Kellie Jones

In 'South of Pico' Kellie Jones explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility. Jones characterizes their works as modern migration narratives that look to the past to consider real and imagined futures. She also attends to these artists' relationships with gallery and museum culture and the establishment of black-owned arts spaces. With South of Pico, Jones expands the understanding of the histories of black arts and creativity in Los Angeles and beyond.

African American artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s

South of Pico

Deborah Willis

Richard Cándida Smith

James Christen Steward

Lowery Stokes Sims

Extending the Frozen Moment

Betye Saar

Katharine Derosier Weiss

Sean Ulmer

An illustrated collection of mixed-media collages by early twentieth-century African-American artist Betye Saar that blends spiritual, political, and cultural iconography to create complex works.

This comprehensive, lavishly illustrated catalogue offers an in-depth survey of the incredibly vital but often overlooked legacy of Los Angeles's African American artists, featuring many never-before-seen works.

Art & Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980

Now Dig This!

Kellie Jones traces how the artists in L.A.'s black communities during the 1960s and 70s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism through the production of art works that spoke to African American migration and L.A.'s racial politics.

African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s

Thelma Golden

Connie H. Choi

An authoritative guide to one of the world's most important collections of African-American art, with works by artists from Romare Bearden to Kehinde Wiley. The artists featured in Black Refractions, including Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, Nari Ward, Norman Lewis, Wangechi Mutu, and Lorna Simpson, are drawn from the renowned collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Through exhibitions, public programs, artist residencies, and bold acquisitions, this pioneering institution has served as a nexus for artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally since its founding in 1968. Rather than aim to construct a single history of "black art," Black Refractions emphasizes a plurality of narratives and approaches, traced through 125 works in all media from the 1930s to the present. An essay by Connie Choi and entries by Eliza A. Butler, Akili Tommasino, Taylor Aldridge, Larry Ossei Mensah, Daniela Fifi, and other luminaries contextualize the works and provide detailed commentary. A dialogue between Thelma Golden, Connie Choi, and Kellie Jones draws out themes and challenges in collecting and exhibiting modern and contemporary art by artists of African descent. More than a document of a particular institution's trailblazing path, or catalytic role in the development of American appreciation for art of the African diaspora, this volume is a compendium of a vital art tradition.

Highlights from the Studio Museum in Harlem

Black Refractions

A consideration of the African-American artist's searching, philosophical work.

Lorna Simpson

Naomi Beckwith

Chrissie Iles

The ultimate monograph on the work of celebrated artist Lorna Simpson, a trailblazer who continues to influence and inspire Lorna Simpson is a multimedia artist known for her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. In 1993 Simpson was the first African-American woman ever to show in the Venice Biennale and to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This landmark book documents Simpson's career in its entirety, up to her most recent work. In doing so, it sheds light on the remarkable path that Simpson paved to global critical acclaim and art-world stardom.

Lorna Simpson - Revised and Expanded Edition

Tom Finkelpearl

David Hammons

Steve Cannon

Essays by Steve Cannon, Tom Finkelpearl, and Kellie Jones Photographs by Dawoud Bey and Bruce Talamon Rousing the Rubble celebrates two decades of work by artist David Hammons, who has risen to prominence while at the same time consciously ducking the attention of critics, galleries, and museums, preferring to "do things in the street." A recipient of both a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award and a Prix de Rome, Hammons places himself as an artist between Arte Povera and Marcel Duchamp. He makes his art from refuse and the detritus of African-American life: chicken wings, Thunderbird and Night Train bottles, clippings from dreadlocks, basketball hoops. Hammons's deeply felt political views on race and cultural stereotypes give his witty and elegant sculptures, installations, and body prints an integrity that promises to keep the focus on his art rather than on his career. Illustrated with nearly 100 photographs (both black and white and color), Rousing the Rubble covers the full range of Hammons's art and his methods of creating it. Steve Cannon's rap poem takes the reader on a freewheeling bicycle ride from Harlem to the Lower East Side in New York and is joyously infused with the same energies and inspirations as Hammons' work. Tom Finkelpearl discusses the power of the dirty, used objects Hammons prefers and how they relate to the clean" art exhibited in conventional gallery settings. And Kellie Jones examines how Hammons's art evolved from Los Angeles in the 1960s to New York and Rome in the present day.

Rousing the Rubble

Adrienne Edwards

Courtney J. Martin

The first monograph on the work of celebrated and influential Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her paintings, sculptures, and collages, often enriched with culturally-charged materials including tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers, and sand, interweave fact with fiction, generating a unique form of myth-making that sets her apart from classical history or popular culture. This is the first book to document her evolution and explore her impact.

Wangechi Mutu

Amiri Baraka

Selections of writing by the influential art critic and curator Kellie Jones reveal her role in bringing attention to the work of African American, African, Latin American, and women artists.

Kellie Jones

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