Colored pictures
Subtitle: race and visual representation
By: Michael D. Harris ; foreword by Moyo Okediji.
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 281
Subjects: African Americans in art; African American art; African Americans -- Race identity
Description: "In this book, artist and art historian Michael Harris investigates the role of visual representation in the construction of black identities, both real and imagined, in the United States. He focuses particularly on how African American artists have responded to - and even used - stereotypical images in their own works.".

"Colored Pictures traces black artists' responses to racist imagery across two centuries, from early works by Henry O. Tanner and Archibald J. Motley Jr., in which African Americans are depicted with dignity, to contemporary works by Kara Walker and Michael Ray Charles, in which derogatory images are recycled to controversial effect. The work of these and other artists - such as John Biggers, Jeff Donaldson, Betye Saar, Juan Logan, and Camille Billops - reflects a wide range of perspectives.

Examined together, they offer compelling insight into the profound psychological impact of visual stereotypes on the African American community."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [259-274) and index.
Table of contents: title: Black: the discredited signifier/signified; title: Constructing and visualizing race; title: The nineteenth century: imaged ideology; title: Aunt Jemima, the fantasy black mammy/servant; title: Jezebel, Olympia, and the sexualized woman; title: Color lines: mapping color consciousness in the art of Archibald Motley Jr.; title: The language of appropriation: fantasies and fallacies; title: Turning in from the periphery.