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Two New Books by Art, Art History & Visual Studies Faculty

Published By Duke Arts / published on: November 15, 2020

New books by Richard Powell and Tom Rankin are available at independent Durham businesses—just in case you're beginning to think about holiday shopping.

Richard J. Powell, Going There: Black Visual Satire (Yale University Press, 2020)

In this groundbreaking study, Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History, investigates the visual forms of satire produced by Black artists in 20th- and 21st-century America. Underscoring the historical use of visual satire as antiracist dissent and introspective critique, Powell argues that it has a distinctly African American lineage. Taking on some of the most controversial works of the past century—in all their complexity, humor, and provocation—Powell raises important questions about the social power of art.

Read Powell’s LA Times Op-Ed: “Quaker Oats may ‘bury’ Aunt Jemima, but her image will live on in powerful and subversive works of art” (Jun 19, 2020)

Tom Rankin and Jill McCorkle, Goat Light (Horse & Buggy Press, 2021)

Goat Light provides focused reflections by Tom Rankin and Jill McCorkle upon their home and farm northwest of Hillsborough in rural Orange County, an oasis of beauty quietly tucked away from the increasingly frenetic pace of the Triangle region. Rankin is professor of the practice of art and director of the Master in Fine Arts: Experimental and Documentary Art.

The 9 x 10 inch, 96-page book weaves together many layers, including black and white images made by Rankin with large- and medium-format view cameras and lovingly brought to life in his wet darkroom; digital color cell phone pictures taken on the move by Rankin over the past decade; and essays by both McCorkle and Rankin about life with the collection of animals that populate their land along the Eno River. The beauty of the Piedmont landscape is the underlying constant as times, lives, and light change through the seasons and over the years.

Goat Light is published in an edition of 750 sewn copies, offset printed in full color on 120lb uncoated text weight paper, with covers printed on a hand-fed, hand-cranked letterpress at the Horse & Buggy Press studio.

Listen to Rankin’s interview with the Southern Foodways Alliance: “Goat is the Future” (Oct 29, 2020)