Amy Sherald monograph explores artistic influences and biography through essays and interview

A new monograph titled 'Amy Sherald: The World We Make' accompanies the artist's Hauser & Wirth exhibition, presenting the first widely available book on her work. Art historian Jenni Sorkin opens the volume by positioning Sherald's frank, front-facing portraits of Black subjects within an art-historical lineage that includes Romaine Brooks, Ansel Adams, and Laura Wheeler Waring. Sorkin notes Sherald's signature use of greyscale for Black skin and suggests her 2015 painting 'The Bathers' challenges the tradition of French modernists like Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Henri Matisse. Academic Kevin Quashie contributes an essay analyzing desire, ideology, and 'mere beauty' in Sherald's practice, with the artist later crediting him as inspiration for her greyscale palette. An interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates becomes a conversation that reveals biographical details central to understanding Sherald's work, including her heart transplant, the role of faith, and the impact of painting Michelle Obama's portrait in 2017. Coates observes Sherald's connection to nineteenth-century photography, noting how it underscores the classic nature of her approach. Published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, the hardcover book retails for US$55 and features strong illustrations alongside textual content that collectively seeks to bridge tradition and contemporary sensibility.