Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

African-American art has made an increasingly vital contribution to the art of the United States from the time of its origins in early-eighteenth-century slave communities. Folk and decorative arts such as ceramics, furniture, and quilts are discussed alongside fine art -- sculpture, painting, and photography -- produced by African Americans, both enslaved and free, throughout the nineteenth century. Twentieth-century developments are given full coverage, particularly the New Negro Movement of the 1920s, the Era of Civil Rights and Black Nationalism through the 1960s and 1970s, and the emergence of new black artists and theorists in the 1980s and 1990s. New evidence has provided an exciting myriad of perspectives about African-American art, confirming that it represents the culture and society from which it emerges. Professor Patton explores significant issues such as the relationship of art and politics, the influence of galleries and museums, the growth of black universities, critical theory, the impact of artists'' collectives, and the assortment of art practices since the 1960s. African-American Art shows that in its cultural diversity and synthesis of cultures it mirrors those in American society as a whole. `African-American Art should be read by teachers, students, and writers, and on the shelves of every library. Professor Patton begins this impressive book with the slave ships that brought Africans to this country and gives evidence of the fine metalworking, carving, carpentry, basketry, weaving, and clay building skills passed from Africa through the works of valued but nameless slave-artisans. She tells how we learned accidentally about a few named artists like the slave, Scipio Moorhead, who in 1773 engraved the only surviving image of poet, Phyllis Wheatley. She describes the portraitists, furniture makers and highly skilled artisans. Sharon Patton follows a path leading from great African formal styles, which, mixed with the powerful expressive force of struggle and opposition, led to distinctive new ideasfrom the quilts of Harriet Powers in the late 1800s to the paintings of Jean Michel Basquiat in the 1980s. She helps the reader to think and search for the evidence of the art-making skills that not only survived the Middle Passage, but the many erasings of the auction block and racism''s lack, little and denial. In a fine survey of contemporary African-American art and ideascomplete with words from the artists themselvesPatton takes us first through its foundations and the through the movements, people and ideas that surrounded and generated this art. An art historian, curator, and scholar, Patton has produced a volume which, like no other, can be used both as an unusual reference book and a good read on an important part of American art. The illustrations are a special treat.'' Emma Amos, Artist Professor of Art, Rutgers University `For a long period of time there has been an acknowledged need for a comprehensive text that integrates the full range of African American artistry, the building crafts, slave craftsmanship, the decorative and the fine arts tradition into one scholarly document. Professor Patton has brought those elements of history into her text that are often omitted in the available texts on the subject of African-American art and much of what she has written is primary information not previously recorded outside the context of social history. The cultural context in which Professor Patton has written accounts of the artistry of African-American artists and craftsmen from the period of American slavery to the present is illuminating, analytically sound, and well documented. She has brought to the attention of the reader a number of topics such as ''Art Institutions and the Artist''s Groups'' that have not been thoroughly discussed in previous texts on the subject. A subject such as ''The Plantation House'', the place where many decorative arts originated in the slave society is a welcomed addition to Professor Patton''s historical overview.'' David Driskell, Artist Distinguished University Professor of Art, University of Maryland `Sharon Patton has written a much needed text which surveys the broad scope of the history of African-American art from slavery to the present. She has followed a different tack, tracing art themes and their development throughout the history, rather than the influences of specific artists or periods. Thus, she shows how ideas such as crafts, formal painting and sculpture, or architecture, co-existed with equal importance to the culture from the times of the Colonies. In so doing, she breaks down the barrier between folk and formal art, and articulates an interrelationship of both concepts to African-American people and their culture. Her book expands the framework for the visual arts in the United States in the last two centuries.'' Professor Keith Morrison, Dean, College of Creative Arts, San Francisco State University

