Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. - book reviews

Art in America, Dec, 1995 by Brian Wallis

What appeals to me about hooks's account is not its nostalgic folksiness but its recognition of the deeply political implications of such forms of submerged vernacular culture. In her writings on art, hooks seems to be trying to tie together, however subjectively, the strands of a faintly remembered, almost secret history of black culture. Her conversations with like-minded artists, her intense way of looking at images and her combative readings of books by other critics--all of these contribute to the crazy quilt of essays that make up Art on My Mind, and all are efforts to make sense of fragments. Her book is not a search for great black artist heroes; it is, rather, a guide to the ways that political meaning and esthetic pleasure may be discovered, bound together, in many works by contemporary artists of color. For hooks, postmodern art works are tools that can help us perceive disjointed political patterns in the esthetics of the ordinary.

Author: Brian Wallis is a contrbuting editor of Art in America. He is coeditor of Constructing Masculinity (Routledge, 1995).