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Art on My Mind: Visual Politics
In Art on My Mind, bell hooks, a leading cultural critic, responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting, and criticizing art and aesthetics in an art world increasingly concerned with identity politics. Always concerned with the liberatory black struggle, hooks positions her writings on visual politics within the ever-present question of how art can be an empowering and revolutionary force within the black community.
240 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1995
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About the author
bell hooks
162 books14.2k followersbell hooks (deliberately in lower-case; born Gloria Jean Watkins) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination. She published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern female perspective, she addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism.
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March 22, 2015
“Does man love Art?
Man visits Art, but squirms.
Art hurts.
Art urges voyages-
and it is easier to stay at home.”
— Gwendolyn Brooks
hooks sees a dearth in the area of black art critique and she issues a call to arms for more critique and also for a new vocabulary for this to happen.This book is such a great look into the state of black art, especially as it relates to the dominant male Eurocentric art. Although the book was less accessible than hooks’ other books, the relatively slow speed that I read it at meant I took more time to ruminate on what I had read and think about the role that art has played in my life.
I was struck by quite a few of bell hooks’ quotes, primarily about the politics of seeing. hooks says how we see things and relate to them depends on our worldview. hooks laments the fact that art is often seen as superfluous in so many black people’s lives just because there might be so many other pressing issues at hand. She finds that worrying for a number of reasons, primarily because of the transformative power of art.
Reading on hooks’ own experiences with art, I thought of my own. Seeing as the majority of the art I’ve viewed is European art, that probably formed the lens through which I view art. It doesn’t help that black art, African in particular, is often called “folk art”, a term that devalues the art both intrinsically and price-wise. Having visited several African countries on vacation with my family and wanting to buy African art for souvenirs, I was always looked at with some bemusement as the art was created for (Western) tourist consumption, not for a “local” such as me. I find it interesting that without this Western demand for art, perhaps the art would not have been created but it does beg the question of how authentic the art is as African art as it was created with a western audience in mind. Either way, I liked it and I bought a lot of it. When I bought batik in Zimbabwe or malachite carvings in South Africa, what I saw was its beauty and the fact that I could buy art I could actually touch, art that wasn’t hung in a gallery somewhere, and art I could relate to on a deeper level because of my heritage.
I have seen some great African diasporic art collections in Toronto and Vancouver and I’m often left thinking why aren’t the artists better known, and why aren’t more journals and magazines writing about their work? I attended Chantal Gibson’s art talk at the Vancouver Public Library during Black History Month and her discussions on her works Tome (http://www.chantalgibson.com/tome-201...) and Historical In(ter)ventions: Altered Texts and Border Stories (http://ethnographicterminalia.org/201...) were truly insightful, although it needed her explaining her vision, process etc before I fully understood what she was trying to portray.
Black artists as “image-makers” was a profound point for me. About photography hooks says: “I think about the place of art in black life, connections between the social construction of black identity, the impact of race and class, and the presence in black life of an inarticulate but ever-present visual aesthetic governing our relationship to images, to the process of image making.”
Photos are seen as a “disruption of white control over black images.” I think of the gollywog (http://revealinghistories.org.uk/lega...) on Robertson’s jam labels when I was growing up and how amazing it is that giving a black person a camera lets them create their own images to counter the negative ones:
“The camera became in black life a political instrument, a way to resist misrepresentations well as a means by which alternative images could be produced.”
hooks touches on black male art, but her focus is on the feminine. I enjoyed her thoughts on Lorna Simpson's (http://www.lsimpsonstudio.com/) work in particular, an artist who uses images of black female bodies that counter stereotypes:
“Whereas female bodies in this culture depict us as hard, low down, mean, nasty, bitchified, Simpson creates images that give poetic expression to the ethereal, the prophetic dimensions of visionary souls shrouded flesh.”
Although bell hooks is talking mainly about African-Americans and their experiences with art, I feel it’s very similar to the African diaspora’s experiences with, and perceptions of, art.In fact, there is a lot in the book about collective memory of the diaspora. It’s definitely not an easy read but I personally found it very rewarding.
Man visits Art, but squirms.
Art hurts.
Art urges voyages-
and it is easier to stay at home.”
— Gwendolyn Brooks
hooks sees a dearth in the area of black art critique and she issues a call to arms for more critique and also for a new vocabulary for this to happen.This book is such a great look into the state of black art, especially as it relates to the dominant male Eurocentric art. Although the book was less accessible than hooks’ other books, the relatively slow speed that I read it at meant I took more time to ruminate on what I had read and think about the role that art has played in my life.
I was struck by quite a few of bell hooks’ quotes, primarily about the politics of seeing. hooks says how we see things and relate to them depends on our worldview. hooks laments the fact that art is often seen as superfluous in so many black people’s lives just because there might be so many other pressing issues at hand. She finds that worrying for a number of reasons, primarily because of the transformative power of art.
Reading on hooks’ own experiences with art, I thought of my own. Seeing as the majority of the art I’ve viewed is European art, that probably formed the lens through which I view art. It doesn’t help that black art, African in particular, is often called “folk art”, a term that devalues the art both intrinsically and price-wise. Having visited several African countries on vacation with my family and wanting to buy African art for souvenirs, I was always looked at with some bemusement as the art was created for (Western) tourist consumption, not for a “local” such as me. I find it interesting that without this Western demand for art, perhaps the art would not have been created but it does beg the question of how authentic the art is as African art as it was created with a western audience in mind. Either way, I liked it and I bought a lot of it. When I bought batik in Zimbabwe or malachite carvings in South Africa, what I saw was its beauty and the fact that I could buy art I could actually touch, art that wasn’t hung in a gallery somewhere, and art I could relate to on a deeper level because of my heritage.
I have seen some great African diasporic art collections in Toronto and Vancouver and I’m often left thinking why aren’t the artists better known, and why aren’t more journals and magazines writing about their work? I attended Chantal Gibson’s art talk at the Vancouver Public Library during Black History Month and her discussions on her works Tome (http://www.chantalgibson.com/tome-201...) and Historical In(ter)ventions: Altered Texts and Border Stories (http://ethnographicterminalia.org/201...) were truly insightful, although it needed her explaining her vision, process etc before I fully understood what she was trying to portray.
Black artists as “image-makers” was a profound point for me. About photography hooks says: “I think about the place of art in black life, connections between the social construction of black identity, the impact of race and class, and the presence in black life of an inarticulate but ever-present visual aesthetic governing our relationship to images, to the process of image making.”
Photos are seen as a “disruption of white control over black images.” I think of the gollywog (http://revealinghistories.org.uk/lega...) on Robertson’s jam labels when I was growing up and how amazing it is that giving a black person a camera lets them create their own images to counter the negative ones:
“The camera became in black life a political instrument, a way to resist misrepresentations well as a means by which alternative images could be produced.”
hooks touches on black male art, but her focus is on the feminine. I enjoyed her thoughts on Lorna Simpson's (http://www.lsimpsonstudio.com/) work in particular, an artist who uses images of black female bodies that counter stereotypes:
“Whereas female bodies in this culture depict us as hard, low down, mean, nasty, bitchified, Simpson creates images that give poetic expression to the ethereal, the prophetic dimensions of visionary souls shrouded flesh.”
