The art of history : African American women artists engage the past /

A compact and complex publication, The Art of History addresses the paradox that African American studies, while preoccupied with visual culture, largely neglects the history of art and works by serious visual artists. The book's avowed purpose is to challenge the status quo by using the rich potential afforded by the contemporary works of African American women artists who engage the history, representation, aesthetics, and ideology of the African American experience as the source for their art. This contemporary perspective is one of the strongest aspects of the publication, affording insightful analyses of work by a number of exciting artists. In five chapters, Collins (Vassar College) examines a wide range of significant issues including the representation of African Americans, standards of beauty, and black girlhood as subjects--all within the larger context of the history of African American thought. The book offers a clear delineation of the process from the New Negro Movement of the 1920s, to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, to postmodernism. Though the writing is dense, it is nonetheless accessible and engaging. Authoritative and convincing text, well documented and supported by 58 small-scale, pertinent black-and-white illustrations; substantial and useful bibliography. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. J. A. Day University of South Dakota

Collins, an art historian at Vassar, is a bit academic in tone, but that won't deter readers. This is a perceptive study of the forthright work of contemporary African American women painters, sculptors, photographers, and installation artists. Collins begins by noting a paradoxical aspect of African American thought, a simultaneous "preoccupation with visual culture and a neglect of visual art and artists." Why, she asks, has black art remained marginalized while black music and literature thrive? Collins concludes that images, especially portraits, possess a uniquely volatile power, and that the disregard of black art is the result of the ways slavery, ongoing racism, and class conflict have politicized the depiction of African Americans, especially women. Many of today's black women artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Alison Saar, Beverly Buchanan, Clarissa Sligh, and Julie Dash, confront this predicament by trenchantly addressing the historic and current provocation of the black female body, and critiquing society's shying away from black art, efforts undertaken with the noble intention of breaking down old barriers and liberating art, artists, and viewers. Donna Seaman