Books by Christopher Stackhouse
Kara Walker: Dust Jackets for the Niggerati
by James Hannaham, Hilton Als, Christopher Stackhouse
African-American artist Kara Walker (born 1969) has been acclaimed internationally for her candid investigations of race, sexuality and violence through the lens of reconceived historical tropes. She had her first solo show at The Drawing Center in New York City in 1994 and, at the age of 28 in 1997, was one of the youngest people to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. This publication documents Dust Jackets for the Niggerati--and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings Submitted Ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker, a major series of graphite drawings and hand-printed texts on paper that grew out of Walker’s attempts to understand how interpersonal and geopolitical powers are asserted through the lives of individuals. In scenes that range from the grotesque to the humorous to the tragic, these works vividly and powerfully explore the themes of transition and migration that run through the African-American experience. The accompanying essays take us through Walker’s saga of American experience--the dual streams of renewal and destruction that trace parallel lines through the last century’s rapid urbanization and the complementary emergence of a “New Negro” identity. Fully illustrated with reproductions of the entire series, and designed by award-winning design studio CoMa with Walker’s close collaboration, Dust Jackets for the Niggerati represents a major contribution to the career of one of our most significant and complex contemporary artists.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat: Xerox
by Dieter Buchhart, Christopher Stackhouse, Eric Robertson
Copy, paste: Basquiat's collaged Xerox paintings presage today's sampling aesthetics
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Xerox provides the first concentrated examination of the extraordinary body of work that the artist created using Xerox copies as his principal medium and compositional focal point. These immersive, collaged Xerox paintings epitomize Basquiat’s extraordinary instinct for visual language. Their raw, allover compositions incorporate recycled and transformed signs and markings from the artist’s everyday experiences, including motifs from his earlier artworks.
The intricate web of content in this series presages the copy-paste sampling characteristic of the subsequent internet and post-internet generations, positioning Basquiat as a pioneer of the pre-digital age.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–88) grew up in Brooklyn. Notoriety came early, from his street paintings made under the tag SAMO. Later he stormed the gallery world, and became an icon of New York's vibrant early-’80s downtown scene, a friend to and collaborator with Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente, and the cover boy for a 1985 New York Times Magazine story on the new art market. He died following a heroin overdose at 27.
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