Benny Andrews: Between the Lines

In partnership with the Benny Andrews Estate and the Andrews-Humphrey Family Foundation, this expanded edition of Between the Lines, brings together Benny Andrews’s long-out-of-print collection of seventy drawings and seven essays with new scholarship focused on his life, work, and legacy. Originally published in 1978, the book includes essays that confront racism and power in the art world—most notably his seminal text “Understanding Black Art.” The drawings, rendered in his distinctive contour line, span subjects ranging from his early life in Georgia to the surreal symbolism of his Bicentennial Series.

The original volume remains the most extensive published collection of Andrews’s drawings, and this new edition will feature the original preface and portrait by his close friend, the painter Alice Neel, along with an updated chronology, an essay by artist Alex Jackson, and a new foreword by Allie Biswas to contextualize Andrews’s life and work for a contemporary audience.