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The canonical work of cultural criticism by the “profoundly influential critic” (Artnet), in a beautiful thirtieth-anniversary edition, featuring a new foreword by esteemed visual artist Mickalene Thomas
“Sharp and persuasive.” —The New York Times Book Review on the original publication of Art on My Mind
bell hooks has been “instrumental in cracking open the white, western canon for Black artists” (Artnet), with searing essays complemented by conversations with Carrie Mae Weems, Emma Amos, Margo Humphrey, and LaVerne Wells-Bowie. Featuring full-color artwork from giants such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, and Alison Saar, Art on My Mind “examines the way race, sex and class shape who makes art, how it sells and who values it” (The New York Times), while questioning how art can be instrumental for Black liberation. In doing so, hooks urges us to unravel the forces of oppression that colonize our imaginations.
With a new foreword from acclaimed contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas, this thirtieth-anniversary edition passes the torch to a new generation of artists, capturing hooks’s simple yet evergreen affirmation: art matters—it is a life force in the struggle for freedom. Art on My Mind is essential reading for anyone looking to find lessons on liberation and creativity in the world of color—the free world of art.
Art on My Mind is at once a grounded and rigorous engagement with existing structures of power and a visceral, dreamy meditation on creative expression, written with clarity, warmth and ease.”
—The New Statesman
“In an art world obsessed with identity politics, Art on My Mind is a long-overdue rescue of the liberating, rather than confining, power of art.”
—Paper magazine
“Sharp and persuasive.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[Art on My Mind] is a guide to the ways that political meaning and esthetic pleasure may be discovered, bound together, in many works by contemporary artists of color.”
—Art America
“[hooks] brings a welcome clarity to such issues as received art and the development of a Western canon.”
—San Francisco Examiner
“Passionate and highly personal.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"A classic work of intersectionality, Art on My Mind escaped the tidy halls of mainstream art criticism, offering new and original ways to look at art in relation to race, gender, and the world. In the process, bell hooks also offered a corrective to us white feminists who belatedly realized that we had enthusiastically acknowledged but not sufficiently respected the hard-fought contributions of Black women."
—Lucy R. Lippard, author of Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America
bell hooks (1952–2021) was the author of over thirty books, including the feminist classic Ain’t I a Woman, the memoir Bone Black, and the New York Times bestselling All About Love.