Richard J. Powell asks what happens when Black artists are seen not only for what they depict, but for how they use color in his latest book “Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect.”
Richard J. Powell Reconsiders Black Art
“If you had a choice of colors, which one would you choose, my brothers?”
Richard J. Powell was a high school student in Chicago when he first heard singer Curtis Mayfield pose that question over the airwaves. “At the time, I was taken aback by the opening lines,” Powell confesses. “Not only was I without an answer, but as a budding visual artist, I was too in love with the entire spectrum to pick just one color.”
But the earworm stayed, and decades later became the catalyst for Powell’s research on a largely overlooked area of art history and color theory: What happens when Black artists are seen not only for what they depict, but for how they use color? That question ultimately shaped more than a decade of research into color, perception and Black art — building the foundation for his latest book, “Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect.”
Following the question
In 2015, the John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History was preparing a lecture on Jacob Lawrence. While Lawrence is celebrated for his paintings that tell the stories of Black life in America, Powell wondered what could emerge if viewers considered Lawrence as a storyteller and a colorist.
A six-part lecture series with the National Gallery of Art gave Powell an opportunity to expand his research and examine how Black artists can be discussed through their formal choices as well as their subject matter. A Metropolitan Museum of Art residency and a National Humanities Center fellowship followed, providing the time and resources needed to develop a manuscript that eventually became “Colorstruck!”
“Many of the artists included in the book are seldom talked about in the context of color choices,” Powell says. “They’re usually discussed through biography or the narratives that shape the work, but I wanted to look more closely at their formal choices and what color itself can communicate alongside — and sometimes beneath — the narrative.”
That distinction is at the heart of the book, with Powell arguing that color is not simply a matter of picking one over another. The choices a painter makes can convey identity, establish relationships between forms, create visual energy and affect viewers in ways they may not consciously recognize. Powell stresses that color functions formally within a painting while also carrying social and cultural associations well beyond the canvas.
“We think we know what ‘color’ means,” Powell says, “but as I began to unpack all the possibilities of what I meant when I refer to color — an artist’s tool or medium of expression, a characteristic or identificatory attribute — I realized that the term carried much more weight.”
The power of color
The book puts that realization into practice through five chapters that place specific colors in conversations with artists known for using them in their palettes.
The book opens with Jacob Lawrence and viridian, a blue-green hue that Powell discovered received comparatively little attention despite its importance in several of Lawrence’s works. The chapter also brings Lawrence into conversation with Josef Albers, the influential color theorist who invited the artist to Black Mountain College in the 1940s.
From there, a chapter on the yellow-orange glow includes artists such as Alma Thomas and Malcolm Bailey, with Powell examining the ways artists used the color to suggest light, energy, movement, the sun and even solar power.
A single chapter devoted to red and blue brings together artists like Raymond Saunders, Sam Gilliam and Charles Alston, artists whose work demonstrates the expressive possibilities of the two colors while challenging assumptions about what Black art is expected to address.
The penultimate chapter explores the relationship between color, painting and writing through works by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Haitian artist Hervé Télémaque. The book ends with brown, a color Powell deliberately treats as more than a descriptor of skin. Through artists including Barkley L. Hendricks, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and William Henry Johnson, he considers brown as a formal element with its own visual properties and expressive possibilities.
That distinction is important to Powell because Black artists are frequently approached through subject matter first. “A viewer may recognize a Black figure, a historical reference or a depiction of a familiar community and assume they have understood the work,” he says. “They don’t realize that there’s so more.”
His point is not that viewers should ignore the social or historical dimensions of Black art. Instead, those dimensions are part of the analysis where formal choices like color, composition, surface, line and materials carry meaning as well.
This is what makes “Colorstruck!” more than a study of pigments and hues. By following color across generations of Black artists, Powell shows how the formal element of color choice can open onto questions of identity, history, perception, emotion and artistic freedom without being reduced to any one of them. While color theory still matters, it does not have to be the final word.
Powell’s goal isn’t to teach readers which pigments and hues to see, but to encourage us to look again and notice what we missed the first time — to see color not just as something on the canvas but as something that can stop us in our tracks.
“I hope the book leaves people colorstruck.”
Susan and Barkley L. Hendricks Artist Lecture & Book Signing
The Nasher Museum of Art will present its inaugural Susan and Barkley L. Hendricks Artist Lecture Series on October 1 at 6:00pm, where celebrated artist Mickalene Thomas will be in conversation with Richard J. Powell. Designed to foster dialogue between artists, scholars and the public, the annual series brings influential contemporary artists to campus to discuss their work and its impact on culture and society.
While the event is sold out, it will be live streamed with no registration required. The link will be posted on the Nasher's website and social media on October 1.
