This is the first monograph on Baltimore artist Amy Sherald (born 1973), and coincides with her first solo museum show at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Sherald, best known for her stunning and iconic portrait of Michelle Obama, makes paintings of African Americans she encounters on the street, in the grocery store or on the bus. “When I choose my models,” the artist has said, “it’s something that only I can see in that person, in their face and their eyes, that’s so captivating about them.” Through these vibrant, sometimes fantastical portraits, Sherald captures the essence of her particular subjects while engaging in broader dialogues about the black experience, the performance of race and the historic lack of nonwhite representation in the Western art canon. Set against a monochrome background and divorced of context, time and place, the life-sized, frontal figures are dressed in costumes and carry objects that indicate their daily activities or imagined or perceived selves. Although each subject―painted with sober realism―bears clear resemblance to the sitter, Sherald adds the props and clothing, conjuring the figure’s possible alternate self, and hinting at the complexity and performance of identity and race.

Amy Sherald

Arts & Photography

Christovale, Erin

History & Criticism

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Explore the sculpture and installation work of artist Lauren Halsey, winner of the coveted Mohn Award in 2018. Every two years, on the occasion of the Made in L.A. biennial, the Hammer Museum presents the Mohn Award to an artist whose work in the exhibition is exceptional. The 2018 winner was Lauren Halsey for her piece The Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project (Prototype Architecture), a large structure made of plywood and gypsum and covered in bas-relief carvings. These carvings--depicting graffiti, community members, and other elements significant to South Central Los Angeles where Halsey grew up--evoke the hieroglyphs found on Egyptian temples. This book also explores a range of Halsey's earlier work and includes original texts by poet and performer Douglas Kearney, curator Anne Ellegood, as well as an interview between the artist and curator Erin Christovale. Published with the Hammer Museum

Lauren Halsey: Mohn Award 2018

Ellegood, Anne

Individual Artists

Prestel

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Books by Christovale, Erin