Text by Jenni Sorkin, Kevin Quashie. Interview by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The long-awaited first major monograph on the iconic portraitist of Black Americans
This is the first comprehensive monograph on acclaimed painter Amy Sherald, whose distinctive style of simplified realist portraiture features African American subjects rendered against colorful monochrome backdrops or in everyday settings. Sherald rose to fame after being chosen by former first lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, in 2018, becoming the first African American woman to receive this honor. In addition to reproductions of Sherald’s recent works, the book—published to accompany her solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London in fall 2022—includes illustrations of earlier paintings, as well as an intimate glimpse into Sherald’s process and practice through a series of in-studio photographs. Newly commissioned texts include an art historical analysis of the artist’s work by Jenni Sorkin; a meditation on the politics and aesthetics of Sherald's portraiture by cultural scholar Kevin Quashie; and a conversation between Sherald and acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Amy Sherald was born in Georgia in 1973 and received her MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. She has been included in countless group shows at galleries and museums worldwide as well as the subject of solo exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, among others. Sherald lives in Baltimore and New Jersey.
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In contrast to Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic 1945 photograph, “V-J Day in Times Square,” Amy Sherald's “For love, and for country” (2022) “decisively queers the intimate pose, swapping out a straight, white couple in favor of two black males in uniform,” Jenni Sorkin writes. “Keenly political, Sherald’s painting exemplifies the era of military policy known as ‘open service,’ in which homosexuality is no longer treated as a crime, a shameful secret or a deficiency. Floating on a bright blue background, Sherald’s couple is the embodiment of the celebratory slogan ‘out, loud, and proud’—both for love, embedded in their own chemistry, seemingly oblivious to the external world, and for country, their patriotism embodied by the white-and-blue-striped sailor shirt, topped with a jaunty red scarf knotted at the throat.” In celebration of the national holiday, this painting is reproduced from the recent Hauser & Wirth monograph, The World We Make. continue to blog
Featured spreads are from new release Amy Sherald: The World We Make, the first major monograph on the renowned portraitist, who has said that her eyes "search for people who are and who have the kind of light that provides the present and the future with hope." Certainly, after the monumental challenges of the past few years—in America, and around the world—more of this direct, recognizable kind of hope is what we want and need. In his essay, In Praise of Mere Beauty, Kevin Quashie takes the impact of Sherald's work further: "Amy Sherald’s work insists on mere beauty, a quiet, pulsing, just-there beauty. In advancing this phrase, I write in acknowledgment of Sherald’s artistic fineness, to praise her virtuosic skill as well as to gesture toward the sheer impact of encountering frame after frame of blackness: mere beauty as a proxy toward mere being, which has its own politic. Indeed, the very idea of mere beauty as idiom for viewing blackness responds to the world’s incapacity to appreciate blackness exactly that way. For me, a black viewer, there is something magical enacted in looking at this mere beauty, where I am saturated by seeing and not seeing myself, this process of abstracting and of multiplying that is at play in all art, even as the terms of antiblackness would seek to reduce black art—and black encounters with black art—to a lesser intelligence. Again, Amy Sherald’s aesthetic is one of mere beauty—a dynamic ordinary rendering of an approximation of a moment of life, a capable quality of light for such rendering, an invitation to try to behold blackness presented in such exquisite color." continue to blog
In contrast to Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic 1945 photograph, “V-J Day in Times Square,” Amy Sherald's “For love, and for country” (2022) “decisively queers the intimate pose, swapping out a straight, white couple in favor of two black males in uniform,” Jenni Sorkin writes. “Keenly political, Sherald’s painting exemplifies the era of military policy known as ‘open service,’ in which homosexuality is no longer treated as a crime, a shameful secret or a deficiency. Floating on a bright blue background, Sherald’s couple is the embodiment of the celebratory slogan ‘out, loud, and proud’—both for love, embedded in their own chemistry, seemingly oblivious to the external world, and for country, their patriotism embodied by the white-and-blue-striped sailor shirt, topped with a jaunty red scarf knotted at the throat.” In celebration of the national holiday, this painting is reproduced from the recent Hauser & Wirth monograph, The World We Make. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 196 pgs / 106 color / 2 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $76 ISBN: 9783906915722 PUBLISHER: Hauser & Wirth Publishers AVAILABLE: 1/17/2023 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR ME
Published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers. Text by Jenni Sorkin, Kevin Quashie. Interview by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The long-awaited first major monograph on the iconic portraitist of Black Americans
This is the first comprehensive monograph on acclaimed painter Amy Sherald, whose distinctive style of simplified realist portraiture features African American subjects rendered against colorful monochrome backdrops or in everyday settings. Sherald rose to fame after being chosen by former first lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, in 2018, becoming the first African American woman to receive this honor. In addition to reproductions of Sherald’s recent works, the book—published to accompany her solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London in fall 2022—includes illustrations of earlier paintings, as well as an intimate glimpse into Sherald’s process and practice through a series of in-studio photographs. Newly commissioned texts include an art historical analysis of the artist’s work by Jenni Sorkin; a meditation on the politics and aesthetics of Sherald's portraiture by cultural scholar Kevin Quashie; and a conversation between Sherald and acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Amy Sherald was born in Georgia in 1973 and received her MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. She has been included in countless group shows at galleries and museums worldwide as well as the subject of solo exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, among others. Sherald lives in Baltimore and New Jersey.