Although bell hooks is talking mainly about African-Americans and their experiences with art, I feel it’s very similar to the African diaspora’s experiences with, and perceptions of, art.In fact, there is a lot in the book about collective memory of the diaspora. It’s definitely not an easy read but I personally found it very rewarding.
March 10, 2016
It's difficult for me to convey what I see as hooks' central concern here without sounding hopelessly general. She is very much engaged with what art can do for people, personally and thus politically, and in passionately arguing the case for it she delineates and criticises the structures of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as they are reproduced in, sustained by and do the work of exclusion and limitation inside the art world. She echoes Michele Wallace in lamenting the absence of black critics writing about art, partly because this contributes to the lack of intelligent writing about the work of black artists; often she finds that no theoretical framework exists to 'read' the work of artists such as Alison Saar, leading to misguided attacks on work, overdetermining focus on biography and essentialist authenticity that reinscribe racist and sexist tropes. She points out that sustaining motivation to write this material as a black woman is difficult, since male and white female critics so often present radical insights without citing or mentioning the women of colour who have done the work, while that work is frequently ignored or dismissed.
I was reminded of Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation. Sontag called for an 'erotics of art', clearly meaning the erotic in the sense of Lorde's essay 'Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power' but I can't imagine bell hooks needing to hear such an injunction; I don't think it would occur to her to write about art starting from anywhere but pleasure, feelings, empowering self-awareness. The issues of interpretation that Sontag so strenuously grappled with are sailed through effortlessly here - hooks finds and upholds the deepest insights and dedicates effort to their fullest and clearest illumination, often employing anecdotes from her own life, and quotes from diverse sources.
She investigates the reasons (beyond representation) why the majority of African Americans do not feel that the art world is relevant to them, and don't see fields of art work as open to them, and many of her conclusions here segue into encouragement for black artists and non-artists to find ways in. She aims to help "create collective awareness of the radical place that art occupies in the freedom struggle and [how] experiencing it can enhance our understanding of what it means to live as free subjects in an unfree world"
In discussing the work of her friend, Alison Saar, hooks underlines how accusations of appropriation and an obsession with authenticity can become a tool of exclusion and perpetuates the othering and exotification of black artists. Appropriation need not be exploitation, she argues. Saar's appropriation of 'folk art' imagery and styles allow her to engage and extol the beauty of everyday life. While she herself is an academically trained artist, her use of these styles speaks to her embrace of the mysterious connections and longing for community that everyone feels, in her case, as a woman with African American heritage, connections to the rural South where she herself has never lived. Hooks sees in Saar's work an honest exploration of soul by a seeker who goes where the soul leads: "that vernacular emphasis on cultivating the soul, searching for depth and meaning in life, was continually connected to experiences of pleasure and delight
I was really moved by the discussion of the power of snapshots and the cultural practice of filling walls with family pictures in black homes like the one she grew up in. Such curatorial spaces allowed black people to celebrate their own lives and images free from the surveillance of the white gaze.
In Diasporic Landscapes of Longing, hooks looks at the work of Carrie Mae Weems and criticises the way her work is often approached "as though the sign of racial difference is the only relevant visual experience her images evoke". In discussion with the artist, she agrees with her that those who see images like her Ain't Jokin' series as straightforward ethnographic documentation are ignoring the serious issues it raises. Their conversation draws attention to the ways whiteness tends to diffuse radical potential in art work by seeing only 'rage' when race is marked ('this is as true of the liberal and progressive white gaze as it is of the conservative right'), or assuming that this is the only subject black artists can meaningfully deal with. Hooks also writes about Weems' images of African sites as anticolonial:
In Beauty Laid Bare: Aesthetics in the Ordinary, hooks rhapsodises the spirit-healing powers of beautiful things around us - in opposition to 'hedonistic materialism… offered as a replacement for healing and life-sustaining beauty.' she laments that "unlike the global nonwhite poor, who manage to retain an awareness of the need for beauty despite imperialist devastation, the vast majority of the black poor in the US do not harbour uplifting cultural objects in their homes. This group has been overwhelmingly encouraged to abandon, destroy or sell artefacts from the past." she suggests "Rather than surrendering our passion for the beautiful, for luxury, we need to envision ways those passions can be fulfilled that do not reinforce the structures of domination we seek to change."
In Women Artists: The Creative Process, beginning by sharing her own need to spend time in solitary reverie, hooks passionately defends the creative's right to time, not only to work undisturbed, but to relax and contemplate. Comparing the lives of famous white male creatives she admired to those of women, she saw that successful men always seemed to have support a support network of people who 'both expected and accepted that they would need space and time apart from the workings of the everyday to blossom, for them to engage in necessary renewal of spirit' whereas for women such time is often, as Adrienne Rich puts it 'guiltily seized' I was reminded of Sara Ahmed's thoughts on philosophers at their tables in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others
One of the most interesting essays to me is Black Vernacular: Architecture as Cultural Practice in which hooks writes appreciatively about the shacks poor black folks in the south usually lived in where she grew up. These could be shaped to the needs and desires of their inhabitants, extended when required, and surrounded by outdoor space such as porches and yards: "often exploited or oppressed groups of people who are compelled by economic circumstances to share small living quarters with many others view the world right outside their housing structure as liminal space where they can stretch the limits of their imagination." she notes "I am often disturbed when folks equate a concern with beauty, the design and arrangement of space, with class privilege." and contrasts the freedom offered by the shack even to those who lack material privilege with the confining space of the 'projects' which leave no rooms for the expression of uniqueness. "Standardized housing brought with it a sense that to be poor meant one was powerless, unable to intervene in any way with one's relationship to space"
Following the essay is a discussion with African American architect LaVerne Wells-Bowie, who discussed how long it took her to be able to see herself, a black woman, as an architect, in an environment where nobody and nothing ever suggested the idea to her, although her talents and inclinations might have pointed others in that direction. Her long journey through textile design perhaps gave her time and space to develop a deeper philosophy though: "I wanted my relationship to space to evoke architecture as it is informed by the humanities, not simply as a technical art". The two women consider African architecture and its connection with African American vernacular buildings. Hooks concludes "We need to document the existence of living traditions both past and present that can heal our wounds and offer us a space of opportunity where our lives can be transformed"
Writing about Emma Amos in Aesthetic Interventions hooks really embarrassed me with my lack of insight. I had never thought about the power of black and other PoC artists using images of white people. Amos' work also "urges recognition of the cultural mixing that calls into question an emphasis on racial purity", echoing hooks' oft-articulated deconstruction of essentialism around race as well as gender. Noting that Amos' images including whites have been less well-received than her other work, hooks points out that the white-dominated art world does not want to see itself through black eyes.
