Kerry James Marshall, American born 1955
A retrospective exhibition was held at the Metropolitan Museum, New York in the autumn/winter of 2016 of paintings of Kerry James Marshall made over the last 35 years. Large lit drawings on glass of his comic strip, Mastry, were also on display.
The artist, an African American, was born in Birmingham, Alabama.
He moved with his family to Watts, Los Angeles when he was 8. It was at the height of the Black Panther and civil rights movements.
He has said that his introduction to art was a visit when he was 10 to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where he looked at everything.
He was further encouraged on a visit to the studio of Charles White (1918-1975, American), the foremost African-American artist of his day and committed to social activism.
O Freedom, 1956, charcoal with crayon, erasing, stumping, and wash on ivory illustration board, and detail.
Charles White, 1918-1979, American. Private collection on loan to MOMA, NY in 2018
Untitled (Studio), 2014, acrylic on PVC panels.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
The artist describes a visit to the studio of the painter, Charles White, 1918-1979, between his seventh and eighth grades.
There were laid out the physical and human context which allowed him to understand that he, too, could become an artist.
Marshall was the first of his family to attend college where, still in Los Angeles, he studied art. He has lived his mature adult life in Chicago.
In the matter of art, the artist is also an autodidact.
Marshall taught himself the Western and certain African ritual traditions. The Met included 20 or so works of art of great interest to this artist from its own collection.
Including these two:
Grape Wine, 1966, tempera on Masonite.
Andrew Wyeth, 1917-2009, American. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY .
A portrait of a drifter, Willard Snowden, who lived in Wyeth’s Pennsylvanian studio for many years and often greeted visitors with a glass of wine. The background of the painting is a ruby red.
Odalisque in Grisaille, 1824-1834, oil on canvas.
Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres and Workshop. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Of interest to this artist because this image exists as only image – with clear body distortions – and nothing else and is thus, he says, ultra-modern’.
Aware of the almost total exclusion of his people from this Western tradition, he has wanted to represent them within it.
Marshall’s work inevitably points up the confounding vileness of North American racism and the tangled consequences of dealing with it day after day for a whole life.
Painful dissonances which the painstaking work of this artist shows and which makes this work both poignant and vibrant.
It is an immense sadness and anxiety to us, and a cause for anger, that we are now again in a period of state-sanctioned racism as a consequence of a philosophy now in power.
It pretends that all peoples in the United States have equal access to the goodies and equal chances to pursue their own happiness.
At the same time, the institutions which were put in place to make this access and this equal chance a reality are being taken down.
I give but one example.
In April 2025, the storied department of Civil Rights in the US Department of Justice, was decimated by a political decision to change the focus of the department. Many of its lawyers promptly quit.
Traditionally the department has protected the constitutional rights of minority communities and marginalized people, often by monitoring police departments for civil rights violations, protecting the right to vote and fighting housing discrimination and the environmental degradation of poor and minority communities.
Its new role is to focus on investigating antisemitic activity, anti-Christian activity and discrimination against women by policies which ‘favour’ transgendered women in sports.
This is in addition to the support of other of President Donald Trump’s policies including that English shall be the country’s only language; and that institutional focus on minority art or minority anything is not necessary because in the United States we are all ‘equal’ and no ethnic or gender group needs affirmative treatment.
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Portrait of Nat Turner with the head of his master, 2011, acrylic on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private collection on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016.
Nat Turner raised a revolt in 1831 which resulted in the deaths of 60 white Americans and the liberation of a number of slaves.
The artist uses an unmixed shade of black for all his figures if they are African-Americans.
The artist has said that black is black.
With very few exceptions, there are only black people in the artist’s tableaux and they are one shade of black.
He is representing the life of a people without reference to the very sensitive subject of ‘colorism’
(discrimination which favours lighter skin among members of the same ethnic group and includes the practice of some African Americans to pass for white for the life-altering advantages which this has provided and still provides).
The artist does, however, touch upon another sensitive aspect of black life: the degree to which to conform to certain white physical norms.
Self-portrait of the Artist as a Supermodel, 1994, acrylic and collage on board.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
In the painting below, a black woman is asked if she really wants to look like a blonde. The artist also shows the ludicrousness of the notion of race by including an image of the female reproductive organ whose shape and colour does not differ, of course, across racial lines.
So This is What You Want? 1992, acrylic and collage on canvas. (Reflections of visitors to the gallery are visible along with light interference).
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Beauty Examined, 1993, acrylic and collage on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Standards of beauty have been until recently centered on the prerequisites of white women.
