Review by Booklist Review
In her first book about art and the "politics of the visual," hooks, a writer known for her clarifying views on feminism and black women, addresses the deplorable absence of discourse on black artists, especially by black critics. Why, she asks, has art played a minimal role in the lives of most African Americans? With a firm grasp of the racial and cultural climate in which black aesthetics must grow, hooks offers some astute answers to that question and holds out hope for change. She then hones her aesthetic in her adept interpretations of the work and impact of black artists, including Romare Bearden, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alison Saar, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, and Margo Humphreys. Hooks also discusses portrayals of black women and men in art and, in an essay on photography, how the "struggle over images" became part of the black liberation movement. Art matters, hooks assures us; it helps us forge our identities while forcing society to evolve from being exclusive to inclusive. As erudite and sophisticated as hooks is, she is also eminently readable, even exhilarating. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A prolific critical writer, hooks has contributed a collection of essays on contemporary art and what she describes as the troubling relationship between the dominant white, male art world, its practices, protocols and biases, and the creative production of African American artists-particularly women-and others whose works grapple with issues of identity and social context. Decrying the lack of black critics writing on today's art, hooks provides a minute dissection of issues of race, gender and ``cultural hegemony'' in the works of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat; examines the historical impact of photography in black life and the trenchant intelligence and beauty of Carrie Mae Weems's photographs; and highlights important critical works by black art historian Sylvia Boone and black architect LaVerne Wells-Bowie. Hooks has a knack for balancing flat academic jargon with vivid language, illuminating the historical and psychoanalytic underpinnings of her topics while anticipating the visceral responses of a lay audience. Despite her generic invocations of the dominant, marginalizing Eurocentric patriarchy, etc., etc., her passionate and highly personal exploration of these and other issues (including a distressing account of her own illness and an aestheticized betrayal by an artist friend) transforms academic abstractions into recognizable human patterns linking the everyday lives of Americans, black or white. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Political theorist and critic hooks continues the work of Black Looks (not reviewed), exploring the politics of representation, aesthetics, and the place of the African-American woman artist. This collection of 18 essays in art criticism and five interviews with prominent black women artists is hooks's response to the paucity of African-American art critics, particularly women. Drawing effectively on her personal experience of art as both maker and viewer, hooks urges that we take art seriously as a focus for struggle, emphasizing its transformative power. At the same time, she eschews essentialist arguments that would reduce all black art to protest art, arguments that have repeatedly been narrowed to discussions of ``good'' and ``bad'' images. Instead, she calls for ``a revolution in the way we see, the way we look.'' What is at stake here, she says, is nothing less than control over the representation of the self; she points to the empowering nature of personal photography as an example. The book itself is an odd creature. The first half is a rocky road full of academic artcrit jargon of the kind usually found in the pages of artforum (which is where one of these pieces first appeared), and the early dialogues, with Carrie Mae Weems and Alison Saar, are unsatisfying, with hooks dominating the conversations. But the second half of the book is a return to form for one of the most astute cultural and political writers in the country today. Essays on black vernacular architecture, representation of the black male body, and the creative process of women artists are powerful and concise, and the dialogues with Emma Amos, Margo Humphreys, and particularly LaVerne Wells-Bowie are a real contribution to our understanding of the situation of black women artists. It is impossible to imagine hooks writing a book devoid of interest, and the second half of this one is excellent indeed.
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