Biography of Kerry James Marshall, Contemporary Artist

Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is a prominent contemporary African-American artist. He broke ground for black artists by rising to the upper echelon of the art world while remaining steadfastly dedicated to presenting work that explores the black experience in America. His experience growing up in the Watts neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles profoundly influenced his art. Fast Facts: Kerry James Marshall Occupation: ArtistBorn: October 17, 1955 in Birmingham, AlabamaEducation: Otis College of Art and DesignSelected Works: Voyager (1992), Many Mansions (1994), Portrait of Nat Turner with the Head of His Master (2011)Notable Quote: One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person. Early Life and Career Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Kerry James Marshall moved with his family to the Watts neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles as a young child. He grew up surrounded by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. He was an eyewitness to the Watts riots that occurred in August 1965. As a teenager, Kerry James Marshall took part in a summer drawing class at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles after a teacher nominated him for inclusion. There, he was shown the studio of artist Charles White who later became his instructor and mentor. Kerry James Marshall enrolled as a full-time student at the Otis Art Institute in 1977 and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1978. He moved to Chicago in 1987 after completing a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City. Marshall began teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993, and he earned a genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1997. History as Subject Matter Many of Kerry James Marshalls works reference events from American history as primary subject matter. One of the most prominent is 1992s Voyager. The boat featured in the painting is named Wanderer. It references the story of the former yacht that was the last ship to bring a large number of African slaves to America. In violation of a 50-year-old law prohibiting the importation of slaves, the Wanderer arrived at Jekyll Island in Georgia in 1858 with over 400 slaves on board. It was the final event in the history of the African slave trade in America. In 2011, Marshall painted Portrait of Nat Turner with the Head of His Master. It is a nearly full-length portrait in the manner of traditional portraiture, but the grisly image of a man slaughtered in his sleep lying behind Nat Turner is chilling. The historical event referenced is the two-day slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in 1831. Housing Projects In 1994, Kerry James Marshall painted a series titled The Garden Project. He depicts life in public housing projects in the U.S. inspired by his own experience living in Nickerson Gardens, a 1,066-unit apartment complex in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. His paintings in the series explore the dichotomy between the imagery evoked by the names of the projects using the word Gardens and the reality of harsh life in public housing. It is a metaphor for the lives of African-Americans in contemporary America. One of the key pieces is 1994s Many Mansions. It shows three black men in formal clothing performing the manual labor of planting flowers for a housing project. Their depiction is at the center of Marshalls juxtaposition of the ideal evoked by the concept of a public housing project with the reality of the residents experiences. Another painting in the series, Better Homes, Better Gardens, shows an idyllic young black couple strolling through a brick housing project. The inspiration for this piece is Chicagos Wentworth Gardens. It is notorious for a history of gang violence and drug problems. Concept of Beauty Another frequent subject of Kerry James Marshalls work is the concept of beauty. The people depicted in Marshalls paintings usually have very dark, almost flat black, skin. He explained to interviewers that he created the extreme to specifically draw attention to the distinctive appearance of black Americans. In a series of 1994 paintings of models, Marshall depicts male and female black models. The male model is shown against a mostly white background that emphasizes the blackness of his skin. He is lifting his shirt to presumably share the power of his physique with viewers. He painted a topless female black model with the names Linda, Cindy, and Naomi inscribed in the upper right. They are the iconic supermodels Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, and Naomi Campbell. In another model painting, Marshall juxtaposed the image of the female black models face with those of blonde white models. Mastry In 2016, Kerry James Marshalls work was the subject of the historically significant retrospective Mastry at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The exhibition covered 35 years of Marshalls work with nearly 80 pieces displayed. It was an unprecedented celebration of the work of an African-American artist. In addition to its overt celebration of the black experience in America, many observers saw Kerry James Marshalls work as a reaction to the movement of much of the art establishment away from traditional painting. Unlike celebrated experiments in minimalist and conceptual art, Marshall creates his works with an eye toward arranging his subject matter in ways that stretch back to the traditions of art from the Renaissance era. Kerry James Marshall has explained that he is more interested in being a painter than creating art. When the Mastry exhibition traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Kerry James Marshall selected 40 works from the museums permanent collection that he particularly valued as inspiration. The exhibit within an exhibit was titled Kerry James Marshall Selects. Public Works Controversy In 2018, Kerry James Marshalls paintings made headlines in two controversies over the value of public art contrasted with the benefit of public services that could be provided with money earned from sales of the art. In May, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority of Chicago sold the monumental piece Past Times to rap artist and entrepreneur Sean Combs for $21 million. The original purchase price was $25,000. The piece previously hung in the McCormick Place convention center on public display. The money earned from the auction provided a windfall to the budget of the public agency. Even more controversial was the announcement by Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel that the city would sell the 1995 Kerry James Marshall painting Knowledge and Wonder. It hung on the wall in one of the citys public library branches. Commissioned for $10,000, experts pegged the value of the painting at somewhere near $10 million. Emmanuel planned to use the funds from the sale to expand and upgrade a branch of the library on the citys west side. After intense criticism from the public and the artist himself, the city withdrew plans to sell the work in November 2018. Source Tate, Greg, Charles Gaines, and Laurence Rassel. Kerry James Marshall. Phaidon, 2017.