Rashid Johnson

This exhibition catalogue shows the artist working in a range of mediaincluding photography, painting, sculpture, and video.

Correspondence between two imprisoned Black revolutionaries, smuggled out from behind the walls.

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson entered the u.s. prison system over 20 years ago, one of countless young Black men consigned to lifelong incarceration by the post-civil right policies of anti-Black genocide. While behind bars, Rashid encountered the ideas of revolutionary Black nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, and of the people and organizations who have used and developed these ideas in previous generations, foremost amongst these being the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Along with other Black/New Afrikan prisoners, Rashid helped found the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, while using both his artwork and his political writings as avenues to advance the cause of liberation for all. Here, collected in book form for the first time, are Rashid's core writings as Minister of Defense of the NABPP-PC. Subjects addressed include the differences between anarchism and Marxism-Leninsm, the legacy of the Black Panther Party, the timeliness of Huey P. Newton's concept of revolutionary intercommunalism, the science of dialictical and historical materialsm, the practice of democratic centralism, as well as current events ranging from u.s. imperialist designs in Africa to national oppression of New Afrikans within u.s. borders. And much more.

Universally accessible and employing common visual tropes such as the monochrome and the grid, Johnson's work is also self-referential, making specific allusion to his upbringing in Chicago and the Afro-centric values of his parents. In Rashid Johnson: Anxious Men, the artist creates a site-specific installation in the Drawing Room gallery. The core of the exhibition is a new series of black-soap-and-wax-on-tile portraits that Johnson calls his "anxious men." Executed by digging into a waxy surface, they enact a kind of drawing through erasure and represent the first time Johnson has worked figuratively outside of photography or film, and on such a small scale. Whereas Johnson's previous work has taken a more cerebral approach to questions of race and political identity, the drawn portraits confront the viewer with a visceral immediacy. The portraits are set within a multi-sensory environment that includes wallpaper featuring a photograph of the artist's father from the year Johnson was born, and an audio sound track comprised of Melvin Van Peebles's "Love, That's America," a song that originally appeared in Peebles's 1970 film Watermelon Man and that was recently pressed into service by the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this way, the exhibition, documented in this volume, creates an immersive space that implicates not only the artist but also the viewer in its interrogation of selfhood and identity.

Jellybeans Morning, Noon and Night is about two brothers who share a love of jellybeans! No matter what flavor, those boys just love jellybeans-all of them. If they had it their way, they would eat jellybeans for breakfast, jellybeans for lunch, and jellybeans for dinner. And that's exactly what they plan to do! It is a brilliant plan, isn't it? Written by Maggie Pajak and illustrated by Marni Backer, Jellybeans Morning Noon & Night is a delicious story filled with a sweet lesson of moderation and a savory message to parents to let your kids (sometimes) figure things out on their own. But more importantly, it is sprinkled with a few giggle-filled moments that both you and your kids will enjoy.

The book invites you into the private studios of seventeen of the most celebrated contemporary artists as they draw, paint, sculpt, or design an original project for readers to recreate at home. It demystifies the studio practice through the fun, accessible format of D.I.Y., leading you step-by-step through each artist's project. Eight inserts specially designed by the artists for completing their projects - from stencils to cut-outs - are included. The result can inspire people everywhere to blaze their own creative trails

Timeless Painting presents the work of 17 contemporary painters whose works reflect a singular approach that is peculiarly of our time: they are a-temporal, a term coined by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, the originators of the cyberpunk aesthetic. A-temporality or timelessness manifests itself in painting as an ahistoric free-for-all, where contemporaneity as an indicator of new form is nowhere to be found, and all eras co-exist. Published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that explores the impact of this cultural condition on contemporary painting, this publication features work by an international roster of artists including Joe Bradley, Kerstin Brätsch, Matt Connors, Nicole Eisenman, Mark Grotjahn, Charline von Heyl, , Julie Mehretu, Oscar Murillo, Laura Owens and Josh Smith, among others. An overview essay by curator Laura Hoptman is divided into thematic chapters that explore topics such as re-animation and reenactment, recontextualization, 'Zombie' painting, and the concomitant 'Frankenstein approach', which describes a process of stitching together pieces of the history of painting to create a work of art that would be dead but for its juxtaposed parts, all working in association with one another to propel the work into life.