Printmaker Margo Humphreys talks about the high level of expertise and skill her work requires, and suggests that the form is seen as less intellectual than painting or sculpture simply because it involves messy manual labour, associated with marginalised people in the US. Hooks describes her work as mythopoetic and metaphysical. Humphreys agrees, explaining that her work is often autobiographical and sometimes examines 'the deeper philosophical meaning of emotions'. She uses colour as a tool of power: "you can enter [my] work the way you dive into a pool". This conversation really made me want to get acquainted with Margo's work. I hadn't heard of her or any of these artists before = (
To those who have read hooks' book We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity , the essay on Representing the Black Male Body will serve as a reminder of some key points. She criticises photographers like Mapplethorpe for their racist objectification of black male bodies, and discusses some black men's embrace of hypermasculinity as a response to their 'femininsation' in this kind of imagery.
The final essay The Radiance of Red: Blood Works was for me the most surprising. I love how she opens by reminding me that 'dead bodies do not bleed'. Blood may be a sign of violence, but it is a sign of life, that can carry numerous meanings, as in the work of Andres Serrano. Hooks makes various points, for instance, contrasting the 'uncleanliness' of menstrual blood with the 'purifying' blood of Christ, but the essay moves in an open-ended way through a garden of ideas.
I was reminded of Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation. Sontag called for an 'erotics of art', clearly meaning the erotic in the sense of Lorde's essay 'Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power' but I can't imagine bell hooks needing to hear such an injunction; I don't think it would occur to her to write about art starting from anywhere but pleasure, feelings, empowering self-awareness. The issues of interpretation that Sontag so strenuously grappled with are sailed through effortlessly here - hooks finds and upholds the deepest insights and dedicates effort to their fullest and clearest illumination, often employing anecdotes from her own life, and quotes from diverse sources.
She investigates the reasons (beyond representation) why the majority of African Americans do not feel that the art world is relevant to them, and don't see fields of art work as open to them, and many of her conclusions here segue into encouragement for black artists and non-artists to find ways in. She aims to help "create collective awareness of the radical place that art occupies in the freedom struggle and [how] experiencing it can enhance our understanding of what it means to live as free subjects in an unfree world"
In discussing the work of her friend, Alison Saar, hooks underlines how accusations of appropriation and an obsession with authenticity can become a tool of exclusion and perpetuates the othering and exotification of black artists. Appropriation need not be exploitation, she argues. Saar's appropriation of 'folk art' imagery and styles allow her to engage and extol the beauty of everyday life. While she herself is an academically trained artist, her use of these styles speaks to her embrace of the mysterious connections and longing for community that everyone feels, in her case, as a woman with African American heritage, connections to the rural South where she herself has never lived. Hooks sees in Saar's work an honest exploration of soul by a seeker who goes where the soul leads: "that vernacular emphasis on cultivating the soul, searching for depth and meaning in life, was continually connected to experiences of pleasure and delight
I was really moved by the discussion of the power of snapshots and the cultural practice of filling walls with family pictures in black homes like the one she grew up in. Such curatorial spaces allowed black people to celebrate their own lives and images free from the surveillance of the white gaze.
In Diasporic Landscapes of Longing, hooks looks at the work of Carrie Mae Weems and criticises the way her work is often approached "as though the sign of racial difference is the only relevant visual experience her images evoke". In discussion with the artist, she agrees with her that those who see images like her Ain't Jokin' series as straightforward ethnographic documentation are ignoring the serious issues it raises. Their conversation draws attention to the ways whiteness tends to diffuse radical potential in art work by seeing only 'rage' when race is marked ('this is as true of the liberal and progressive white gaze as it is of the conservative right'), or assuming that this is the only subject black artists can meaningfully deal with. Hooks also writes about Weems' images of African sites as anticolonial:
Weems has insisted on rituals of commemoration that can be understood only within the context of an oppositional worldview, wherein intuition, magic, dream lore are all acknowledged to be ways of knowing that enhance the experience of life, that sweeten the journey[...] Weems imagines a diasporic landscape of longing, a cartography of desire wherein boundaries are marked only to be transgressed, where the exile returns home only to leave againon Lorna Simpson: "she depicts black women in everyday life as if our being brings elegance and grace to whatever world we inhabit"
In Beauty Laid Bare: Aesthetics in the Ordinary, hooks rhapsodises the spirit-healing powers of beautiful things around us - in opposition to 'hedonistic materialism… offered as a replacement for healing and life-sustaining beauty.' she laments that "unlike the global nonwhite poor, who manage to retain an awareness of the need for beauty despite imperialist devastation, the vast majority of the black poor in the US do not harbour uplifting cultural objects in their homes. This group has been overwhelmingly encouraged to abandon, destroy or sell artefacts from the past." she suggests "Rather than surrendering our passion for the beautiful, for luxury, we need to envision ways those passions can be fulfilled that do not reinforce the structures of domination we seek to change."
In Women Artists: The Creative Process, beginning by sharing her own need to spend time in solitary reverie, hooks passionately defends the creative's right to time, not only to work undisturbed, but to relax and contemplate. Comparing the lives of famous white male creatives she admired to those of women, she saw that successful men always seemed to have support a support network of people who 'both expected and accepted that they would need space and time apart from the workings of the everyday to blossom, for them to engage in necessary renewal of spirit' whereas for women such time is often, as Adrienne Rich puts it 'guiltily seized' I was reminded of Sara Ahmed's thoughts on philosophers at their tables in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others
One of the most interesting essays to me is Black Vernacular: Architecture as Cultural Practice in which hooks writes appreciatively about the shacks poor black folks in the south usually lived in where she grew up. These could be shaped to the needs and desires of their inhabitants, extended when required, and surrounded by outdoor space such as porches and yards: "often exploited or oppressed groups of people who are compelled by economic circumstances to share small living quarters with many others view the world right outside their housing structure as liminal space where they can stretch the limits of their imagination." she notes "I am often disturbed when folks equate a concern with beauty, the design and arrangement of space, with class privilege." and contrasts the freedom offered by the shack even to those who lack material privilege with the confining space of the 'projects' which leave no rooms for the expression of uniqueness. "Standardized housing brought with it a sense that to be poor meant one was powerless, unable to intervene in any way with one's relationship to space"
Following the essay is a discussion with African American architect LaVerne Wells-Bowie, who discussed how long it took her to be able to see herself, a black woman, as an architect, in an environment where nobody and nothing ever suggested the idea to her, although her talents and inclinations might have pointed others in that direction. Her long journey through textile design perhaps gave her time and space to develop a deeper philosophy though: "I wanted my relationship to space to evoke architecture as it is informed by the humanities, not simply as a technical art". The two women consider African architecture and its connection with African American vernacular buildings. Hooks concludes "We need to document the existence of living traditions both past and present that can heal our wounds and offer us a space of opportunity where our lives can be transformed"
Writing about Emma Amos in Aesthetic Interventions hooks really embarrassed me with my lack of insight. I had never thought about the power of black and other PoC artists using images of white people. Amos' work also "urges recognition of the cultural mixing that calls into question an emphasis on racial purity", echoing hooks' oft-articulated deconstruction of essentialism around race as well as gender. Noting that Amos' images including whites have been less well-received than her other work, hooks points out that the white-dominated art world does not want to see itself through black eyes.
