Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist born in Birmingham, Alabama. She grew up in South Central Los Angeles and now lives in Chicago, Illinois, where she previously taught at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a 1978 graduate of Otis College of Art and Design. The exhibition of his work, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry , is assembled by the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016.
Video Kerry James Marshall
Influences
Although he currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois, his time is spent in Watts, Los Angeles, California, where the Black Power and Civil Rights movement has a significant impact on his paintings. Strongly influenced by his experience as a youth, he developed his signature style during his early years as an artist involving the use of a very dark, basically black figure. These images represent his view of African-Americans with separate and distinct outward and inner appearances. At the same time, they face racial stereotypes in contemporary American society. This common theme emerged continuously in his work over the next several decades, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.
While obtaining his BFA from the Otis Art and Design Academy in Los Angeles, he worked on not having a representative image or a specific story to tell, "Above Marshall still maintains a very important political content for the Civil Rights Movement while painting narratives through pieces mural-sized.
Maps Kerry James Marshall
Work
Marshall is known for his large-scale paintings, sculptures, and other objects that make African-American life and history his subject. His work often deals with the effects of the Civil Rights movement in domestic life, in addition to working with elements of popular culture. In a 1998 interview with Bomb Magazine , Marshall observed,
Blacks occupy space, even ordinary space, in the most interesting way. Style is an integral part of what blacks do that just run is not a simple thing. You must walk in style. You must speak with a certain rhythm; You have to do a lot with certain talents. And in the paintings I try to validate the same tendency toward the theater which seems to be an integral part of the black cultural body.
One masterpiece, Rythm Mastr , is a superhero comic book based on African mythology and art set in an urban environment. Some of his other famous works include The Garden Project, which criticizes the names of housing projects that cover desperate poverty and the Lost Boys series, which examines young black men â € is missing. in the ghetto, lost in public housing, lost jobs, and lost in reading. "
Marshall's first major solo exhibition, which traveled throughout the country, was held at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago in 1998. His work has been exhibited at many American and international exhibitions, including Venice Biennale (2003) and Documenta (1997). and 2007).
In April 2016, Marshall's retrospective Mastry debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago as the largest retrospective for Marshall art dates, which stretches the 35-year-old artist's career and includes nearly 80 original pieces. In October 2016, the retrospective traveled to Met Breuer in New York City.
Marshall based some of his works in the early 1990s on actual events in American history. One such painting, Voyager , painted in 1992, has particular relevance in the discussion of racial issues in the United States because Marshall bases it on "the fancy schooner... secretly equipped to carry African slaves ". These representational symbols abound, from the two black figures on the boat and the flowers dangling around the woman's neck in contrast between the bright and windy clouds and the darkness of the upper background. The skull lies in the water, just below the ship, hinting at the cursed African future, and the unknown woman has an expression of anxiety. Thus he brings to the forefront the irony of the ship with its beautiful high-class appearance and dark secret purpose, forcing people to think about something they forget more.
Marshall explores the concept of black beauty in contrast to the Western ideals with his paintings of La Venus Negra . The figure, this time a naked woman, completely blended with her dark environment, her sensual form barely visible. Yet as soon as viewers take a closer look, the montoknya figure awakens women's strengths only enhanced by the dense black skin. Untitled (Supermodel) , in the Honolulu Museum of Art collection, depicts a black woman trying to look like a blond Caucasian model. This work is also a self-portrait artist's reference, which adorns itself with pale lipstick and long blonde wigs.
As Marshall admits, he himself "does not assume that a black woman can be considered a goddess of love and beauty," but with this painting he proves his possibilities. He challenged the classical perception of a goddess as a white woman with long flowing hair, speaking again to the issue of African-American identity in the Western world. This concept is more meaningful when looking at African patterns at the top of the background. In addition to this, he refers to the movement that began during the Harlem Renaissance to incorporate African traditional aesthetics into African American art. In an attempt to reconcile African art and Western ideals, Marshall places both in his paintings. Thus it highlights the search for a black identity involving all aspects of the history of their ancestors and their present situation. Although African-Americans may feel connected to two different cultures, Marshall's painting of a classic Western figure represented by a new black aesthetic unites them, indicating that they can live in harmony.
Some of his works, such as La Venus Negra and Voyager combine African aesthetics with Western traditions, showing African-American struggles to find their place in American society. Another project from Marshall's, Garden Project and Souvenir, shows racial issues in America from the 1960s and 1970s and beyond. Marshall's work is dynamic and consistently relevant, especially to the problem of finding identity.
