouded in mystery.

Key Features

· Includes 16 colour photographs

· Provides individual and in-depth case studies of 20 artists

· Maps the tradition over a 200 year period (from slavery to the contemporary era)

· Presents close readings of neglected works

· Uses unpublished archival materials including artists' autobiographies, interviews, and descriptions of their works and aesthetic philosophies

· Includes Appendices listing other artists and information on where to view specific works

Table of Contents

Chronology of Visual Arts by African Americans from Slavery to the Present
Introduction: The Historical Context
1. ‘Grotesque jars and voodoo jugs’: Africa, a Slave Past and the Visual Arts
2. ‘Ethiopia Awakening’: Sculpture, Religion and Folk Art
3. Black Revolution, the Mural and the Fine Arts
4. Creative Chroniclers: Developments in Photography
5. A Visual Language: Graffiti Art and Installation
Conclusion
Guide to Further Reading