Printmaker Margo Humphreys talks about the high level of expertise and skill her work requires, and suggests that the form is seen as less intellectual than painting or sculpture simply because it involves messy manual labour, associated with marginalised people in the US. Hooks describes her work as mythopoetic and metaphysical. Humphreys agrees, explaining that her work is often autobiographical and sometimes examines 'the deeper philosophical meaning of emotions'. She uses colour as a tool of power: "you can enter [my] work the way you dive into a pool". This conversation really made me want to get acquainted with Margo's work. I hadn't heard of her or any of these artists before = (
To those who have read hooks' book We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity , the essay on Representing the Black Male Body will serve as a reminder of some key points. She criticises photographers like Mapplethorpe for their racist objectification of black male bodies, and discusses some black men's embrace of hypermasculinity as a response to their 'femininsation' in this kind of imagery.
The final essay The Radiance of Red: Blood Works was for me the most surprising. I love how she opens by reminding me that 'dead bodies do not bleed'. Blood may be a sign of violence, but it is a sign of life, that can carry numerous meanings, as in the work of Andres Serrano. Hooks makes various points, for instance, contrasting the 'uncleanliness' of menstrual blood with the 'purifying' blood of Christ, but the essay moves in an open-ended way through a garden of ideas.
"In Circle of Blood the abstract image of wholeness converges with recognition that the circulating blood is central to continuity of being[…] [these images] challenge us to decentre those epistemologies in the West that deny a continuum of relationships among all living organisms, inviting us to replace this mode of thought with a vision of synthesis that extols a whole that is never static but always dynamic, evolutionary, creative. Though often overlooked, this is the counter-hegemonic aesthetic vision that is the force undergirding Andres Serrano's work"I don't consider this a review as such but I hope I've succeeded here in conveying a little of the flavour of these essays, which are the most exciting works of art criticism I've ever read, despite four years of formal semi academic study in the arts.
April 23, 2025
Books read & reviewed: 1️⃣8️⃣3️⃣🥖4️⃣0️⃣0️⃣
Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Word Count: (ARC, can't find the word count)
╔⏤⏤⏤╝❀╚⏤⏤⏤╗
૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ♡ My 34th read this month (^-^ )
4️⃣🌟, Essay collection?? I'm definitely not that into politics but this is extremely good 😇😇, so many insights and a powerful message
——————————————————————
➕➖0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣5️⃣6️⃣7️⃣8️⃣9️⃣🔟✖️➗
First of all i would like to thank The New Press for the ARC¿ (kinda arc¿) Since upon researching there's already a book named 'Art on My Mind' also by bell hooks published in 1995 aaaaaaaand this is the 30th anniversary edition :) with the original text and essays being preserved with no additional apparatus or annotations (or so I've researched). Just an additional new commissioned foreword/introduction by Mickalene Thomas, so this review will only focus on the new media being released.
Cover: One that stood outs is the updated design and the cover, which consists of bell hooks in 8 beautiful photographs, my only criticism is the font present on the name and the title, it is rather odd that the text present on the photographs have this nostalgic handwriting vibe going on whilst the title, the author name, and the "Visual Politics" have this simplistic, modern, and linear vibe, which is strange because in a contrasting perspective, the photographs have much more emphasis while the infos are left on the top and bottom sides.
The Introduction by Mickalene Thomas: The introduction is a well thought out commentary on the empowerment and influence that bell hooks did on the future of people of color and the legacy of the art created to convey messages from the mind. It has many insights on the commercialization and the way complex art has been reduced to small products and the impact of visual politics through art, plus with the emergence of the internet when art can be more accessible, representations are more expressed through different mediums.
Typography and Illustrations: Well i think i'm going a little bit too far fetched if i'm even going to comment on the typography 😭, but still, the formatting and the fonts are gentle for the eyes and the more enhance illustrations give the work more depth and leverage to the messages it tries to convey (and did well).
In conclusion this is a well written and well organized and packaged work of essay collection and truly brings back the original for the 30 years it has been on print, quite an admirable 30th anniversary edition 🫶.
Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Word Count: (ARC, can't find the word count)
╔⏤⏤⏤╝❀╚⏤⏤⏤╗
૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ♡ My 34th read this month (^-^ )
4️⃣🌟, Essay collection?? I'm definitely not that into politics but this is extremely good 😇😇, so many insights and a powerful message
——————————————————————
➕➖0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣5️⃣6️⃣7️⃣8️⃣9️⃣🔟✖️➗
First of all i would like to thank The New Press for the ARC¿ (kinda arc¿) Since upon researching there's already a book named 'Art on My Mind' also by bell hooks published in 1995 aaaaaaaand this is the 30th anniversary edition :) with the original text and essays being preserved with no additional apparatus or annotations (or so I've researched). Just an additional new commissioned foreword/introduction by Mickalene Thomas, so this review will only focus on the new media being released.
Cover: One that stood outs is the updated design and the cover, which consists of bell hooks in 8 beautiful photographs, my only criticism is the font present on the name and the title, it is rather odd that the text present on the photographs have this nostalgic handwriting vibe going on whilst the title, the author name, and the "Visual Politics" have this simplistic, modern, and linear vibe, which is strange because in a contrasting perspective, the photographs have much more emphasis while the infos are left on the top and bottom sides.
The Introduction by Mickalene Thomas: The introduction is a well thought out commentary on the empowerment and influence that bell hooks did on the future of people of color and the legacy of the art created to convey messages from the mind. It has many insights on the commercialization and the way complex art has been reduced to small products and the impact of visual politics through art, plus with the emergence of the internet when art can be more accessible, representations are more expressed through different mediums.
Typography and Illustrations: Well i think i'm going a little bit too far fetched if i'm even going to comment on the typography 😭, but still, the formatting and the fonts are gentle for the eyes and the more enhance illustrations give the work more depth and leverage to the messages it tries to convey (and did well).
In conclusion this is a well written and well organized and packaged work of essay collection and truly brings back the original for the 30 years it has been on print, quite an admirable 30th anniversary edition 🫶.
June 19, 2023
i admire bell hooks a lot and sometimes i'll read something that makes me gawk at her genius but other times her sentences are filled with buzzwords that lose their meaning when packed into an overly verbose sentence. when you use "revolutionary" or "politics of" or "aesthetic" so frequently without really defining what they mean, it just sounds like a mess of jargon that doesn't necessarily elucidate the point
September 19, 2021
I bought this book when I was still in high school and never finished it. For much of my life, I was raised without art or a strong connection to it. It is only a decade later, when I return to it with a deeper understanding of art that I find myself finally ready to appreciate bell hooks's writing.
Art on My Mind seeks two things: to address a dearth in critical writing on Black artists by Black critics, and to discuss the role of art in everyday life. hooks interviews various artists, pens criticism and includes personal essays about her own experiences with art. Many of these essays are formed as interventions, to offer alternative ways of viewing and understanding an artist. They are a response to the "vulgarization" of art, a flattening of an artist's viewpoint by White-dominated institutions, how they are commoditized and marketed to the public.
