An essential primer on collecting Black art that expertly blends the passion of an art student with the expertise of an...
A connoisseur offers advice for collecting African American works of art.
With an MBA in finance and a master’s degree in museum studies from Harvard (and a forthcoming doctorate in art education from Columbia), Moore has both a keen artistic eye and practical know-how on the ins and outs of the business of art collection. He acknowledges the structural barriers that have long confronted African American artists, but he believes that they’ve become “pillars” of today’s art scene. Museums from Los Angeles to Atlanta have seen an inclusive “curatorial shift,” he says, as “exhibitions rooted in the Black American identity” have become commonplace. The book’s first section offers guidance to novices interested in African American art, including a brief history lesson regarding important Black creators, from the early 20th century’s Norman Lewis and Jacob Lawrence to contemporary sensations, such as Tschabalala Self. The book is full of practical tips, with chapter topics that include general information on art museums and fairs, art schools, and auctions. The book’s second half profiles a cross-section of modern collectors of African American art, including actor Hill Harper, former Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Keith Rivers, and tech entrepreneur Everette Taylor. The collectors discuss their love of varied aesthetics found in Black art, but many also emphasize their “socially conscious” approach to collecting. This book deals in a cultural realm that many people associate with elitism, but Moore’s writing style is always accessible and geared toward neophytes, and his advice effectively emphasizes “economical…methods on which we can educate ourselves in the art world.” However, many readers will be disappointed by the lack of images of actual artworks in a work devoted to art. Still, the book provides ample, useful reference materials, including a detailed glossary of art terms and an annotated bibliography of introductory texts on art criticism and theory as well as on African American history and culture.
An essential primer on collecting Black art that expertly blends the passion of an art student with the expertise of an insider.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73517-080-0
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Petite Ivy Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
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