African American Visual Arts
From Slavery to the Present
By Celeste-Marie Bernier

320 pp., 5.5 x 8.5, 16 color plates, appends., notes, bibl., index
For Sale in U.S. & Dependencies and Canada
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Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-5933-9
Published: January 2009
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Bernier analyzes the work of twenty-one artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, William Edmondson, Howardena Pindell, Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Betye Saar, Horace Pippin, and Kara Walker. She highlights key but frequently neglected and little-discussed black artists, situating their works within their specific historical and political contexts. Bernier provides a new understanding of their relationship to fundamental themes of the black experience such as black stereotyping and caricature in mainstream discourse, poverty in the inner city, and the division between the rural and the urban.
About the Author
Celeste-Marie Bernier is lecturer in American literature at the University of Nottingham.
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Reviews
"[A] groundbreaking book. Bernier's aesthetic, formal, historic, and political analyses motivate the creation of bona fide criticism."--Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas
"Presents some compelling art work by a range of modern and contemporary African American artists spanning more than a century. . . . Includes previously unpublished testimony and commentary from the artists themselves to elucidate their creative practices."--H-Net Reviews
"This is the richest and most important book on African American visual arts on the market. It has enormous period coverage without sacrificing rich analysis and depth. It is a book that will be crucial for anyone interested in African American culture, the visual arts, and American studies. It is brilliantly conceived, deeply researched, and very well executed."--John Stauffer, Harvard University