Through his The Garden Project series Marshall reveals the inherent contradictions and deep alignment of the idealized promises of the Public Housing Project and the often harsh and desperate reality of those who live in them. But Marshall goes beyond the distinction between these ideals and their corresponding reality, for his work is offensive to the sense of community and hope that African Americans are capable of creating under the conditions of low-income housing grinding. Inspired by his former home, Nickerson Gardens, the Marshall series "The Garden Project" makes an ironic play on the connotations attached to the word "garden." The five paintings in this series illustrate different public housing projects - Rockwell Gardens, Wentworth Gardens, Stateway Gardens, etc. - exploring how an almost identical image that is used in these names makes no sense in terms of these failed projects. Executed on a stretched canvas, these large paintings look like murals. The elements they compile and, at times, the rough surface treatment signify the collapse of public housing projects and the difficulty of living in them.
Marshall Many Mansions, from 1994, show a contradiction between the name "Stateway Gardens", and the reality of life there. There is a cheating cheer through the pieces, because the landscape is illustrated in full bloom. Excessive black figures are planting flowers that bloom, the trees are felled purely, and they all seem abundant. But Marshall's black figures, as Michael Kimmelman notes in his book The New York Times, are "stiff and stylish: almost stereotypical". They represent the poor black men who live in public housing and unlike the scenery that surrounds them, they are not cheerful. One person looked suspiciously at the audience, while the other two looked away, all without happiness. The buildings they occupy appear to be the background of the box, calling attention to the false situation. Truth is not found in the beautiful utopianism of sights or flowers, but rather on artificial buildings and stereotypical images and incriminating those who live in them.
The Garden Project is a series of insightful paintings, both in its loud exclamation of false promises and the desperate reality of low-income housing public and in its capacity to demonstrate the extraordinary ability of African Americans to find happiness and build community regardless of this condition.
From the series of Souvenir , Souvenir III , completed in 1998, centered on angels mediating the present with the past. He is the news angel and the organizer of the living room. However, in creating the new rhetoric of blacks in America, it highlights their differences from conventional white power structures. There are some characters that force viewers to look deeper: these numbers directly contradict the abstractions of black artists feeling they must combine to become mainstream artists. Marshall calls the amalgamation of these powerful aesthetic and political comments as "visual authority" that command the attention of the people
In Souvenir III , the names of prominent black historical figures and the year of their deaths are displayed at the top of the mural-sized paintings. Thus, the theme of immortality arises: the audience is in the present with a reflection on the legacy of figures who are champions of civil rights and African American artists. The paintings reinforce these dhikr symbols with the phrases "We Mourn Our Weib" and "In Memory Of".
Souvenir IV (1998), also placed in a classroom living room based on the Marshall family's residence, is a realism with an invisible touch. Through the painting, the viewer travels to the era of Civil Rights and the painting itself is a postcard that also marks the journey. The whole scene echoes Egyptian rituals supplying dead in the afterlife with furniture and food. Souvenirs III and IV were done in grisaille style, the technique of "old narrative painting", while Souvenirs I and II (< 1997) is done in color. When someone examines the background of the souvenir series, the viewer will be aware of the fertile settings even in the monochromatic nature of III and IV . A characteristic of Marshall is the stamping that is repeated through the painting, seen here as the angel's wings surrounding the black leaders, and the background of the flower, seen here as a sparkling ornament.
The series of Souvenirs notes the losses that Americans face from the deaths of leaders in politics, literature, art, and music.
Awards and Personal Life
Marshall was the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 1997. In 2017, he was awarded the Fifth Star Award by City of Chicago. She is featured in Season 1 of PBS Art art documentary series: 21 - Art In the Twenty First Century and appears in the segment titled "Identity".
She is married to actress Cheryl Lynn Bruce.
Selected Collection
- Kerry James Marshall at Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN
References
Further reading
- Marshall, Kerry J., Richard J. Powell, Susanne Ghez, Will Alexander, Cheryl I. Harris, and Hamza Walker, Kerry James Marshall: Mementos , Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 1998. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43702402
- Marshall, Kerry J., Terrie Sultan, and Arthur Jafa. Kerry James Marshall . H.N. Abrams, New York, 2000. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43318234
- Marshall, Kerry J., Okwui Enwezor, Nav Haq, Dieter Roelstraete, and Sofie Vermeiren. Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Items , MHUKA, Antwerp, 2014. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/869741733
- Marshall, Kerry J., Robert Storr, and Angela Choon. Kerry James Marshall: See View , David Zwirner Gallery, London, 2015. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/904542035
- Marshall, Kerry J., Charles Gaines, Greg Tate, and Laurence Rassel, Kerry James Marshall , Phaidon Press, London, 2017. ISBNÃ, 978-0-7148-7155-4
External links
- Kerry James Marshall at the Miami Art Museum
- Kerry James Marshall. Painting and other items . Exhibition at FundaciÃÆ'³ Antoni TÃÆ' pies, Barcelona.
- Randy Kennedy, "Kerry James Marshall, Art History Brings Out with Bravery", The New York Times , 9 September 2016
- Susan Stamberg, "Kerry James Marshall: The Black Presence in the Art World Is 'No Nego'", NPR, Morning Edition , March 28, 2017.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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