Kerry James Marshall at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
A thought-provoking exhibition which I saw last year and which was so refreshing in its representation of Black people. Kerry James Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama. His figurative paintings unapologetically centre Black people.
His practice is grounded in a deep engagement with the histories of art. He reimagines and transforms the conventions and genres of Western painting, from portraiture and landscape to history painting, a genre that was first concerned with Biblical and mythical narratives, and has been used to depict contemporary political events. He also draws from the art of Africa and its diasporas, for instance Kongo nkisi nkondi power figures, and Haitan Voodoo veves - drawings used to invoke spirits. For Marshall, it is important that an artist knows the histories of art in detail in order to contribute to them in powerful, meaningful and original ways.
Many of the works in this exhibition address moments in Black history from the Middle Passage and slave rebellions to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements which formed a backdrop to Marshall's childhood. Recently, challenging romantic representations of a past in Africa, his paintings have confronted difficult historical subjects that others prefer to avoid.
There are 11 sections in this exhibition, the earliest dating back 45 years until recent times.
The Academy:
The works in this section feature scenes from art schools, studios and museums. There is a deep fascination in Western art with the studio as the locus of production and the museum as the repository of wonders. Adding to this tradition, Marshall transforms it by centring Black figures as both producers and consumers.
Marshall uses various black pigments to depict skin colours, layering, or placing side by side, ivory black, Mars black and carbon black, mixing in other colours to render black fully chromatic. As he said, 'if you say black, you should see black'. While his blacks are complex, Marshall rarely attempts to depict the browns of real skin tones. His figures are at once individual characters and examples of am emphatic Blackness, real and rhetorical, and as such, provoke wider questions about the idea of Black figures in art.
The Academy (The Model), (acrylic on PVC panel)
Untitled (Underpainting), 2018, (acrylic and collage on PVC panel)
An underpainting is the initial layer of colour, usually brown, that allows a painter to work out the structure and relationship of tones across a composition. Though considered a traditional, academic technique, Marshall uses it here to depict an underappreciated reality: 'Black kids go on school trips to museums too'. As a child, Marshall was amazed by museum collections and proposes them as a critical social space for observing and learning.
Untitled (Studio), 2014, (acrylic on PVC panels)
Untitled, 2009, (acrylic on PVC panel)
Untitled, 2008, (acrylic on PVC panel)Invisible Man:
In the 1970s Marshall read Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man. In the novel, the protagonist feels he is invisible because he is not seen as desirable in American society. This idea inspired Marshall to begin a series of works in which Black figures are set against a dark ground, so that they become almost invisible to the viewer.
In this series Marshall also explored histories of racial stereotypes and caricatures, choosing to render his figures in black paint. From this point on, his figures function rhetorically, raising questions about Black absence and presence both in society and in art history.
Portrait of the Artist and a Vacuum, 1981, (acrylic on paper)
Portrait of Nat Turner on Loan from Hell, 1990, (acrylic and burnt printed paper collage on canvas, mounted on board)
Nat Turner was born into slavery in Virginia in 1800. Believing he was divinely chosen, in 1931, he led what would be the deadliest slave revolt in the history of the United States. In Marshall's portrait of the revolutionary, Turner's head emerges from the scorched centre of a collage of burnt romance novels featuring barely visible white characters. The glowing halo around Turner's head affirms his divinity, referencing painterly conventions of 15th and 16th century European religious art.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self, 1980, (egg tempera on paper)
This small painting marked a significant breakthrough for Marshall. It is made with egg tempera, a precise medium associated with painters of the Sienese school of the 13th-15th centuries, and 'magic realist' painters like Jared French in the 20th century. The title is both a reference of James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and a reflection of Marshall's decision to play with depicting a Black figure against a black background.
Two Invisible Men Naked, 1985, (acrylic on paper on wood panel in two parts)
The Wonderful One, 1986, (charcoal on paper)
Invisible Man, 1986, (acrylic on canvas and wood)
If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day, 1988, (conte crayon with acrylic on paper)
The Painting of Modern Life:
Knowledge and Wonder, 1995, (mixed media on canvas)
This painting was made especially for a Chicago public library and presents the book as a portal to knowledge. A group of children gather at the edge of infinity, mesmerised by the mysteries unfolding before them.
De Style, 1993, (acrylic and collage on canvas)
Set in a barber's shop, De Style references Western painting genres from 17th century Dutch group paintings to the De Stijl movement associated with Piet Mondrian. The everyday setting is both mythic and ordinary, focusing on the style and flair of the subjects within. A calendar on the wall dates the scene to 1991, the year Rodney King was brutally beaten by members of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Middle Passage:
The paintings in this section constitute Marshall's first attempt to address the history of the Middle Passage - the treacherous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, during which many captive Africans died before reaching the slave markets in the Americas. It is a history understood in fragments, and accordingly, instead of making works functioning like costume dramas, Marshall composes paintings with disparate images, motifs and textures, incorporating symbols and diagrams derived from Yoruban religion, Voodoo and other religions that were practised across the African diaspora as acts of defiance as well as to maintain connections to Africa.
Great America, 1994, (acrylic and collage on canvas)
Great America is a Californian theme park that opened in 1976 to rival Disneyland. Marshall represents life for Black people in America as akin to the ups and downs, thrills and chills, of amusement park rides and haunted houses. Four figures are on a boat ride, and one has fallen in the water.
Terra Incognita, 1992, (acrylic, ink and paper collage laid on canvas)
In Terra Incognita, Marshall uses multiple techniques that call attention to the complicated legacy of the Middle Passage. The collage-like composition shifts our gaze around the painting. The waiter in the middle of the painting, dressed in the colours representing Eshy, Elegba, spirit of the crossroad and of changes, stands between an ocean liner and a compass. Around them are the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates of the Atlantic. The drawing of the map below disrupts our sense of time, with its image of an African warrior, a list of commodities extracted from Africa and names of nation states post-independence.
Plunge, 1992, (acrylic and paper on canvas)
Baptist, 1992, (acrylic and mixed media on canvas)
Voyager, 1992, (acrylic and collage on canvas)
Wanderer, written here in capitals on the bow of a small wooden boat, was the name of one of the last ships to bring human cargo to the US in 1858. The female figure on the prow surrounded by flowers is the embodiment of Yemoja, goddess of the sea and the family. Blue and white are her colours. Her magic number is 7.
Eschu: Crossroads, 1987, (woodcut from found wood printed over oil paint monotype)
The African Powers prints were made in two stages. First, Marshall laid coloured oil paints over smooth sheets of Plexiglass and made monoprints. Next, he found pieces of lumber, carved faces into them, and inked them with black. With these he made woodcut prints over the monoprints. The prints show six out of the seven 'African Powers' - orishas, or deities, of the Yoruba people of West Africa. Eshu is a trickster figure also known as the messenger god of crossroads. Accordng to some accounts, Eshy accompanied slaves during the Middle Passage.
