Contextures

A facsimile of the Just Above Midtown 1978 exhibition catalog that disrupted the white-dominated canon of postwar abstract art

Originally published in 1978 alongside an exhibition at the legendary Just Above Midtown gallery, Contextures was the first of its kind. More textbook than traditional catalog, the volume realized the vital mission of situating Black artists within the still-prevalent, white-dominated canon of postwar abstract art. Contextures not only provides an extensive history of Black artists working in abstraction from 1945 to 1978, but it also articulates the then newly emerging movement of Black Conceptual Art in the 1970s. Despite its historical importance and visionary scholarship, it was originally produced in a limited run of just a few hundred copies by the gallery and remains rare and largely unknown.
The publication contains extensive writing by editors Linda Goode Bryant and Marcy S. Philips, drawn from interviews with the featured artists, as well as 58 black-and-white and 16 color images documenting the work of 25 artists, including Frank Bowling, Ed Clark, David Hammons, Suzanne Jackson and Betye Saar. This new edition is produced in facsimile form and features a newly commissioned afterword by Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, curator of the exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.