POPE L., William
Black People Are Cropped – Skin Set Drawings 1997-2011

“When Pope.L shakes his head he makes drawings that keep him from laugh-crying to death,” writes Helen Molesworth about William Pope.L’s Skin Set Drawings. Made with very low-key materials, this extended corpus of drawings deals with the absurdities and perversities of intentional language, especially racist language and language associated with categorizing and naming color. “Black People Are Taut,” “Brown People Are The Green Ray,” “Blue People Are What We Do To Homosexuals,” “French People And Roma,” “Purple People Are The Perfect Cone For The King Not His Body,” “Red People Are The Niggerss Of The Canyon” are some examples of this on-going series made by the self-proclaimed “friendliest black artist in America.”

The book offers a selection of drawings, made between 1997 and 2009, some sketches and two critical texts by artist and writer Iain Kerr, and curator Helen Molesworth, as well as one of the artist’s own texts. [publishers’ note]

Published by JRP|Ringier, 2012
Artists' Books