Charles Gaines

Alongside his career as an artist, Charles Gaines has engaged deeply with the history of aesthetics, philosophy, and politics through parallel writing and teaching practices for over half a century. This edited volume brings together more than twenty-five of the artist’s writings, including several new pieces penned especially for this publication or newly revised for publication from decades-old notes and manuscripts. Critical essays and lectures, from his influential career as a member of the faculty at CalArts set out Gaines’s thinking about topics including art and philosophy, reality and representation, while other texts show a lighter side to his artistic and conceptual commitments. Complementing these writings are a selection of illuminating interviews with cultural voices including Rashid Johnson, Kerry James Marshall, and Fred Moten, among others. Edited by curator Kate Fowle, 'Charles Gaines: Content and Form' is essential reading not only for followers of Gaines’s work but for anyone interested in thinking about and around art.

Acclaimed sporting and adventure writer Charles Gaines has spent much of his life on the water, around the world, fishing rod in hand, angling for trout, redfish, salmon, bonefish, bass, marlin, tuna, and practically everything else that swims. Just about any place where there's water to fish and eccentrics to keep him company, Gaines has been. The Next Valley Over, a collection of his best writing on fishing from his long and storied career, is culled from the pages of Men's Journal, Forbes, and Sports Afield, among other publications, and ultimately is about the heart of the sport. While his stories are lined with the accoutrement of angling--the art of technique, the equipment, the lodges, the fish themselves--they're really about why we love to fish and what it means to our culture. As Thoreau once said: ? Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” What ?they are after” is what Charles is curious about, and he has devoted the better part of his life and sanity to coming up with answers. Starting and ending at the majestic Lake Tadpole in St. Clair County, Alabama, where Gaines’s love of fishing was initially sparked, the Next Valley Over chronicles exploits in exotic locations with eccentric characters. In the process of his quest of nearly every species known to man, Gaines explores what we are really searching for when we fish.

The most comprehensive book yet on this inspired, inventive chronicler of the African-American experience Alabama-born, Chicago-based Kerry James Marshall is one of the most exciting artists working today. Critically and commercially acclaimed, the painter is known for his representation of the history of African-American identity in Western art. Conversant with a wide typology of styles, subjects, and techniques, from abstraction to realism and comics, Marshall synthesizes different traditions and genres in his work while seeking to counter stereotypical depictions of black people in society. This is the most comprehensive overview available of his remarkable career.