Description

How Black painters use color to stir emotion, provoke remembrance, and uplift the spirit

Color does more than capture a viewer's attention. It assaults one's equilibrium physically and psychologically. In this stunning book, Richard Powell draws on the concept of "colorstruck," a twentieth-century slang term describing prejudice toward people with darker skin complexions, to provide a new history of Black American art.

Powell charts the dynamics of paint and pigment in the works of important Black artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, Raymond Saunders, Sam Gilliam, Hervé Télémaque, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Nina Chanel Abney, and Henry Taylor. Using blue, green, yellow, orange, black, red, brown, and their combinations, he shows how the vibrant palettes of these artists collide with the undercurrents of race in unanticipated and though-provoking ways. Demonstrating how the term "colorstruck" takes on multiple and varied associations when adapted to painting, Powell shares compelling insights into the powerful chromatic forces manifested through artists' actions and viewers' reactions.

A landmark work by an acclaimed art historian, this richly illustrated book offers a dazzling look at the transformative use of color by some of today's most exciting painters, revealing how hue and pigmentation strike a chord for freedom and reclamation in life as well as art.

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC