‘Colorstruck!’ Examines the Connection Between Race and Chromatic Expression

A nude Black woman lies on a stark white chaise, her head propped up by her thin arm. She’s surrounded by flat, abstracted color in the form of fruits and fabrics, and a glass coupe and bottle on a nearby table offer a clear, rather than refracted, view of the vibrant scene. Rendered in oil on burlap, the painting by William H. Johnson is commanding in its palette and subject matter and an exemplary work in a new book by art historian Richard J. Powell.

Forthcoming this fall from Princeton University Press, Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect delves into the ways that color and social, political, and cultural forces intersect in Black American art. Powell takes an expansive approach to each of the three topics—painting, pigment, and affect—and examines works by a wide group of artists, including Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, Lorna Simpson, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Nina Chanel Abney. His interest is in the dynamic interplay of paint and pigment and what the two reveal about both the artists and the viewers.

a stylized painted portrait of a nude Black woman — William H. Johnson, “Nude” (c. 1939), oil on burlap, 29 ¾ x 38 ¼ inches. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum and Art Resource

Sharing a root with words like awestruck or starstruck, colorstruck is a slang term that evolved from “a Black person who preferred associating with light-skinned Blacks or White people to anyone inordinately preoccupied with race,” Powell writes. The idea is largely associated with colorism, although in his view, it can also be applied to the ways we marvel at and can even be overwhelmingly affected by an artist’s palette. He adds:

What if a painter, like early Black modernist Willian H. Johnson, set aside the more pejorative insinuations in the idea of being colorstruck, and instead used the paint medium, an intense color palette, racial Blackness, and most important, his abstracting inclinations to produce an expressionistic, evocative, and disruptive work of art?

The book continues in this line of thinking as it connects what is often thought of as a universal concept—that color exists, and humans respond to certain hues in particular ways—and the distinct context of race in America. Richly illustrated with archival photographs and numerous artworks, the volume captures the relationship between the unique experience of an artist and her viewer and the broader powers that inform those dynamics.

Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect will be published in September, and you can pre-order your copy through Bookshop.

an abstract print — Hervé Télémaque, “Négrerie (Black cultural effects)” (1974), lithograph, 30 x 22 inches. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of Art Resource

an abstract painting of color fields — Alma Thomas, “The Eclipse” (1970), acrylic on canvas, 62 x 49 ¾ inches. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum and Art Resource

a small figure in white against a vast orange backdrop — Malcolm Bailey, “Untitled” (1972), cut and pasted paper and acrylic on Plexiglas, 36 x 36 inches. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of Art Resource

a painted portrait of a Black woman — Charles Alston, “Girl in a Red Dress” (1934), oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of Art Resource

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