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Colonial America and the Young Republic 1700-1820
• Introduction
• The fight for independence 1775-83
• Africa, North America and African-American culture
• Plantations
• Architecture and the plantation layout
• Slave houses
• The revival of African culture on the plantations
• Life on the plantations
• New European-Ameriacn influences
• A planter's house in Louisiana
• Plantation slave artists and craftsmen
• Textiles and patchwork quilts
• Folk art
• Pottery
• Urban slave and free artists and craftsmen
• Furniture
• Silversmiths
• Fine artists
• Chapter 2 Nineteenth-Century America, the Civil War and Reconstruction
• Introduction
• The anti-slavery movement
• Free black and slave artisans
• Fine artists
• Architecture, the decorative arts, and folk art
• Urban and rural architecture
• Furniture
• Metalwork and woodcarving
• Pottery
• Quilts
• Fine arts: Painting, sculpture, and graphic arts
• Exhibitions and the viewing public
• Abolitionist patronage
• Graphic arts
• Landscape painting
• Neoclassical sculpture
• Genre and biblical painting
• Chapter 3 Twentieth-Century America and Modern Art 1900-60
• Introduction
• Civil rights and double-consciousness
• The development of a modern American art
• African-American culture, the New Negro and art in the 1920s
• The Great Migration
• The Jazz Age
• Expatriates and Paris, the Negro Colony
• The New Negro movement
• Photography
• The New Negro artist
• Graphic art
• Painting
• The patronage of the New Negro artist
• State funding and the rise of African-American art
• The Federal Arts Project
• The legacy of the New Negro movement
• Negritude and figurative sculpture
• Folk art
• American Scene painting
• African-American murals
• WPA workshops and community art centres
• Social realism
• Abstract art and modernism in New York
• Abstract figurative painting
• Patronage and critical debate
• American culture post World War II
• Folk art
• Painting: Expressionism and Surrealism
• Abstract Expressionism and African-American art
• Primitivism
• Early Abstract Expressionism: Bearden, Woodruff, and Alston
• Abstract Expressionism
• Second generation of Abstract Expressionists 1955-61
• Chapter 4 Twentieth-Century America: The Evolution of Black Aesthetci
• Introduction
• Civil rights and black nationalism
• Cultural crisis: Black artist or American artist?
• Spiral artists' group 1963-6
• Painting
• The evolution of a modern black aesthetic
• Defining black art
• Painting
• Sculpture
• Art institutions and artists' groups
• Mainstream art institutions
• Black art aesthetcis
• Black art and black power
• Black artsists' groups
• Towards a new abstraction
• Are you black enough?
• Painting
• Sculpture
• The postmodern condition 1980-93
• Painting
• Video art
• Sculpture
• Photography
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Llist of Illustrations
• Bibliographic Essay
• Timeline
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Several decades of increasing scholarly attention to African American art have led to this excellent survey by Patton (art history and African American studies, Univ. of Michigan). The book provides a chronological examination of the development of African American art from its earliest manifestations to the present day. Eschewing the approach taken in many previous books, Patton deemphasizes individual artists' biographies, instead focusing on African American art in its historical-political-cultural setting and its relationship to three centuries of Euro-American art historical trends. Similarly, another recent survey, Richard Powell's Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century in the "World of Art" series (Thames & Hudson, 1997) features thematic and iconographic analysis. Given its high-quality illustrations (most in color), its well-written, accessible text, and its obvious value as a textbook, this is highly recommended for any library with an interest in art and/or ethnic studies.‘Eugene C. Burt, Art Inst. of Seattle Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Patton has written an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the historical development of African American visual art. She provides much new information on the art making of both slaves and freemen in the 18th and 19th century while later providing a broad art-historical context for black modernists. Pointing out that crafts did not necessarily precede fine art making during slavery, she examines African retentions (and Indian influences) in 18th-century black ceramics and architecture; black women and quilting; abolitionism and the rise of black landscape painters like Robert Duncanson; and sculptor Edmonia Lewis's black expatriate neoclassicism. Turning to generally better- documented 20th-century black artists, Patton arguably provides the first clear discussion of the relationship (both social and aesthetic) of black modernists to the prevailing mainstream artists and art movements of their time. As is perhaps inevitable, Patton's discussion of the contemporary art scene, while quite competent, is defined as much by the artists she fails to mention as by those she chooses to include. Well researched, scrupulously documented and organized, this lucidly written, fully illustrated book also includes numerous useful sidebars defining art movements, issues or individuals. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

At last, American art historians, professors, and students have a complete, authentic history of black artists and their art, placed precisely where it belongs--within the very fabric of the total history of American art from the 18th century into today's postmodernist period. Not since David C. Driskell's Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976) has any author succeeded in adequately integrating the contributions of African American artists into their rightful place in the American heritage. Comprehensively and with sharp, scholarly accuracy, Patton has closed gaps between the chronological and thematic directions of Black American art and complexities of Euro-American art history. She treats effectively the difficult dimensions of the evolution of the black aesthetics concepts in the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement, and brings together the diversities of black mainstream, black genre, and black nationalist interest groups. Her masterful organization incorporates colored panels that outline concurrent external events, placed within the story context on the same page. This, together with an extensive bibliographic essay on the best of American art history literature from the Harlem Renaissance to most recent studies of the postmodernist era, supplies full research guidance for continuing study. Every artist and teacher interested in the history of African American art and in American art in general will welcome this long-awaited contribution to the fields of art history and African American studies. Highly recommended. General readers; undergraduates through professionals. J. L. Leahy; Marygrove College

Booklist Review

The second set of volumes in the Oxford History of Art series, all well illustrated, accessible, and vigorous, offers fresh and penetrating views of sharply defined spheres of art, as did the initial group of five titles, published a year ago. The most unusual of the set is The Art of Art History, edited by Preziosi, head of the art history critical theory program at the University of California. A groundbreaking anthology, it showcases and assesses the various perspectives art critics and art historians have employed over the years, from Immanuel Kant to Ernst Gombrich, Meyer Schapiro, Michel Foucault, and Rosalind Krauss. It's been said that no new approach to art can be "seen," that is, comprehended and appreciated, without interpretation. To paraphrase Preziosi, art history makes the visible legible. So how have his colleagues performed this generous art? British art historian Causey sifts through the complex output of postwar sculptors in his contribution, skillfully discussing the diverse work of European and American artists. It must be said that he overemphasizes the artists of his own country, an excusable bias given the great gifts of Henry Moore and Tony Cragg, but he also commits some deplorable omissions, particularly when it comes to women artists. Still, given Causey's conciseness and the fine quality of his observations, the book can be considered a handy introduction to the field. Patton, a Romare Bearden expert, is above reproach, having done a superb job of elucidating the various aesthetic and political movements that have shaped the evolution of African American art, a tradition both spurred and hampered by racism. Beginning in colonial times and working her way to the present, she covers every conceivable visual medium and explores the work of well-known artists as well as those with less-familiar names. Last but not least is Upton's brisk survey of architecture in the U.S. It does all that a broad study of a nation's buildings must do; it takes every facet of society into account--from religion to attitudes toward nature, ethics, art, community, politics, technology, commerce, and self-definition. --Donna Seaman

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Sharon F. Patton is Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Michigan.