Books by Jamillah James

Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art

by Thelma Golden, Thomas Lax, Antwaun Sargent, Jamillah James, Jessica Brown, Graham Boettcher, Connie H. Choi, Anthony Graham, Lauren Haynes, Hallie Ringle, Adeze Wilford, Gordon Dearborn Wilkins, Bernard Lumpkin

What’s new, now and next from contemporary Black artists
A New York Times 2020 holiday gift guide pick

This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support. But there has never been an opportunity to consider their acclaimed collection as a whole until now.

Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion), Young, Gifted and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, and establishment voices such as the New York Times are declaring that “it has become undeniable that African American artists are making much of the best American art today,” Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.

Young, Gifted and Black contextualizes artworks with contributions from artists, curators and other experts. It features a wide-ranging interview with Bernard Lumpkin and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and an in-depth essay by Antwaun Sargent situating Lumpkin in a long lineage of Black art patrons. A landmark publication, this book illustrates what it means (in the words of Nina Simone) to be young, gifted and Black in contemporary art.

Artists include: Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sadie Barnette, Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Bethany Collins, Noah Davis, Cy Gavin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Tomashi Jackson, Samuel Levi Jones, Deana Lawson, Norman Lewis, Eric N. Mack, Arcmanoro Niles, Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith, Chanel Thomas, Stacy Lynn Waddell, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Brenna Youngblood, and more.

Rebecca Morris 2001-2022

by Jamillah James

A survey for a long-term champion of abstraction

Published with Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Acclaimed American painter Rebecca Morris (born 1969) has long been celebrated for her juxtapositions of thin, matte washes of color with shimmering, metallic impasto. Her first major monograph coincides with a new survey exhibition traveling from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Teeming with opulently illustrated plates, the volume provides insight into Morris' practice through various vantage points, including texts from longtime collaborators of the artist and new voices alike. Topics include the historiography of color in Morris' paintings as well as art historical contexts for her work. An additional section of the book traces Morris' own photo documentation of her studios over the 21-year period. Today, Morris remains steadfast to an ethos of constant evolution and a rigorous commitment to experimentation in painting. As she wrote in a widely circulated manifesto from 2005: "Abstraction never left, motherfuckers."