A fresh perspective on the influential critic, offering new ways of understanding the art of the Harlem Renaissance\nAlain Locke (1885–1954), leading theorist of the Harlem Renaissance, maintained a lifelong commitment to the visual arts. Offering an in-depth study of Locke’s writings and art world interventions, Kobena Mercer focuses on the importance of cross-cultural entanglement. This distinctive approach reveals Locke’s vision of modern art as a dynamic space where images and ideas generate new forms under the fluid conditions of diaspora.\nPositioning the philosopher as an advocate for an Afromodern aesthetic that drew from both formal experiments in Europe and the iconic legacy of the African past, Mercer shows how Aaron Douglas, Loïs Mailou Jones, and other New Negro artists acknowledged the diaspora’s rupture with the ancestral past as a prelude to the rebirth of identity. In his 1940 picture book, The Negro in Art, Locke also explored the different ways black and white artists approached the black image. Mercer’s reading highlights the global mobility of black images as they travel across national and ethnic frontiers. Finally, Mercer examines how Locke’s investment in art was shaped by gay male aestheticism. Black male nudes, including works by Richmond Barthé and Carl Van Vechten, thus reveal the significance of queer practices in modernism’s cross-cultural genesis\nPublished in association with the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University

Alain Locke and the Visual Arts (Richard D. Cohen Lectures on African & African American Art)

Arts & Photography

Mercer, Kobena

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

Welcome to the Jungle brings a black British perspective to the critical reading of a wide range of cultural texts, events and experiences arising from volatile transformations in the politics of ethnicity, sexuality and "race" during the 1980s. The ten essays collected here examine new forms of cultural expression in black film, photography and visual art exerging with a new generation of black British artists, and interprets this prolific creativity within a sociological framework that reveals fresh perspectives on the bewildering complexity of identity and diversity in an era of postmodernity. Kobena Mercer documents a wealth of insights opened up by the overlapping of Asian, African and Caribbean cultures that constitute Black Britain as a unique domain of diaspora.

Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies

Routledge

JAMES VANDERZEE (1886-1983) was Harlem's leading photographer from 1916 onwards when he opened his studio Guarantee Photos. VanDerZee's photo-graphic range was wide - he made portraits and photographed weddings and public events - and it was this hybrid style which attracted the attention of photo-graphic audiences in the 1990s. Many of his works were featured in the important 1969 exhibition of African-American art 'Harlem on my Mind' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

James Vanderzee 55

Photography & Video

Phaidon Inc Ltd

James Vanderzee (0000)

PHAIDON FRANCE

Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s (English and Spanish Edition)

Over the years, Kobena Mercer has critically illuminated the visual innovations of African American and black British artists. In Travel & See he presents a diasporic model of criticism that gives close attention to aesthetic strategies while tracing the shifting political and cultural contexts in which black visual art circulates. In eighteen essays, which cover the period from 1992 to 2012 and discuss such leading artists as Isaac Julien, Renée Green, Kerry James Marshall, and Yinka Shonibare, Mercer provides nothing less than a counternarrative of global contemporary art that reveals how the “dialogical principle” of cross-cultural interaction not only has transformed commonplace perceptions of blackness today but challenges us to rethink the entangled history of modernism as well.  

Duke University Press Books

Over the years, Kobena Mercer has critically illuminated the visual innovations of African American and black British artists. In Travel &amp; See he presents a diasporic model of criticism that gives close attention to aesthetic strategies while tracing the shifting political and cultural contexts in which black visual art circulates. In eighteen essays, which cover the period from 1992 to 2012 and discuss such leading artists as Isaac Julien, Renée Green, Kerry James Marshall, and Yinka Shonibare, Mercer provides nothing less than a counternarrative of global contemporary art that reveals how the “dialogical principle” of cross-cultural interaction not only has transformed commonplace perceptions of blackness today but challenges us to rethink the entangled history of modernism as well.

Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire

Bailey, David A.

Ugwu, Catherine

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Ica Editions

Hew Locke: Stranger in Paradise is a detailed monograph into the fascinating and multi-layered work of artist Hew Locke. Hew Locke uses a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, photography and sculpture and extensively using found objects and collage, Locke’s work addresses recurring themes of visual expressions of power, trophies, globalization, movement of people and the creation of cultures. His sculptural work ranges from large scale architectural constructions to vibrantly colored portraits of the Royal Family. They are constructed from everyday materials ranging from mass produced toys, souvenirs, cake decorations, sequins and plastic flowers.

Hew Locke: Stranger in Paradise

Hoffman, Jens

Black Dog Press

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Books by Mercer, Kobena