New Rolling Stone cover by Kadir Nelson:

[demmiblue]

Link to tweet

I just adore his art.

[demmiblue]

1. BTW, the photo on his easel/canvas is of "Liberty Leading the People":

Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple [la libɛʁte ɡidɑ̃ lə pœpl]) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman of the people with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept of Liberty leads a varied group of people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolour, which again became France's national flag after these events – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People

Edit: Whoops, I see that that this is mentioned in the tweet... I was too busy looking at the pictures!

[Glorfindel]

2. Very powerful! Thanks for sharing it, demmiblue

Many of us wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

[Alex4Martinez]

3. Positively powerful. Stepping up and into power, backed by thousands of all skin colors.

And, stepping into light from a smoky background.

A sea of humanity, irresistible in its magnitude and strength, provided we don't lose momentum.

K/R

[blaze]

4. Same artist did the new New Yorker (interactive) cover

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2020-06-22

[demmiblue]

5. Thanks!

I saw the cover, but didn't know there was an interactive version. He has done so many great New Yorker covers.

He is also a children's book illustrator.

[MLAA]

14. Wow, just wow. This piece defines the words Art History.

It’s really beyond my capabilities to describe it. How beautifully painted and how tragic a story it tells.

[NoRoadUntravelled]

6. Thank You for Posting this.

Kadir Nelson's work captures a light within his subjects. I love it.

[dhill926]

7. there's kind of a Norman Rockwell look to this...

saying...THIS is true America. I love it...

[Historic NY]

12. Exactly....

[Niagara]

8. Kicking for visibility!

Powerful.

[iluvtennis]

9. Very nice...thanks for sharing. nt

[littlemissmartypants]

10. Thank you! ❤ nt

[Celerity]

11. K & R

[demmiblue]

13. Cover story by Jamil Smith:

How the movement that’s changing America was built and where it goes next

Two days after a Minneapolis cop killed George Floyd in late May, the novel coronavirus tallied its 100,000th American victim. More than 22,000 of those lost were black, though we only make up 13 percent of the overall U.S. population. As the global pandemic was laying bare virtually all of America’s structural inequalities, unrest on the Minneapolis streets swelled into the largest and most numerous public demonstrations for civil rights seen in generations. Tens of thousands of nonviolent protesters from various cultural backgrounds, in city after city, are crying out “black lives matter,” the mantra of the modern civil-rights movement and the rallying cry against the casual acceptance of our deaths.

Civil-rights organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi put those three words into our minds and hearts seven years ago, when they began to change the country. The sweeping calls for change we see today are not sudden, but the fruits of the labor of activists like them. Their work has given us room to demand more, because black lives don’t truly matter just because people simply say so. This year alone, a white father and son carried out the modern-day lynching of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Georgia. If black lives mattered by now, we wouldn’t have to say the name of Breonna Taylor, lost to a hail of police bullets in her own home in Louisville in March. Or chant the name of Floyd, killed for allegedly spending a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill at a corner grocery.

The protesters mobilized quickly and with unapologetic fury, their range of targets plentiful, whether it be overly militarized policing or inadequate medical services; mass incarceration or bigotry in the workplace; food insecurity or housing, Confederate monuments or racism in the entertainment industry. As “black lives matter” rings out from the mouths of protesters and corporations alike, what will it take to build an America where those three words are a statement of fact — not a fight for survival?

It was seven years ago this July that Garza reacted to George Zimmerman’s acquittal of murder in the Trayvon Martin case with a viral Facebook post expressing her pain, writing: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. Black Lives Matter.”“I was impacted in a way that I didn’t expect,” Garza tells me. “We see black death all the time, and I don’t know what it was about this, but I know I went home and then I woke up in the middle of the night crying. And I picked up my phone and I started clickety-clacking, right?” Garza is now the principal of the Black Futures Lab, which works with voters and produces a Black Census Report. Patrisse Cullors, a Southern California activist close to Garza, saw the post and added the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. In New York City, immigration organizer Opal Tometi learned of the Zimmerman verdict after leaving a screening of the Ryan Coogler film Fruitvale Station, about the 2009 police shooting that killed Oscar Grant III. Already emotional, Tometi then read Garza’s viral post.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/black-lives-matter-jamil-smith-1014442/

[calimary]

15. DAYUM!

WUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDERFUL!

Stuff like this makes me so proud, not to mention impressed! BRILLIANT!

[Hugin]

16. Nice!

It's good to see fine art returning to the print media.

[nuxvomica]

17. Brilliant!

Note the kid on the bicycle. The artist has taken great care to capture the sense of tension and balance, while all the other figures are either just standing or have the same raised-hand pose. This juxtaposition infuses the painting with energy. It's a brilliant compositional choice.

[Lonestarblue]

18. Nelson is also the artist for this week's cover of The New Yorker.

It is stunning.

[gademocrat7]

19. Very inspiring cover!

[TygrBright]

20. of THAT one... I want five copies for my mother! n/t

[peacebuzzard]

21. riveting. nt