Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Colorstruck!: Painting, Pigment, Affect

Colorstruck!: Painting, Pigment, Affect

Powell, Richard J.

Hardcover

Black American HistoryAmerican Art - African American & BlackGeneral World History

Publisher Price: $65.00

ISBN10: 0691285160
ISBN13: 9780691285160
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Sep 1 2026
Pages: 280
Weight: 3.40
Height: 1.00 Width: 9.20 Depth: 11.30
Language: English

How Black painters use color to create meaning, provoke remembrance, stir emotion, and uplift the spirit

Color does more than capture a viewer's attention. It assaults one's equilibrium physically and psychologically. In this stunning book, Richard Powell draws on the concept of colorstruck, a twentieth-century slang term describing prejudice toward people with darker skin complexions, to provide a new history of Black American art.

Powell charts the dynamics of paint and pigment in the works of artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, Raymond Saunders, Sam Gilliam, Hervé Télémaque, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Nina Chanel Abney, and Henry Taylor. Using blue, green, yellow, orange, black, red, brown, and their combinations, he considers the historical and cultural contexts in which these colors unleash their visual magic and shows how the artists' vibrant palettes collide with undercurrents of race in unanticipated and thought-provoking ways. Powell shares compelling insights into the powerful chromatic forces manifested through artists' actions and viewers' reactions.

A landmark work by an acclaimed art historian, this richly illustrated book offers a dazzling look at the transformative use of color by some of today's most exciting painters, revealing how hue and pigmentation strike a chord for freedom and reclamation in life as well as art.

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

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Powell, Richard J.

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American Art - African American & Black

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