A massive compendium on the multimedia art of Rashid Johnson, tackling themes of Black history, literature, philosophy and material culture Rashid Johnson (born 1977) is renowned for challenging the assumptions often present in collective notions of Blackness. Based in New York, Johnson is among an influential group of American artists whose work employs a wide range of materials and images to explore themes of art history, literature, philosophy, and personal and cultural identity. After beginning his career working primarily in photography, Johnson has expanded into a variety of mediums, including text work, sculptural objects, installation, painting, drawing, collage, film, performance and choreography. Drawing on a dizzying array of historical, cultural, literary and musical references, Johnson ultimately invites audiences to find connections to their own lives. Rashid Johnson: The Hikers presents works from his highly acclaimed shows at the Aspen Art Museum, Museo Tamayo and Hauser & Wirth. This dynamic and unprecedented collection of his work features a conversation between Rashid Johnson and choreographer Claudia Schreier, as well as essays by curators Heidi Zuckerman and Manuela Moscoso.

Jellybeans Morning, Noon and Night is about two brothers who share a love of jellybeans! No matter what flavor, those boys just love jellybeans-all of them. If they had it their way, they would eat jellybeans for breakfast, jellybeans for lunch, and jellybeans for dinner. And that's exactly what they plan to do! It is a brilliant plan, isn't it? Written by Maggie Pajak and illustrated by Marni Backer, Jellybeans Morning Noon & Night is a delicious story filled with a sweet lesson of moderation and a savory message to parents to let your kids (sometimes) figure things out on their own. But more importantly, it is sprinkled with a few giggle-filled moments that both you and your kids will enjoy.

Universally accessible and employing common visual tropes such as the monochrome and the grid, Johnson's work is also self-referential, making specific allusion to his upbringing in Chicago and the Afro-centric values of his parents. In Rashid Johnson: Anxious Men, the artist creates a site-specific installation in the Drawing Room gallery. The core of the exhibition is a new series of black-soap-and-wax-on-tile portraits that Johnson calls his "anxious men." Executed by digging into a waxy surface, they enact a kind of drawing through erasure and represent the first time Johnson has worked figuratively outside of photography or film, and on such a small scale. Whereas Johnson's previous work has taken a more cerebral approach to questions of race and political identity, the drawn portraits confront the viewer with a visceral immediacy. The portraits are set within a multi-sensory environment that includes wallpaper featuring a photograph of the artist's father from the year Johnson was born, and an audio sound track comprised of Melvin Van Peebles's "Love, That's America," a song that originally appeared in Peebles's 1970 film Watermelon Man and that was recently pressed into service by the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this way, the exhibition, documented in this volume, creates an immersive space that implicates not only the artist but also the viewer in its interrogation of selfhood and identity.

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson entered the u.s. prison system over 20 years ago, one of countless young Black men consigned to lifelong incarceration by the post-civil right policies of anti-Black genocide. While behind bars, Rashid encountered the ideas of revolutionary Black nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, and of the people and organizations who have used and developed these ideas in previous generations, foremost amongst these being the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Along with other Black/New Afrikan prisoners, Rashid helped found the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, while using both his artwork and his political writings as avenues to advance the cause of liberation for all. Here, collected in book form for the first time, are Rashid's core writings as Minister of Defense of the NABPP-PC. Subjects addressed include the differences between anarchism and Marxism-Leninsm, the legacy of the Black Panther Party, the timeliness of Huey P. Newton's concept of revolutionary intercommunalism, the science of dialictical and historical materialsm, the practice of democratic centralism, as well as current events ranging from u.s. imperialist designs in Africa to national oppression of New Afrikans within u.s. borders. And much more.

Correspondence between two imprisoned Black revolutionaries, smuggled out from behind the walls.

Published in an edition of 800 copies by the South London Gallery, this catalogue was produced on the occasion of Rashid Johnson's exhibition, Shelter, 28 September 2012 - 25 November 2012.For his first solo exhibition in London, New York-based artist Rashid Johnsonpresents an entirely new body of work in the South London Gallery's main space. Inspired by the idea of an imagined society in which psychotherapy is a freely available drop-in service, Johnson's installation of large-scale paintings, hanging plants, Persian rugs and four wooden day beds questions established definitions of the art object and its limitations, as well as therelationship between individual and shared cultural experience. The book features an essay by Tom Morton.

This publication, the first comprehensive monograph on the paintings of Purvis Young (1943-2010), collects 254 works by the Miami-born African American artist known for his lyrical depictions of current and historical events. A self-educated artist who began drawing while incarcerated as a teenager, Young became widely known in Florida in the early 1970s with his large-scale murals consisting of paintings on scrap wood, metal and book pages, which he nailed to the walls of abandoned buildings in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami's downtown. Surveying paintings from throughout his career, the book is thematically arranged in 14 chapters illustrating various stages of life and concerns present in Young's work. The book also includes an interview with Young conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2005, along with essays by Rashid Johnson, Gean Moreno, Franklin Sirmans, César Trasobares and Barbara N. Young.