Recently, a number of cutting edge African American artists have investigated issues of race and American identity in their work, relying on the use of historical source material and the subversion of archaic media. This scrutiny of little known, yet uncannily familiar, racialized imagery by contemporary artists has created a renewed interest in the politics of nineteenth-century American art and the role of race in the visual discourse. Portraits of a People looks critically at images made of and by African Americans, extending back to the late 1700s when a portrait of African-born poet Phillis Wheatley was drawn by her friend, the slave Scipio Moorhead. From the American Revolution until the Civil War and on into the Gilded Age, American artists created dynamic images of black sitters. In their effort to create enduring symbols of self-possessed identity, many of these portraits provide a window into cultural stereotypes and practices. For example, while some of these pictures were undoubtedly of distinct, named individuals, many are now known by titles that reference only generalized types, such as Joshua Johnston's painting Portrait of a Man, c. 1805–10, or the silhouette inscribed "Mr. Shaw's blackman," cut around 1802 by the manumitted slave Moses Williams. By the middle of the nineteenth century, photography began to offer black sitters an affordable and accessible way to fashion an individual identity and sometimes obtain financial support, as in the case of the numerous cartes-de-visites produced during the 1860s and '70s that bear the image of the feminist activist Sojourner Truth above the text, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance." Portraits of a People features colour reproductions of over 100 important portraits in various media, ranging from paintings, photographs, and silhouettes to book frontispieces and popular prints. Essays by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw consider silhouettes and African American identity in the early republic, photography and the black presence in the public sphere after the Civil War, and portrait painting and social fluidity among middle-class African American artists and sitters. This landmark publication will change the way that we view the images of blacks in the nineteenth century.

Portraits of Imaginary People highlights a series of portraits produced by artist Mike Tyka utilizing a generative adversarial network (GAN).

Stories that explore the tragicomic aspects of romantic love.

`A boundary-breaking book, mobilizing art for philosophical purposes with exciting and enlightening results.' Ivan Gaskell, Harvard University --

A highly original history of American portraiture that places the experiences of enslaved people at its center This timely and eloquent book tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Jennifer Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured the portrait's importance as a site of resistance. Moving from the wharves of colonial Rhode Island to antebellum Louisiana plantations to South Carolina townhouses during the Civil War, the book illuminates how enslaved people's relationships with portraits also shaped the trajectory of African American art post-emancipation. Van Horn asserts that Black creativity, subjecthood, viewership, and iconoclasm constituted instances of everyday rebellion against systemic oppression. Portraits of Resistance is not only a significant intervention in the fields of American art and history but also an important contribution to the reexamination of racial constructs on which American culture was built.

This star-studded tribute to the kings and queens of comedy draws together such legendary names as Steve Martin, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais, and many more. Granted extraordinary access, photographer Matt Hoyle has captured his subjects in portraits that are works of art in themselves—by turns zany and deadpan, laugh-out-loud and contemplative. Accompanying them are first-person reflections from each of the comedians on life and laughter that always cut straight to the heart of comedy: it's funny because it's true. Page after sidesplitting page in Comic Genius offers prose as engaging as each portrait is memorable. Here, in one handsome package, is the gift of laughter itself. Comic Genius is proud to support Save The Children.

"Eight internationally acclaimed authors have invented imaginary biographies and character sketches based on fourteen unidentified portraits... in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery."--Back cover.