Marshall uses the genres of the Western tradition – the historical tableau, landscape, genre painting, and portraiture – to the ends of his inclusion of a pictorial record of his community in the Western tradition.
One of his subjects is the ‘double consciousness’ of black life in the United States. This is described by W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963, American) in ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, 1903.
‘It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood….’
A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self, 1980, egg tempera on paper.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private collection on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016.
A painting of a black man’s feeling about being looked at in a white world. What people see is not a man but a pigmentation, blackness.
The artist was 25 when he painted this. He was looking, he said, from then on, to find how the view by another of a black man could be changed.
Two Invisible Men (The Lost Portraits), 1985, acrylic on board
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
From Ralph Ellison’s (1913-1994, American) The Invisible Man of 1952: I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
Invisible Man, 1986, acrylic on canvas
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
From Ralph Ellison’s (1913-1994, American) The Invisible Man of 1952: I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
Silence is Golden, 1986, acrylic on panel
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. The Studio Museum in Harlem loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
It is a requirement of African-American life never to talk publicly about the difficult history of race relations or the devastating effect that this has had on generations of black people. It disturbs the horses.
The Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., born 1962, was fired from that post in February 2025 for forgetting this rule.
It is said that the video which he had made, much appreciated by any number of his troops, recounting the journey of his life had upset the Powers that Be. He had made it after the murder of George Floyd on a street in Minnesota in May, 2020.
It should go without saying that General Brown’s life achievements were extraordinarily rare and extraordinary.
Portrait of the Artist and a Vacuum, 1981, acrylic on paper
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Nasher Museum of Art loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
The artist also caricatures the stereotypes of black sexuality: ferocious, predatory, potent.
Frankenstein, 2009, acrylic on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Bride of Frankenstein, 2009, acrylic on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
(Untitled) Mirror Girl, 2007, PVC on Panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Marshall speaks to the ever present violence of North American life
Bang, 1994, acrylic and collage on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. The Progressive Corporation on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016
The persistence of a people trying to live ‘ordinary’ lives amidst significant levels of violence.
Banner for Willy J., 1976, oil on canvas, and detail.
Charles White, 1918-1979, American. Private collection on loan to MOMA, NY in 2018.
Charles White’s cousin died in a shooting at a bar where he was a bystander.
The gallery during the exhibition
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In Marshall’s paintings are often houses with no windows.
Also veils of white paint covering words or symbols or spaces within the painting.
Sometimes these overwashes introduce a sense of untouchability, of improbability, of unattainability; separation; sacred space; memorial space.
Sometimes they point to disconnection, dysfunction, dissonance, unreadability, in the environment depicted.
There are also lines, cream or white, which lead nowhere and end in ’empty’ space on the canvas.
Marshall’s paintings often include words as though he were afraid that we would misread the tableau without them.
Great America, and details, 1994, acrylic and collage on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
When Frustration Threatens Desire, 1990, acrylic and collage on canvas
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
De Style, and details, 1993, acrylic and collage on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum on loan to the Metropolitan in 2016
An important work for the artist in terms of both content and style, this is a tableau of a barber’s shop, a place for many African Americans of community, socialization, news, and the possibility of self-transformation.
The name of the painting refers both to an actual shop, Percy’s House of Style, and the Dutch modern art movement, De Stijl, whose emphases on red, yellow and blue and a rectilinear grid are reflected here.
School of Beauty, School of Culture, and details, 2012.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Birmingham Museum of Art loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
A Snow Beauty – a kind of memento mori -is examined by a child but is totally ignored by the adults in this tableau. It has lost its symbolic significance.
The artist has included himself in the front center.
The partial veiling here seems to denote that this hair salon is a protected zone.
Nobody here need be bothered by anyone else. Even if the blonde cut-out is a reminder of the ubiquity of ‘white’ norms.
Voyager, 1992, acrylic, collage and glass on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Corcoran Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
In 1858, The Wanderer, a luxury yacht constructed in New York but retrofitted as a slave ship by Southern plantation owners, arrived at Jekyll Island, Georgia carrying 409 enslaved West Africans.
4 attempts to prosecute the ships owners were unsuccessful even though this importation violated The Slave Importation Act of 1807.
This painting is about the pain of that passage and the ancestry of the slaves in that yacht.
The veil/sail denotes separation and death and the figure behind the veil/sail is dead.
Untitled, 2008, acrylic on fiberglass
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016
The oceans of the coasts of the United States: places of beauty and longing imagination;
and burial place of thousands of Africans who did not survive the Middle Passage.
