American artist Barkley L. Hendricks (1945 2017) revolutionized contemporary portraiture with his vivid depictions of Black subjects beginning in the late 1960s. This book contextualizes Hendricks s portraits at different stages of the country s history and places him in the pantheon of innovative twentieth-century artists. Hendricks developed his signature style at a time of significant social and cultural change in the United States, especially with regard to Black artists, and amid a perceived bifurcation between abstraction and representation. He produced portraits from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. Following a hiatus during which he made landscapes, basketball paintings, works on paper, and photographs, he resumed his portraiture practice from 2002 until his death in 2017. Hendricks s portrait paintings, often derived from photographs of friends and family, hired models, or figures he encountered on the street, were inspired by the artist s research, international travels, and visits to museums like The Frick Collection, where he studied centuries-old European paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Bronzino, and others. This publication presents some of the most inventive and striking examples from Hendricks s first period of portrait painting, including 'limited-palette' canvases featuring Black figures dressed in white against white backgrounds a self-portrait, and boldly colorful works that spotlight their subjects spectacular styles and poses. An assessment of this great artist acknowledges his significant contributions to the canon of American art and portraiture in general.

In The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, curator and critic Antwaun Sargent addresses a radical transformation taking place in fashion and art today. The featuring of the Black figure and Black runway and cover models in the media and art has been one marker of increasingly inclusive fashion and art communities. More critically, however, the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body has been reinfused with new vitality and substance thanks to an increase in powerful images authored by an international community of Black photographers. In a richly illustrated essay, Sargent opens up the conversation around the role of the Black body in the marketplace; the cross-pollination between art, fashion, and culture in constructing an image; and the institutional barriers that have historically been an impediment to Black photographers participating more fully in the fashion (and art) industries. Fifteen artist portfolios feature the brightest contemporary fashion photographers, including Tyler Mitchell, the first Black photographer hired to shoot a cover story for American Vogue; Campbell Addy, founder of the Nii Agency and journal; and Nadine Ijewere, whose early series title, The Misrepresentation of Representation, says it all. Alongside a series of conversations between generations, their images and stories chart the history of inclusion, and exclusion, in the creation of the commercial Black image, while simultaneously proposing a brilliantly reenvisioned future.