Fervent messages for the nation’s future.
Artists transform public space.
Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 proclamation of four basic American freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from war, freedom from fear) and Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings, the For Freedoms organization, an artist-led coalition, was created in 2016 by Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Wyatt Gallery, and Michelle Woo, aiming to integrate artists’ voices into the political conversation. “What is the role of art in a democracy?” they asked, a question that seemed newly urgent after the 2016 election. Along with exhibitions and artist-led town hall meetings, the group engaged artists to create hundreds of billboards all across the country that, the artists hoped, would inspire in viewers a way to “better understand themselves, the world, and the artist’s experience.” Color photographs of billboards mounted between 2016 and 2023, along with textual commentary, convey hope, despair, and a call to activism—including the powerful act of voting. “Not voting is actually voting,” one billboard, erected in Flint, Michigan, warns. “Grab em by the Ballots” is the message on another. Many billboards respond to hot-button issues, including reproductive rights, climate change, racism, violence against Asians, indigenous rights, antisemitism, police brutality, gun violence, health care, and immigration: “Every Refugee Boat Is a Mayflower” announces one billboard in Maine. The words “Thoughts” and “Prayers” are superimposed on images of guns on a billboard in Cheyenne, Wyoming. “Your Body Your Business” appears in St. Louis, Missouri. “Think Science,” advises a billboard in Kentucky. The 2020 Awakening campaign was “a culmination of communal artistry, ideation, and visions for a radical future” that proposed four new freedoms: healing, awakening, justice, and listening. One billboard puts it simply: “Cultivate Care.”
Fervent messages for the nation’s future.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781580936620
Page Count: 360
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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