Vignette, 2003, acrylic on fiberglass.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016
Adam and Eve are escaping the Garden of Eden, become menacing. The butterflies fly with them.
The Lost Boys, and details, 1993, acrylic and collage on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
An important work for the artist in terms both of content and style, this painting mourns the deaths of young African Americans. The dates are the dates of the young boys’ death.
By 1993, many African American and white communities had slid into a desperate poverty after years of job loss and governmental neglect.
The killings are still going on more than 30 years later. The divide between wealthy and everyone else has grown. Joblessness is more intractable.
Untitled (Policeman), 2015, synthetic polymer paint on PVC panel with plexi frame.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
Campfire Girls, and detail, 1995, acrylic and collage on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Girls in girlish activity in the midst of a bucolic landscape with reminders wrapped around the pole of the many kinds of legal covenants used to disenfranchise American Blacks.
1994 ‘Garden Project’ series showing early, utopian days in public housing in Chicago and Los Angeles.
Image by Agaton Strom for The New York Times
Untitled (Altgeld Gardens), 1995, acrylic and collage on canvas from the ‘Garden Project Series’.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Our Town, and details, 1995, acrylic and collage on canvas. From the ‘Garden Project’ series.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Better Homes, Better Gardens, 1994, acrylic and collage on canvas. From the ‘Garden Project’ series.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Denver Art Museum loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Heirlooms and Accessories, 2002, inkjet prints in artist’s frames (with light interference).
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953
Photographs were widely circulated of lynchings. This triptych of photographs shows lockets on golden chains.
The photographs in the lockets are white women’s faces taken by Lawrence Beitler. This work centers on the lynching of J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith in Marion, Indiana, in 1930.
Kerry James Marshall concentrates on the photographs of three women of three generations who who watched this lynching.
Untitled (Club Couple), 2014, acrylic on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Untitled (Painter), 2008, acrylic on PVC
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
Untitled, 2009, acrylic on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Yale University Art Gallery loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Untitled (Painter), 2010, acrylic on PVC.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Portrait of a Curator (In Memory of Beryl Wright), 2009, acrylic on PVC.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private collection on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016.
The Academy, 2012, acrylic and glitter on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private collection on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016.
Still Life with Wedding Portrait, 2015, acrylic on PVC.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private collection on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016.
A portrait of Harriet Tubman on the occasion of her marriage with her first husband. The cross can be seen in the lines traced by his fingernails and her buttons.
This is a depiction of a would-be hanging of a painting of this subject in the august halls of a museum. I don’t recall what the green-and-gold object is. Perhaps a levelling device?
Could This Be Love? 1992, acrylic and collage on canvas
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Untitled (Vignette) , 2012, acrylic and glitter on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Yale University Art Gallery loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Gulf Stream, 2003, acrylic and glitter on canvas
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
Sob, Sob, 2003, acrylic on fiberglass
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Smithsonian Museum of American Art.
The book is ‘Africa After 1413’.
Memento #5, 2003, acrylic, collage, silkscreen and glitter on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016
A memorial to important milestones in the history of Civil Rights; now veiled because the time is receding and the accomplishments are being, to some extent, rolled back for lack of enforcement.
Black Painting, 2003-2006, acrylic on fiberglass.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Private loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016. Image from the Blanton Museum of Art Collections.
Fred Hampton, African American activist and the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was assassinated in the early morning of December 4, 1969 by Chicago Police officers.
The image shows Mr. Hampton in bed at almost the hour of his death.
Souvenir 1, and details, 1997, acrylic, collage, silkscreen, and glitter on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016.
This tableau memorializes people killed in the fight for civil rights. It also recalls those who keep these memories alive.
The Land That Time Forgot, 1992, acrylic and collage on canvas.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
Untitled (Blot), 2014, acrylic on PVC panel.
Kerry James Marshall, American born 1953. Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 2016.
Using the colours of the Pan-African movement, the artist has blown up an ink blot of the kind developed for Rorschach tests.
The artist’s point is that abstraction is not accidental, or universal or color-blind.
I didn’t know this artist and I thank you for having talked about him by showing his wonderful works.
I share your bitter reflections on the current period in which that terrible plague of racism is returning, and not only in the United States but also here in Europe.
Hate and greed for power is like an epidemic, Luisa.
Under attack here is everyone identified as ‘not us’ by those in power and they extend way beyond the African-American community. We live in hope, though. And know you do, too.