What I found valuable about Art on My Mind is that it creates space for BIPOC/BAME readers to consider their relationship to art. The very first essay of the book considers the devaluation of art in the lives of Black people. Tracing her childhood desires to be an artist and her family's disapproval towards it, hooks arrives on the common refrain of art needing to serve a purpose -- for representation's sake. Arguing that this need for representation cleaves art into 'good' and 'bad' images to serve narrow political ends, hooks states that a different way of thinking about art is needed:
The conclusion hooks arrives at is moving, presenting art as a means to imagine new futures of pleasure and possibility. This book thus questions the reader on how we develop and nurture this understanding of art, and itself answers this through the presentation of hooks's life. She writes essays about her history, speaks with family members, and shares personal anecdotes about her artistic practice and criticism. Through this, hooks shows how art is all around us, even if we may not have strong emotional ties with it.
I took three weeks to read and consider what hooks raised in her essays and interviews. There is much to appreciate and annotate in response. One example is the book's approach towards honest criticism. Black artists, hooks writes, feel like they're caught in a double bind -- there is a lack of criticism surrounding their art, but negative criticism may damage an artist's future prospects, possibly destroying their chances of ever gaining mainstream acceptance. But hooks stands against temerity: "It is unfortunate that criticism is often seen as negative," she writes. "Constructive critical interrogation can enhance and illuminate our work." She also makes suggestions throughout the book, aimed at art institutions and policy makers, on how we can better democratise and diversify who gets funded and spotlit. She does not view critical reviews as a pure negative, instead recognising their value and suggesting new ways of building a healthy ecosystem for both art and criticism to thrive.
While the writing can be dense, enough is done through personal anecdotes and explanations to root hooks's theories in everyday life. The only places where the writing can be a little difficult are in the artist interviews: hooks and the interviewed artist assume familiarity with the artist's oeuvre, and some Googling will be needed to understand what is going on. But readers interested in the intersection of art and politics, of art and race, would find this book insightful. It is a valuable book on craft and creative process even today.
Art on My Mind seeks two things: to address a dearth in critical writing on Black artists by Black critics, and to discuss the role of art in everyday life. hooks interviews various artists, pens criticism and includes personal essays about her own experiences with art. Many of these essays are formed as interventions, to offer alternative ways of viewing and understanding an artist. They are a response to the "vulgarization" of art, a flattening of an artist's viewpoint by White-dominated institutions, how they are commoditized and marketed to the public.
What I found valuable about Art on My Mind is that it creates space for BIPOC/BAME readers to consider their relationship to art. The very first essay of the book considers the devaluation of art in the lives of Black people. Tracing her childhood desires to be an artist and her family's disapproval towards it, hooks arrives on the common refrain of art needing to serve a purpose -- for representation's sake. Arguing that this need for representation cleaves art into 'good' and 'bad' images to serve narrow political ends, hooks states that a different way of thinking about art is needed:
Clearly, it is only as we move away from the tendency to define ourselves in reaction to white racism that we are able to move towards that practice of freedom which requires us first to decolonize our minds. We can liberate ourselves and others only by forging in resistance identities that transcend narrowly defined limits.
The conclusion hooks arrives at is moving, presenting art as a means to imagine new futures of pleasure and possibility. This book thus questions the reader on how we develop and nurture this understanding of art, and itself answers this through the presentation of hooks's life. She writes essays about her history, speaks with family members, and shares personal anecdotes about her artistic practice and criticism. Through this, hooks shows how art is all around us, even if we may not have strong emotional ties with it.
I took three weeks to read and consider what hooks raised in her essays and interviews. There is much to appreciate and annotate in response. One example is the book's approach towards honest criticism. Black artists, hooks writes, feel like they're caught in a double bind -- there is a lack of criticism surrounding their art, but negative criticism may damage an artist's future prospects, possibly destroying their chances of ever gaining mainstream acceptance. But hooks stands against temerity: "It is unfortunate that criticism is often seen as negative," she writes. "Constructive critical interrogation can enhance and illuminate our work." She also makes suggestions throughout the book, aimed at art institutions and policy makers, on how we can better democratise and diversify who gets funded and spotlit. She does not view critical reviews as a pure negative, instead recognising their value and suggesting new ways of building a healthy ecosystem for both art and criticism to thrive.
While the writing can be dense, enough is done through personal anecdotes and explanations to root hooks's theories in everyday life. The only places where the writing can be a little difficult are in the artist interviews: hooks and the interviewed artist assume familiarity with the artist's oeuvre, and some Googling will be needed to understand what is going on. But readers interested in the intersection of art and politics, of art and race, would find this book insightful. It is a valuable book on craft and creative process even today.
January 6, 2023
this is for dr. grant (the professor who assigned this for the first day of his class). if you’re not him, keep scrolling!
as i’m sure you’re well aware, i skimmed this for our first meeting despite your insistence that we not come to class if we hadn’t read. all these years later, i see why, and i have no excuses but lots of things i wish i drew upon in that discussion. while i wasn’t familiar with most of the works or artists hooks investigates in her essays and interviews prior to reading, her dedication to detail and appreciation for subject are inspiring to say the least. not to mention her prose on the matter!
if i had a time machine, i’d go back and i’d ask about her reference to andres serrano’s work “blood and soil”. i’d wax poetic about her essay “beauty laid bare: aesthetics in the ordinary”. but i don’t, and i can’t bring them up now because you’re gone. and i miss you and i’m forever sorry for the time i wasted as your student and after, but i’m so grateful for the seeds our time planted. every time i read or study or research something, i think of you. i hope you’re resting peacefully.
as i’m sure you’re well aware, i skimmed this for our first meeting despite your insistence that we not come to class if we hadn’t read. all these years later, i see why, and i have no excuses but lots of things i wish i drew upon in that discussion. while i wasn’t familiar with most of the works or artists hooks investigates in her essays and interviews prior to reading, her dedication to detail and appreciation for subject are inspiring to say the least. not to mention her prose on the matter!
if i had a time machine, i’d go back and i’d ask about her reference to andres serrano’s work “blood and soil”. i’d wax poetic about her essay “beauty laid bare: aesthetics in the ordinary”. but i don’t, and i can’t bring them up now because you’re gone. and i miss you and i’m forever sorry for the time i wasted as your student and after, but i’m so grateful for the seeds our time planted. every time i read or study or research something, i think of you. i hope you’re resting peacefully.
February 21, 2023
thoughtful insights on art, aesthetics, and, as I’ve learned is often the case with hooks, so much more. i really, really wish this had an actual conclusion and more visuals of the works being discussed.
March 28, 2024
bell hooks is such an amazing writer. she lays out her ideas in such an easily digestible but still super impactful way, i always love books that are a compilation of essays. thought the interview chapters were so interesting and engaging, so many people should read this. learned a lot.
lots of thoughts but im always embarrassed of sharing them here. thought a lot about my own stuff. ever since i started, i really feel a need to translate my insides into it. just need to get it out in that way. she talks about that in this.
thinking a lot about authenticity and all that recently... hoping im headed towards a summer in the studio and more time on the ranch. barn studio coolest.
lots of thoughts but im always embarrassed of sharing them here. thought a lot about my own stuff. ever since i started, i really feel a need to translate my insides into it. just need to get it out in that way. she talks about that in this.
thinking a lot about authenticity and all that recently... hoping im headed towards a summer in the studio and more time on the ranch. barn studio coolest.
