For centuries, Black creatives were largely excluded from the Western art-historical record. Slowly, however, a body of literature on influential Black artists and art movements has been building, including books that employ documentation as an act of resistance to predominantly white European art-historical narratives. Here are five of them.
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BLK ART: The Audacious Legacy of Black Artists and Models in Western Art, by Zaria Ware
Zaria Ware grew up in love with history, but when it came to Black art history, information was scarce. Redressing this lack, BLK ART, a 2024 NAACP Image Awards Nominee for Outstanding Non-Fiction, presents an alternative art history that highlights Black subjects seen in Medieval and Victorian paintings, as well as the Black artists who shattered barriers in the nineteenth-century art world. The book is split into two parts. In the first, Ware presents common themes encountered in her research on images of Black people throughout history, including the use of headdresses to cover Black hair and the white-washing of Black figures in Greek mythology and art. In part two, she offers in-depth biographies of prominent Black artists who served as precursors to the Harlem Renaissance, including Robert Seldon Duncanson, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Edmonia Lewis and Henry Ossawa Tanner.