Curio: The Art of Kadir Nelson
Tuesday, June 16, 2020 at 7:30PM Curated by Nathaniel R
Since we rebooted Alexa's old series Curio we've been focusing on specific movies or themes but this week we want to spotlight a famous artist who is getting another well-earned round of attention at the moment, with big magazine covers celebrating the Black Lives Matter movement for both The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. His name is Kadir Nelson. The 46 year old painter, who's won numerous awards in his career has done album covers, stamps, book covers, magazine illustration, and children's books. He sells limited edition lithographs, prints, and autographed books at his shop but you can also purchase his books at Amazon and other retailers at regular prices if you don't have a big budget for art.
His art focuses on African-American history but he doesn't do much movie-related art. That said he did work on two movies, Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997) and the animated feature Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) early in his career. We scoured his Instagram for a few movie/tv related pieces after the jump...
Here's his cover of Spike Lee's impishly named children's book "please, baby, please" -- for those who don't remember the line is lifted directly from the randy sexcapades of She's Gotta Have It! (1986), Spike's debut joint, which is decidedly not for children.
Here's the artist at work on a Miles Morales Spider-Man painting
An official portrait of political trailblazer Shirley Chisholm. Chisholm was recently portrayed by Uzo Aduba in Mrs America and at one point Viola Davis was going to star in a biopic but who knows if that's still on given the usual chaos of Hollywood PLUS Covid-19 wreaking havoc with movies in all stages of development and with star schedules, too.
A Josephine Baker piece called "Forbidden Fruit"
Here's a cheekily titled Jimmie Walker Good Times painting "L'Artist Monsieur Dynomite"
All artists eventually do something Star Wars related, it seems, so here's his take on Chewbacca!
A Michael Jackson mural
This is his cover for a 50th anniversary edition of the book Sounder (which of course became an Oscar-nominated 1972 film).
And a New Yorker* cover of Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, who is getting not one but to bios in the next 12 months or so: the feature film Respect starring Jennifer Hudson and the miniseries Genius: Areta Franklin starring Cynthia Erivo.
* The New Yorker frequently employs him as a cover artist so that's where we first began to see his work.
Reader Comments (2)
Really beautiful work. I was gonna say it reminded me of the paintings from the Good Times credits and then I kept scrolling only to see his painting of JJ! lol
Oh, I like that Miles Morales portrait.