September 28, 2025
2.5
Believe it or not, I don't like giving bad reviews, especially to books I'd hoped to love. Unfortunately, this one was such a miss. Bell Hooks was obviously a great writer and a feminist icon, which shines through the pages of this book. However, her voice overshadowed those who should have been the stars of it: the artists. It was particularly visible in her interviews with some Black painters, when her questions seemed like monologues, while the responces were so short. Hooks mentioned that those essays were written at different times, and I could definitely see that. If you're looking for a good read about art and Black culture, you should pick up The Whole Picture by Alice Procter instead of this one.
Believe it or not, I don't like giving bad reviews, especially to books I'd hoped to love. Unfortunately, this one was such a miss. Bell Hooks was obviously a great writer and a feminist icon, which shines through the pages of this book. However, her voice overshadowed those who should have been the stars of it: the artists. It was particularly visible in her interviews with some Black painters, when her questions seemed like monologues, while the responces were so short. Hooks mentioned that those essays were written at different times, and I could definitely see that. If you're looking for a good read about art and Black culture, you should pick up The Whole Picture by Alice Procter instead of this one.
August 9, 2011
I wanted to like this more, but just couldn't. While it did get me thinking about things like art education and the seeming need for art critics to shape their views and writing to expectations put on them by Eurocentric norms and practices, it didn't do much in terms of giving me more to look at in terms of reviews and writing that were accesible or embraced what there is of AfAm visual art tradition.
In the few turns she takes at it, of writing about the art and interviewing artists themselves, hooks really can't escape the verbosity nor the urge to gush over her interview subjects, often outpacing them for lines. In more example than one, she gushes on for 200-300 words, only for the artist to respond "Yes." If this is what art crit is, even without the Eurocentrism, it's definitely apt to not appeal to anyone but the moneyed and social strata who look at art in terms of investment value instead of aesthetics or visceral connections.
In the few turns she takes at it, of writing about the art and interviewing artists themselves, hooks really can't escape the verbosity nor the urge to gush over her interview subjects, often outpacing them for lines. In more example than one, she gushes on for 200-300 words, only for the artist to respond "Yes." If this is what art crit is, even without the Eurocentrism, it's definitely apt to not appeal to anyone but the moneyed and social strata who look at art in terms of investment value instead of aesthetics or visceral connections.
February 22, 2023
absolutely incredible book that i recommend everyone read if you are into art or are trying to dive further into art, especially that of black artists. through her essays and interviews, bell hooks masterfully covers a number of subjects… though i think the most important of those is how we view black art and how critics view work by black artists. these artists are often put into a box and it is assumed that all of their work is autobiographical or radical, bound solely to the “black experience”. not true! i learned so much reading this and i will definitely come back to it later
some of my favorite essays in the book:
- the poetics of soul: art for everyone
- altars of sacrifice: re-membering basquiat
- in our glory: photography and black life
- talking art with carrie mae weems
- facing difference: the black female body
- critical genealogies: writing black art
- black venacular: architecture as cultural practice
some of my favorite essays in the book:
- the poetics of soul: art for everyone
- altars of sacrifice: re-membering basquiat
- in our glory: photography and black life
- talking art with carrie mae weems
- facing difference: the black female body
- critical genealogies: writing black art
- black venacular: architecture as cultural practice
June 9, 2007
STILL one of my favorite books on women and art and the arts.
May 21, 2008
I am always reading this book- Bell is incredible as both interviewer and artist.
August 19, 2025
4.5 stars! absolutely brilliant. so many incredible ideas presented on different mediums of art including painting, drawing, photography and architecture, as well as art criticism, exhibition, and ownership. i personally will be taking hooks' theories of the poetics of space, oppositional aesthetics, cultural appropriation, and subjugated knowledge with me in my future endeavours in the art world. my personal favourite pieces were 'in our glory: photography and black life', 'facing difference: the black female body', 'talking art as the spirit moves us', 'beauty laid bare: aesthetics in the ordinary', 'women artists: the creative process', 'being the subject of art', 'workers for artistic freedom', and 'black vernacular: architecture as cultural practice'. this took me much longer to read than i had anticipated, mostly because it is very dense. the only reason this is not 5 stars is because some of the essays, particularly those regarding a specific artist's work, were just too theoretically complex for me. also i get what people are saying about the buzzwords- i would be very happy if i never have to read the word 'counterhegemonic' again.
December 2, 2025
I could read endless amounts of bell hooks interviewing people. The way she does it is unmatched
March 9, 2024
Really wonderful. Everyone who cares about art should read
Want to read
February 8, 2009This book is about a subject that is essential to everyone, yet rarely recieves intellectual attention. hooks crafts a new vision for what love is and could be by powerfully distinguishing it from abuse and domination: "without justice there can be no love." Gleaning and analyzing other "scholarship" on love, which includes everything from books in the self-help genre, spiritual and philisophical books, to love poems, hooks also weaves her own story, and her own hopeful visions, into the text. As one of the most prolific and thoughful writers of our time, hook's concern for the lovelessness apparent in American culture should be a sign to us all to take a more careful look.
Read
July 16, 2024757 days ago (June 19th,2022)... I bought this book at City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco.
Taking so long to finish is funny because at the end I flipped back through and saw topics and opinions I had already folded into my "art thoughts".
A collection of quotes for myself:
"The moment white people decide it's cool to "eat the other", the response to all our work changes. And suddenly issues of authenticity, of "Will the real black person please stand up?" come into play"
"If art moves us —touches our spirit— it is not easily forgotten. Images will reappear in our heads against our will. I often think that many of the works that are canonically labeled "great" are simple those that lingered longest in individual memory. And that they lingered because, while looking at them, someone was moved, touched, taken to another place, momentarily born again"
"Gonzalez-Torres insists in his work that beauty is not best expressed or contained in the enduring art object but, rather, in the moment of experience, of human interaction, the passion of remembrance that serves as a catalyst urging on the will to create, The art object is merely a mirror giving a glimpse that is also a show of what was once real, present, concrete."
"Contrary to critical discussion that sees Weems as laying claim to an "authentic" black experience, her explorative journeys of recovery and return merely expose how reality is distorted when a unitary representation of black subjectivity is reinscribed rather than consistently challenged. When Weems made the decision to focus on black subject —as she put it, to "dig in my own backyard"— she was motivated by a longing to restore knowledge, not by a desire to uphold an essentialist politics of representation"
"... whether it was possible to use black subjects to represent universal concerns. When we watch Hollywood movies, usually with white subjects, those images create cultural terrain that we watch and walk on and mover through. I wanted to create that same kind of experience using my subjects. Yet when I do that, it's not understood in that way. Folks refuse to identify with the concerns black people express which take us beyond race into previously undocumented emotional realms"
"Rather than surrendering our passion for the beautiful, for luxury, we need to envision ways those passions can be fulfilled that do not reinforce the structures of domination we seek to change... the place of beauty in revolutionary struggle. Many of us who hace a degree of material privilege find that sharing resources, sharing objects we find beautiful that enhance our lives, is one way to resist falling into a privatized, hedonistic consumerism that is self-serving"
"And I am more interested in the standpoint she connected with when creating than in the issue of her "right" to do this space ...I love the work she did, and I also think it would have had a different and potentially more compelling and powerful message had a young black female architect designed the space."
