A critical response to dialogues about producing, exhibiting and criticizing art and aesthetics at a time when the art world is locked in an analysis of identity politics. The book addresses the question of how art can be an empowering and revolutionary force within the black community.

"As erudite and sophisticated as hooks is, she is also eminently readable, even exhilarating." -Booklist In Art on My Mind, bell hooks, a leading cultural critic, responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting, and criticizing art and aesthetics in an art world increasingly concerned with identity politics. Always concerned with the liberatory black struggle, hooks positions her writings on visual politics within the ever-present question of how art can be an empowering and revolutionary force within the black community.

Praise for Art on My Mind:
“In an art world obsessed with identity politics, Art on My Mind is a long-overdue rescue of the liberating, rather than confining, power of art.”
—Paper Magazine

“Passionate and highly personal.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Sharp and persuasive.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“[Art on My Mind] is a guide to the ways that political meaning and esthetic pleasure may be discovered, bound together, in many works by contemporary artists of color.”
—Art America

“[hooks] brings a welcome clarity to such issues as received art and the development of a Western canon.”
—San Francisco Examiner