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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 580 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more

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The popular image of African-American men has gone through several transformations since the rise of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s. This book, which is the catalogue of an exhibition that opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in November 1994, chronicles these changing perceptions of African-American masculinity as interpreted in painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed-media work, as well as in film and video. More than 70 works have been selected, by 29 leading artists of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hammons, Robert Mapplethorpe, Adrian Piper, Andres Serrano, and Lorna Simpson, among others, explore such issues as personal identity, sexuality, and social history. The catalogue includes six essays by leading voices in African-American art criticism and cultural studies: Elizabeth Alexander bell hooks, Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer, Tricia Rose, Andrew Ross, and Greg Tate. The film and video section is the work of five scholars in African-American studies.Herman Gray, Ed Guerrero, Philip Brian Harper, Valerie Smith, and Clyde Taylor each curated a film and video programme, and their essays examine critical and theoretical points of view concerning mainstream and independent film and video as well as commercial television. Essays by Thelma Golden and John G. Hanhardt present overviews of the problems and challenges confronted by representations of black masculinity in the various forms of artisitc expression. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Intelligent and illuminating
This book was published to accompany the exhibition Black Male Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art 1994. It comprises a collection of thirteen essays by different writers, a Bibliography, lists of Works in the Exhibition and Film and Video Programs, and Notes on the Contributors. There is also a section of Plates.

The book covers all aspects of the visual arts, painting, film and photography and three dimensional art; the essays discuss a wide range of subjects with perhaps the emphasis on film and screen, but there are also essays specifically on social and political issues, music, gang culture, pornography and gay issues. The contributors, a mix of men and women, while predominantly university professors also include a writer and a critic and film maker. They are intelligently written and very illuminating.

The essays are illustrated throughout in black and white, mostly quite small images, but one or two are about half page size. They include many stills from films, photographs of personalities and other individuals, art photographs; too many to count they appear on almost every page. The section of plates contains 39 full page images in full colour, with the exception of a few originally black and white pictures; they include original art works and photographs and stills from films. The artists include Basquite, Leon Golub, Lyly Ashton Harris, Barkley L Hendricks, Jeff Koons and Robert Mapplethorpe.

This is a well presented book with a very smart matt-black card cover with minimal white lettering (probably screen-printed) on the front and spine and the words BLACK MALE blind embossed on the front. The book is attractively laid out. My only complaint is that I would like to have seen more and larger images.

Brilliant book on art and the black man!
This collection of essays may have come from a particular exhibit or conference.It is a book that discusses black men's status as objects of art.Don't sleep!The art world is racist.Coco Fusco and bell hooks have effectively documented this.So this anthology is a very needed intervention.Articles cover topics such as gay black men in movies, the visual representation of gangsta rap, Mapplethorpe, etc.The contributors analyze numerous art mediums, not just painting or film.What I love about this book is how straight black men and gay black men are treated equally; a discussion of one does not marginalize the other.I especially love the article "The Gangsta and the Diva."This book is incredible! ... Read more

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A culture's body image, as refracted through its art, will usually provide a more telling account of its preoccupations than the most explicit political art; it seems that cultural symptoms leak more readily into depictions of the body than into more overt statements. This is especially true in periods of heightened alienation, when the solitary figure gains poignancy, but bodies register their eras in many ways: the signifiers of opulence, imperialism, fashion, social decay, sexual convention and anxiety can all be readily inscribed onto the human form in art--and indeed, always have been. Fractured Figure projects our millennial moment as one of fragile bodies pitched against a restless, dysphasic backdrop, in which terrorism and global warming impinge as daily realities. It draws on the world-renowned contemporary collection of Dakis Joannou, who, in collaboration with Jeffrey Deitch, has previously organized shows such as Artificial Nature and Post Human, in which similar concerns have arisen. Here, in works by Chris Ofili, David Altmejd, Richard Prince, Urs Fischer, Pawel Althamer, Ashley Bickerton, Barnaby Furnas and others, the figure is shown as un-idealized and compellingly mortal--situated in a realm that we will immediately recognize as our own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A short read but thorough pleasant visual look at Basquiat.
Although short, this hip designed gem of a book conducts interviews with those closest to JMB throughout his career including his old band, Fab 5 Freddy, his first dealer, his girlfriend, collectors and dealers includingMary Boone, excerpts from the Wathol diaries and so on.Great colorreproductions of his work and probably one of the most suited titles of anybooks about him. ... Read more