Darby English - Böcker

Art historian Darby English is celebrated for working against the grain and plumbing gaps in historical narratives. In this book, he explores the year 1971, when two exhibitions opened that brought modernist painting and sculpture into the burning heart of black cultural politics: Contemporary Black Artists in America, shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The DeLuxe Show, an integrated abstract art exhibition presented in a renovated movie theater in a Houston ghetto.1971 takes an insightful look at many black artists' desire to gain freedom from overt racial representation, as well as their and their advocates' efforts to further that aim through public exhibitions. Amid calls to define a "black aesthetic" or otherwise settle the race question, these experiments with modernist art favored cultural interaction and instability. Contemporary Black Artists in America highlighted abstraction as a stance against normative approaches, while The DeLuxe Show positioned abstraction in a center of urban blight.The power and social importance of these experiments, English argues, came partly from color's special status as a racial metaphor and partly from investigations of color that were underway in formalist American art and criticism. From Frank Bowling to Virginia Jaramillo, Sam Gilliam to Peter Bradley, black modernists and their supporters rose above the demand to represent or be represented, compromising nothing in their appeals for racial reconciliation. At a time when many debates about identity sought closure, these exhibitions offered openings; when icons and slogans touted simple solutions, they chose difficulty. But above all, as English demonstrates in this provocative book, these exhibitions and artists responded with optimism rather than cynicism to the surrounding culture's preoccupation with color.

Taking its title from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, exhibition Black Is, Black Ain't (April 20 – June 8, 2008) explored a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained. Curated by the Renaissance Society's Associate Curator and Education Director Hamza Walker, the exhibition brought together works by twenty-seven black and non-black artists whose work collectively examines a moment where the cultural production of so-called "blackness" is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant. The publication features essays by Huey Copeland, Darby English, Greg Foster-Rice, Amy M. Mooney, Kymberly N. Pinder, Krista Thompson, Hamza Walker, and Kenneth Warrren.

Los Angeles-based artist Silke Otto-Knapp has developed a painting practice characterized by its rigorous process and attentiveness to the medium’s possibilities. Using layers of black watercolor pigment, she builds up delicate surfaces, producing subtle variations in density and a powerful sense of atmosphere. Otto-Knapp’s exhibition at the Renaissance Society, In the waiting room, presented a new group of large-scale free-standing paintings in that evokes a multidimensional stage set. Some depict silhouetted bodies while others introduce scenic elements reminiscent of painted backdrops.Offering a close look at the exhibition, this volume includes an array of illustrations, a conversation between curator Solveig Øvstebø and the artist, and four newly commissioned essays by Carol Armstrong, Darby English, Rachel Hann, and Catriona MacLeod, grounded in art history and performance studies.

Kerry James Marshall: The Histories is the most extensive publication on the artist to date, celebrating half a century of his work. It reveals the complex ways in which he has transformed histories of Western painting, centering Black bodies in ambitious compositions set in barber shops, public housing projects, parks, and beauty salons. It charts his use of portraiture to memorialise individuals such as Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and Olaudah Equiano. A new series, illustrated here for the first time, looks at under-acknowledged aspects of the history of Africa. With lavish illustrations of all the works in the accompanying exhibition, it also includes chapters on Marshall’s Rythm Mastr project and his various public commissions including his stained glass windows for the cathedral in Washington D.C.. A survey by Mark Godfrey is accompanied by shorter essays by Aria Dean, Darby English, Madeleine Grynsztejn, Cathérine Hug, Nikita Sena Quarshie, Rebecca Zorach, and an interview between Kerry James Marshall and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.