"My concern with regard to the Basquiat show at the Whitney was that so many critics overwhelmingly focused on autobiography, as opposed to talking about the work"
ok that's all, i did enjoy the majority of the essays. confused at a good portion. but enjoyable nonetheless.
Taking so long to finish is funny because at the end I flipped back through and saw topics and opinions I had already folded into my "art thoughts".
A collection of quotes for myself:
"The moment white people decide it's cool to "eat the other", the response to all our work changes. And suddenly issues of authenticity, of "Will the real black person please stand up?" come into play"
"If art moves us —touches our spirit— it is not easily forgotten. Images will reappear in our heads against our will. I often think that many of the works that are canonically labeled "great" are simple those that lingered longest in individual memory. And that they lingered because, while looking at them, someone was moved, touched, taken to another place, momentarily born again"
"Gonzalez-Torres insists in his work that beauty is not best expressed or contained in the enduring art object but, rather, in the moment of experience, of human interaction, the passion of remembrance that serves as a catalyst urging on the will to create, The art object is merely a mirror giving a glimpse that is also a show of what was once real, present, concrete."
"Contrary to critical discussion that sees Weems as laying claim to an "authentic" black experience, her explorative journeys of recovery and return merely expose how reality is distorted when a unitary representation of black subjectivity is reinscribed rather than consistently challenged. When Weems made the decision to focus on black subject —as she put it, to "dig in my own backyard"— she was motivated by a longing to restore knowledge, not by a desire to uphold an essentialist politics of representation"
"... whether it was possible to use black subjects to represent universal concerns. When we watch Hollywood movies, usually with white subjects, those images create cultural terrain that we watch and walk on and mover through. I wanted to create that same kind of experience using my subjects. Yet when I do that, it's not understood in that way. Folks refuse to identify with the concerns black people express which take us beyond race into previously undocumented emotional realms"
"Rather than surrendering our passion for the beautiful, for luxury, we need to envision ways those passions can be fulfilled that do not reinforce the structures of domination we seek to change... the place of beauty in revolutionary struggle. Many of us who hace a degree of material privilege find that sharing resources, sharing objects we find beautiful that enhance our lives, is one way to resist falling into a privatized, hedonistic consumerism that is self-serving"
"And I am more interested in the standpoint she connected with when creating than in the issue of her "right" to do this space ...I love the work she did, and I also think it would have had a different and potentially more compelling and powerful message had a young black female architect designed the space."
"My concern with regard to the Basquiat show at the Whitney was that so many critics overwhelmingly focused on autobiography, as opposed to talking about the work"
ok that's all, i did enjoy the majority of the essays. confused at a good portion. but enjoyable nonetheless.
July 13, 2024
What started as, what I considered, a boring, convoluted, long winded anthology/ art critic critique ended as an important showcasing to not only a myriad of profound artists but also an introduction to new insightful ways to perceive and create art. Throughout this piece bell also relayed her own personal testimonies and early experiences with aesthetic, art, and the art world along with its politics. bell, i f*ck with you.
In the text, bell spoke about her upbringing within black southern culture and how working class black Americans unintentionally used photography to document their existence and lives. This caused me to remember my great-grandmother’s house. Granny’s house was FILLED TO THE BRIM with images of our immediate and extended family. She knew who was in every picture, who created that person or people, and where they were during present times. Without realizing it, and maybe she did have this realization, granny was in love with photography and the stories within the photos—this was certainly instilled in me. This is a tradition that must be continued—the documenting of people I love, encounter, and admire. When I am an old geezer my crib will most definitely be a museum of sorts.
Another topic bell touched on is luxury; what is luxury and what can be considered luxurious? She recalled a comparison of her southern grandparents who considered “simple” things the luxuries in life; gardening, fishing, taking a long walk with no destination—opposed to her mother’s desire and acquiring of expensive (unaffordable things, considering their income) items were attempts to fill a void of emotional and spiritual lack. I have seen similar tropes in my personal life. This led me to question my own conception of luxury. Is my relationship with the wanting of “nice” things appropriate and sustainable? If not, how can it be refined in such a way? Thoughts thoughts thoughts.
This book showed me a way to view, challenge, and appreciate my contemporaries! bell expressed with great detail exactly how she felt about several artists who she had relations with —what she thought their works “meant”. Relaying these observations and critiques to her contemporaries, it felt like she built a kinship with these artists. None of them worked within the same medium as her.
Artists this book put me onto:
- Andres Serrano (photographer)
- Lyle Ashton Harris (photographer)
- Margo Humphrey (printmaker)
- Carrie Mae Weems (photographer)
Over-arching “themes”:
-Transgressing status quo through art
-Education, relationships, and politics all inform art one way or another
-Importance of writing about [my] art
In the text, bell spoke about her upbringing within black southern culture and how working class black Americans unintentionally used photography to document their existence and lives. This caused me to remember my great-grandmother’s house. Granny’s house was FILLED TO THE BRIM with images of our immediate and extended family. She knew who was in every picture, who created that person or people, and where they were during present times. Without realizing it, and maybe she did have this realization, granny was in love with photography and the stories within the photos—this was certainly instilled in me. This is a tradition that must be continued—the documenting of people I love, encounter, and admire. When I am an old geezer my crib will most definitely be a museum of sorts.
Another topic bell touched on is luxury; what is luxury and what can be considered luxurious? She recalled a comparison of her southern grandparents who considered “simple” things the luxuries in life; gardening, fishing, taking a long walk with no destination—opposed to her mother’s desire and acquiring of expensive (unaffordable things, considering their income) items were attempts to fill a void of emotional and spiritual lack. I have seen similar tropes in my personal life. This led me to question my own conception of luxury. Is my relationship with the wanting of “nice” things appropriate and sustainable? If not, how can it be refined in such a way? Thoughts thoughts thoughts.
This book showed me a way to view, challenge, and appreciate my contemporaries! bell expressed with great detail exactly how she felt about several artists who she had relations with —what she thought their works “meant”. Relaying these observations and critiques to her contemporaries, it felt like she built a kinship with these artists. None of them worked within the same medium as her.
Artists this book put me onto:
- Andres Serrano (photographer)
- Lyle Ashton Harris (photographer)
- Margo Humphrey (printmaker)
- Carrie Mae Weems (photographer)
Over-arching “themes”:
-Transgressing status quo through art
-Education, relationships, and politics all inform art one way or another
-Importance of writing about [my] art
June 24, 2024
”overall, we have to think deeply about the cultural legacies that can sustain us, that can protect us against the cultural genocide that is daily destroying our past. we need to document the existence of living traditions, both past and present, that can heal our wounds and officer us a space of opportunity where our lives can be transformed.”
art’s always on my mind too. hooks is a very eloquent writer; concepts which seem complex she manages to communicate them with what feels like zero translation loss. i have to admit certain essays here had me rubbing my chin fr. very important discussions.
art’s always on my mind too. hooks is a very eloquent writer; concepts which seem complex she manages to communicate them with what feels like zero translation loss. i have to admit certain essays here had me rubbing my chin fr. very important discussions.
