Riffs And Relations

A timely consideration of African-American artists' rich engagement with the history of art from the twentieth century, this book is the winner of the James A. Porter and David C. Driskell Book Award for African American Art History. Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition presents works by African American artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries together with works by the early-twentieth-century European artists with whom they engaged. Black artists have investigated, interrogated, invaded, entangled, annihilated, or immersed themselves in the aesthetics, symbolism, and ethos of European art for more than a century. The powerful push and pull of this relationship constitutes a distinct tradition for many African American artists who source the master narratives of art history to critique, embrace, or claim their own space. This groundbreaking catalog--accompanying a major exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.--explores the connections and frictions around modernism in the works of artists such as Romare Bearden, Pablo Picasso, Faith Ringgold, Renee Cox, Robert Colescott, Norman Lewis, Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems and Henri Matisse. The volume explores how blackness has often been conceived from the standpoint of these international and intergenerational connections and presents the divergent and complex works born of these important dialogues.

Moral philosophy has long been dominated by the aim of understanding morality and the virtues in terms of principles. The assumption that this is the best approach has been attacked by particularists. The authors meet the particularist challenge head on and defend 'generalism as a regulative ideal'.

In the turbulent era of late 1950s Manhattan—with jazz, the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, and the Red Scare as the volatile ingredients—three groundbreaking black cartoonists defy convention and pay the price. Cliff Murphy is matinee handsome, a light-skinned, straight-haired black man and a comics artist known for his glamour girl art. He’s black uptown and white downtown, and he has an eye for the ladies, and they for him—including his boss’ wife, who knows Cliff’s creation, the Phantom Avenger, is about to be stolen from him. Though Stephaney “Stef” Rawls has her own romance-adventure strip for the largest black newspaper, she still has to work brutal hours as a maid to make ends meet. When she gets a lucrative offer to write and draw a “Negroes must reject agitation” flyer for the FBI, can she pass up the opportunity? Then there’s Oliver “Ollie” Jefferson, a decorated Korean War vet who writes and draws editorial cartoons under the pseudonym Attucks, for the daily Red newspaper The Struggle. But when a cop beats him down while walking his pregnant Korean wife-to-be home one night, Ollie becomes a symbol of oppression and the streets threaten to explode. These three friends will be tested and tried, will work in solidarity, and, just maybe, betray each other, in this explosive graphic novel—with prose by crime fiction author Gary Phillips and images by acclaimed artist-writer Dale Berry.

Using humor as the common denominator, a multicultural cast of YA authors steps up to the mic to share stories touching on race. Listen in as ten YA authors — some familiar, some new — use their own brand of humor to share their stories about growing up between cultures. Henry Choi Lee discovers that pretending to be a tai chi master or a sought-after wiz at math wins him friends for a while — until it comically backfires. A biracial girl is amused when her dad clears seats for his family on a crowded subway in under a minute flat, simply by sitting quietly in between two uptight white women. Edited by acclaimed author and speaker Mitali Perkins, this collection of fiction and nonfiction uses a mix of styles as diverse as their authors, from laugh-out-loud funny to wry, ironic, or poingnant, in prose, poetry, and comic form.

Collects Marvel (2020) 1-6. Unforgettable stories from a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of talent! Thirty years ago, Alex Ross had a vision for a new series showcasing Marvel’s heroes in a way they’d never been seen before. The first realization of that idea became the blockbuster MARVELS — but Ross Alex finally brings his original dream to life! MARVEL is an anthology of stories by unique, exceptional talents, many of whom are working with these characters for the very first time. And all these tales are linked together by an overarching story by Ross featuring the dread dream lord Nightmare, who threatens the entire Marvel Universe — and possibly beyond! Featuring Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, the Thing, Doctor Doom, the Vision, Namor, the Sub-Mariner, Warlock, Rocket Raccoon, the Golden Age Black Widow and more!

A daring, funny, and poignant novel about the desire and duty to procreate, by one of our most brilliant and original writers. Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood—whether or not to have children—with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim, and which led her previous work, How Should a Person Be?, to be called "one of the most talked-about books of the year" (TIME magazine). Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti's narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice. In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions about womanhood, parenthood, and how—and for whom—to live.

In Margo Humphrey, Adrienne L. Childs explores the career of one of the most inspiring artists and printmakers of our time. Best known for her "sophisticated naïve" style, Margo Humphrey (b. 1942) transforms personal experiences into narratives that speak to the human spirit. Bold colors and flat planes intertwine using the artist's unique iconography to address issues of race, gender, spirituality, and relationships. Part autobiography and part fantasy, Humphrey's work alludes to the correlation between the temporal and the spiritual as they coexist in her world. Humphrey employs visual metaphors to channel her experience growing up as an African American woman. Everyday objects become recurring symbols in her prints: zebras embody the strength of her heritage; a plate of yams represents nourishment or survival. Whether celebrating her childhood or confronting her personal fears, Humphrey's artwork navigates her life story to convey hope, possibility, and love. Margo Humphrey presents more than forty-five color plates, from the artist's early abstract art through her groundbreaking lithographs in the figurative narrative style. The text by Adrienne L. Childs considers the memories and events that inspired Humphrey's powerful oeuvre, and the foreword by David C. Driskell places Humphrey in the forefront of contemporary printmaking. Since Humphrey's first solo exhibition in 1965, her art has been exhibited and collected worldwide, and it now resides in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Humphrey has lectured and taught across the world and is a tenured professor of art at the University of Maryland, College Park.