chapter leads readers through the unique experience of the art and ends with a companion guide which focuses on questions to ask, terms to remember and a reminder that readers should think and feel for themselves./PH3In each chapter:/H3ULLIThe Tool Kit/LILIA glossary of everything the reader needs to know about a particular art form/LILIStyle Guide/LILIImportant styles or principal artists/LILIStep-by-step directions to guide the reader through the experience of an art/LILIA Companion to the Art/LI/ULPI remember beginning to play basketball at age eight, a game I still play twice a week, rickety knees and all. My dad handed me a basketball and told me to throw it as high as I could against the garage wall. He wanted to see if I could reach the ten-foot rim. I must have done okay, because he went right out to dig the post-holes in the backyard for a basketball goal. I played my best games on that goal in the Winter moonlight, dribbling on a frozen mud court./PPThink of this handbook as the garage wall and postholes for a different game—a lifelong enjoyment of the arts. It's easy for folks to think they don't measure up to high culture. They're intimidated by the orchestra in white tie and tails, or the hallowed silence of a museum. They're puzzled by the painting they see on the walls or by the drama where nothing seemed to happen. And opera—isn't that fat ladies singing?/PPIf it's confidence you lack, this handbook offers a gentle push through the door of that museum, theater, or concert hall. Once your fanny's in a seat at the Met or you're wandering the Louvre, this guide will deepen your experience of the moment. It teaches you to observe a?Р (less)

power and joy of being an artist. We can make it come true. Or look true."--Faith Ringgold, in a 1992 interviewThis catalog is the first book-length publication devoted to the exquisite story quilts of contemporary artist Faith Ringgold. Combining painted images, handwritten texts, and quilting techniques, Ringgold weaves together modernist painting; feminist critique; postmodernist strategies of appropriation, parody, and montage; and personal memoir in a remarkable synthesis that takes on European modernism, African American folk art, and the "black aesthetic" of the 1960s and 1970s. The catalog accompanies an exhibition of The French Collection and The American Collection, a series of story quilts Ringgold has produced since 1990. Catalog essays include an examination of Ringgold's stylistic development through the 1960s and 1970s, an exploration of the social and political aspects of the story quilts, and a recollection by the artist's daughter, writer Michele Wallace.Ringgold has adapted the tradition of the American slave quilt to create a world in which African Americans and women dominate, where history is not only questioned but also reinvented. The titles of the quilts in Ringgold's French Collection and American Collection suggest her subject range and daring: Jo Baker's Birthday Party; Dinner at Gertrude Stein's; A Portrait of Aunt Jemima; Tubman, Douglass, and Truth: Wanted Dead or Alive are examples. Faith Ringgold's broad audience of admirers (her books for children have won Caldecott and New York Times book illustration honors) will welcome Dancing at the Louvre. Finally there is a book that displays her artistic achievements and provides a full discussion of her importance within contemporary art.  (less)