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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

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Print Price: $145.99

Format:
Paperback
480 pp.
230 illustrations, 7" x 10"

ISBN-13:
9780199995394

Copyright Year:
2016

Imprint: OUP US


African-American Art

A Visual and Cultural History

Lisa Farrington

African-American Art offers a current and comprehensive history that contextualizes black artists within the framework of American art as a whole. This compelling chronological survey explores issues of racial identity and representation while emphasizing aesthetics and visual analysis, helping students develop an understanding and appreciation of African-American art informed by - but not entirely defined by - racial identity.

Readership : Undergraduate students of African American art

Reviews

  • "African-American Art is engaging and written in a way that will entice students to learn more about the works of art. The coverage and methodology are an improvement over the text I currently use."
    --Alison Fleming, Winston-Salem State University

  • "African-American Art integrates styles and artists within the visual culture of the times in which they were created. This allows readers to gain new insights into the way these artists tried to advance their work beyond racial constrictions, labeling, and expectations. As the first new survey of African-American art published in fifteen years, it is certainly welcome in my course."
    --Naurice Frank Woods, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

  • "This book will open students' eyes to an incredible range of material and give them a sense of the possibilities for future research. It couches all of this within a highly sophisticated and contemporary methodological framework. African-American Art features more African-American female artists than any previous survey. It engages with traditionally marginalized artistic expressions like architecture. And perhaps, most importantly, it sustains an effort to situate African-American art within mainstream artistic movements so as to critique the very use of 'race' as a methodological framework for African-American art."
    --Paul B. Niell, University of North Texas

1. The Art of Perception: How Art Communicates
PART 1: 18TH- AND 19TH CENTURY ART
2. Art and Design in the Colonial Era
3. Federal-Period Architecture & Design
4. Nineteenth Century Neoclassicism
5. Romanticism to Post-Impressionism in the 19th Century
PART 2: EARLY TO MID-20TH CENTURY ART
6. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
7. Social Realism
8. Mid-20th Century Transitions and Surrealism
9. Abstract Expressionism
PART 3: THE LATTER 20TH CENTURY
10. Pop and Agitprop: The Black Arts Movement
11. Black Feminist Art: A Crisis of Race and Sex
12. Postmodernism
PART 4: CONTEMPORARY TRENDS
13. Neo-Expressionism: The New Abstraction, and Architecture
14. Post-Black Art and the New Millennium
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Companion Site Click here
Students Resources:
Companion Website:
- Chapter outlines
- Links to artist's sites
- Further resources
E-Book (ISBN 9780190209544):
- Available through Click here

Lisa Farrington is the founding Chair of the Art & Music Department at the City University of New York's John Jay College. She is the author of Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists (OUP, 2005).

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Special Features

  • The first chronological survey to publish in over a decade, covering African-American Art colonial times to the twenty-first century.
  • Contextualizes black artists within the framework of American art as a whole, organizing content by art style and historical period as well as by African American sociopolitical history.
  • Emphasizes critical visual analysis, helping students to develop an understanding and appreciation of factors like process, media, aesthetic concerns, and connections to broader art movements.
  • Addresses the issues of racial identity and representation, and the role of the artist in expressing and challenging these assumptions.
  • Integrates coverage of photography, furniture making and other domestic arts, and architecture, genres often overlooked in African-American art histories.