cover image Wake Up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists

Wake Up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists

Tonya Bolden. ABRAMS, $24.95 (128pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-4527-2

Wake Up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists by Tonya Bolden offers a thorough look into the lives of black artists. She begins with artists such as sculptor Edmonia Lewis and painter Edward Mitchell Bannister and chronicles the racism and discrimination these and later artists faced-forces that often inspired visually arresting works, such as Norman Lewis's Evening Rendezvous (1962), a chilling, abstract portrayal of Ku Klux Klan activity in a red, white and blue palette.