January 13, 2022
Wow bell hooks is a genius. She did such a beautiful job in every essay of connecting herself or other artists to broad sociological concepts, making the connection between sociology and art so vivid and obvious. Two of my favorite essays were women artists: the creative process and representing the male black body. Will be coming back to this one so happy to own it.
March 28, 2022
Wow. This work is ageless - something that can be referenced again, and again, and again. The subjects of race, spirituality, culture, geography, and human connection are just a few things that she reflects upon and contemplates eloquently in this work. She has so many references to previous works written and visual works by artists. Every artist needs this book. Every black artist needs this book.
November 18, 2025
love the way she interviews like an essay within itself
chapters I enjoyed in no particular order
- photography and black life
- basquiat
- art as the spirit moves us
- writing black art
- aesthetics in the ordinary
something unique about workers for artistic freedom
chapters I enjoyed in no particular order
- photography and black life
- basquiat
- art as the spirit moves us
- writing black art
- aesthetics in the ordinary
something unique about workers for artistic freedom
Read
January 8, 2024Läst i 🤍Bokens klubb🤍 dec/jan 23/24
November 25, 2025
Forever in awe of everything bell hooks was /wrote <3
March 5, 2025
This is a great book by a very talented, intelligent, and intellectual author. I can only hope to one day be as well versed as her in all things life. However, I will say that this is very much not a beginner book. I probably should have started with a more beginner art book and then worked my way up to visual politics.
December 12, 2022
this book is simply so amazing and bell hooks is such a good writer and i am thankful for her knowledge and understanding of bodies of individuals who have been oppressed in this dominant society. bodies 🤝 minds
February 25, 2020
"To transgress, I must move past boundaries..." ('Being the Subject of Art, 133). This is what bell hooks does in this 1995 collection of essays that is part historical survey, part critique, part manifesto. Artists (and artworks by) Alison Saar, Carrie Mae Weems, Emma Amos, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, and others are interviewed and interrogated in the best sense of the word. hooks amplifies intersectionality and lays bare the importance of "constructive critical interrogation" and how essential it is to creating a more authentic understanding. One can, in hooks's mind, celebrate contributions without having to offer wholesale acceptance, especially if there is an absence of understanding of one own's hegemonic role (her basic criticism of Robert Farris Thompson, for example). In essays like 'In our Glory: Photography and Black Life' she digs past both aesthetic and political dichotomies of "good" and "bad". She acknowledges that cultural critique is connected to capitalism and other societal structures:
Roughly at the center of the collection is hooks's most personal (in some ways) essay, 'Women Artists: The Creative Process'. It is this short essay where we learn most about hooks as an artist and writer, and where some of her boldest statements appear:
It is a more than fair question. And when we consider that this collection is from a quarter of a century ago, it is telling that I find these questions still very relevant--at least in my field of music history/musicology. I can't speak to the situation in art history, but I'd venture that not much has changed.
The only drawback of the book is that the reproduction of the artwork is not very good, and in some cases, the lack of color undermines some of hooks's most biting and salient points. The book warrants a new edition with color plates, but in lieu of that, the Internet does come to the rescue in most cases. It is worthwhile to take the time to look up the works featured in the book--some of them can be found on Phillips contemporary art and auction site, others on the artists's personal website (such as Carrie Mae Weems's personal website). Others, like Emma Amos's The Overseer, seem inaccessible. But hooks's prose throws many of these works into high relief through description and critique. But look for them---seek them out. Do the work. The rewards will be there.
This was an important book for me to read, especially because so many of its lessons are directly applicable to music history. It asked me to look at my own "wokeness" and wonder if I have ever been, as Emma Amos put it, "the white critic [who] feels safe focusing on the blackness and otherness of the artist instead of learning to look at the art" ('Straighten up and fly right: Talking Art with Emma Amos,' 188). How much has identity politics shaped by own understanding of music? Am I working against silence and erasure? I'm not sure. But I do know that spending time with these essays has helped me consider the boundaries that I have yet to transgress.
Certainly a distinction must be made between having access to art and being willing to engage the visual on an experiential level--to be moved and touched be art. Many of us see art every day without allowing it to be anything more than decorative. The way art moves in the marketplace also changes our relationship to it. Often individuals who collect art spend more time engaged with issues of market value rather than experiencing the visual. ('Critical Genealogies: Writing Black Art', 108)
Roughly at the center of the collection is hooks's most personal (in some ways) essay, 'Women Artists: The Creative Process'. It is this short essay where we learn most about hooks as an artist and writer, and where some of her boldest statements appear:
Women have yet to create the context, both politically and socially, where our understanding of the politics of difference not only transforms our individual lives (and we have yet to really speak about those transformations) but also alters how we work with others in public, in institutions, in galleries, etc. For example: When will white female art historians and cultural critics who structure their careers focusing on work by women and men of color share how this cultural practice changes who they are in the world in a way that extends beyond the making of individual professional success? (131).
It is a more than fair question. And when we consider that this collection is from a quarter of a century ago, it is telling that I find these questions still very relevant--at least in my field of music history/musicology. I can't speak to the situation in art history, but I'd venture that not much has changed.
The only drawback of the book is that the reproduction of the artwork is not very good, and in some cases, the lack of color undermines some of hooks's most biting and salient points. The book warrants a new edition with color plates, but in lieu of that, the Internet does come to the rescue in most cases. It is worthwhile to take the time to look up the works featured in the book--some of them can be found on Phillips contemporary art and auction site, others on the artists's personal website (such as Carrie Mae Weems's personal website). Others, like Emma Amos's The Overseer, seem inaccessible. But hooks's prose throws many of these works into high relief through description and critique. But look for them---seek them out. Do the work. The rewards will be there.
This was an important book for me to read, especially because so many of its lessons are directly applicable to music history. It asked me to look at my own "wokeness" and wonder if I have ever been, as Emma Amos put it, "the white critic [who] feels safe focusing on the blackness and otherness of the artist instead of learning to look at the art" ('Straighten up and fly right: Talking Art with Emma Amos,' 188). How much has identity politics shaped by own understanding of music? Am I working against silence and erasure? I'm not sure. But I do know that spending time with these essays has helped me consider the boundaries that I have yet to transgress.
June 28, 2024
“i am a girl who dreams of leisure, always have. reverie has always been necessary to my existence. i have needed long hours where i am stretched out, wearing silks, satins, and cashmeres, just alone with myself, embraced by the beauty around me. i have always been a girl for fibers, for textiles, and for the feel of comforting cloth against my skin. when i have adorned myself just so, i am ready for the awesome task of just lingering, spending uninterrupted time with my thoughts, dreams, and intense yearnings, often the kind that, like unrequited love, go unfulfilled.”
UH YEAH spoken like a true princess fr !!
UH YEAH spoken like a true princess fr !!
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