Colorstruck! by Dr. Richard Powell: Book Talk & Signing

Sep 10 • Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture

6:30pm - 8:30pm

Join us with Dr. Richard Powell, the author of Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect, for an engaging book talk about his latest release. Dr. Powell's presentation will include live readings of excerpts from his book and powerful images & videos to expand upon its cultural context. After the presentation, guests will have the opportunity to meet Dr. Powell and purchase signed copies of his book.

In this stunning book, Richard Powell draws on the concept of “colorstruck,” a twentieth-century slang term describing prejudice toward people with darker skin complexions, to provide a new history of Black American art. Powell charts the dynamics of paint and pigment in the works of artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, Raymond Saunders, Sam Gilliam, Hervé Télémaque, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Nina Chanel Abney, and Henry Taylor. Using blue, green, yellow, orange, black, red, brown, and their combinations, he considers the historical and cultural contexts in which these colors unleash their visual magic and shows how the artists’ vibrant palettes collide with undercurrents of race in unanticipated and thought-provoking ways. Powell shares compelling insights into the powerful chromatic forces manifested through artists’ actions and viewers’ reactions.