Kerry James Marshall, known as one of America’s greatest contemporary painters, was born in Birmingham Alabama in 1955, right after the start of the Civil Rights Movement. At the age of 7, his family moved to Watts California, near the Black Panther Party headquarters. Marshall’s perception of the world was shaped while experiencing early life as a black youth in South Central. Growing up he witnessed shootouts between the Black Panther Party and the LAPD, he watched as schools burned down during the Black Student Union Movement, he saw multiple walkouts, protests, and rallies, and grew up in neighborhoods where a lack of equity was prominent in the community. He felt a deep responsibility to expose and highlight that in his work. However, he wanted to reframe the narrative that had been generationally imposed on the black community, and instead wanted to focus on the importance of black figures and black bodies in spaces. Marshall played with the structure of European Art in his work, and used it as a tool to help refrain and restructure the narrative. The lack of black bodies in old master paintings inspired him to create work that would center and make room for black folks. He mentions his intent on using blackness as a kind of phenomena, and vowed at a young age to never paint white bodies. He felt white folks were already really good at projecting ideas of the perfect self into the world, that he didn’t feel it was something he needed to reinforce. So instead he focused on perfecting black values in paintings, allowing them to exist in his subjects as chromatically rich as all the other colors. Marshall wanted to challenge the idea that black was used as a reductive, that it was used for absence, and that black was flat, and one-dimensional. This intent grew from reading Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, where Ellison talks about the condition of invisibility as it relates to black people, and this idea of being both present and absent to a culture who chooses not to see blackness and its importance. In his work Marshall uses repeated emblems of Black Nationalism, and Black Independence to indicate the importance of Black liberation, and how it had become the center focus for many people. He recalled going to art museums during field trips in his childhood, and experiencing a huge lack of diversity in the art. As he experienced growth within art institutions, as a black man, he wanted to normalize having black bodies as the focal point in work that covered museum walls. He understood the importance and necessity of relevance within art, and wanted that to be an expectation from viewers when visiting art museums. And so his work continued to center around representation throughout his career. Now, at 65 Kerry James Marshall continues to diligently do just that, as he has made it his job to create space and bring diversity into art rooms for his own community. Galleries and art museums around the country, and across Europe have mounted his work on their walls and have purchased collections of his work for permanent display. Where Museums such as LACMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York have all shown his paintings to the public and continue to support his work and his intent. ReflectionGathering all the material, and recording the audio was very straightforward, however it was bringing everything together that was a lot more tedious than expected. Although gratifying, patience is definitely needed, there were multiple times where I had to step away from it, and sleep on it, to see what areas I enjoyed and what I had to scrap. Originally my script was lengthier than what I ended up with, and realized how ridiculously obnoxious that was, so I had to go in and restructure it. Aside from the actual work, learning about the artist was the highlight of the entire project. I got caught up catching hours of interviews, where he spoke about the history of his work, and the experiences he went through living in the era that he did. His philosophy seems to coincide with our current climate, dismantling what's been spoon fed to use through art institutions, and moving on from an agenda that is exclusive to a kind of individual. 10/10 was a lot more enjoyable than expected.
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