Kerry James Marshall(1955 — ?)
Kerry James Marshall
États-Unis
6 min read
Kerry James Marshall is an American painter born in 1955, famous for his large canvases depicting figures with deep black skin. His work reinserts Black figures into the great tradition of Western painting, from which they had historically been absent.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, he grew up in Los Angeles during the rise of the civil rights movement
- His series of paintings from the 1990s features figures with intensely black skin, asserting a Black presence in art
- In 2016–2017, the retrospective “Mastry” at MOCA, the Met Breuer, and the MCA Chicago crowned his career
- In 2018, his painting “Past Times” (1997) sold at auction for $21.1 million, a record at the time for a living African American artist
Works & Achievements
Small, foundational painting in which the figure with extremely black skin, almost dissolved into darkness, appears for the first time.
Scene in an African American barbershop; the title plays on the De Stijl movement and on the “style” of Black culture.
Large canvases depicting everyday life in public housing projects, whose ironic names evoke gardens.
Sweeping scene of African Americans at leisure in a park; sold for $21.1 million in 2018, a record for a living Black artist.
Monumental painting set in a beauty salon, rich with references to art history and Black identity.
Depiction of a Black painter's studio, a way of asserting the place of African American artists within the great pictorial tradition.
Major traveling exhibition (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles) that established Marshall as one of the most important painters of his time.
Anecdotes
Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most segregated cities in the United States, the very year Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. As a child, his family moved to Los Angeles, to the Watts neighborhood, where at a very young age he witnessed the 1965 riots. He would later say that you cannot grow up in such a context without feeling a kind of social responsibility.
As a teenager, Marshall visited an artist's studio during a school outing and was given a box of paints as a gift: that day he decided to become a painter. He went on to study at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where his teacher was Charles White, one of the great African American artists of his generation.
Reading Ralph Ellison's novel *Invisible Man* had a profound impact on Marshall. It is partly from there that his choice came to paint figures with skin of an extreme, deep black: a way of finally making visible, and monumental, Black figures long absent from museums.
In 1997, Marshall received the famous “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, a prestigious award given with no strings attached. That same year, he painted *Past Times*, a large canvas showing African Americans relaxing in a park.
In 2018, this painting *Past Times* was sold at auction for 21.1 million dollars, a record for a living African American artist at the time. The buyer was the rapper and producer Sean Combs (P. Diddy).
Primary Sources
You cannot be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955, and grow up in South Central Los Angeles, near the Black Panthers' headquarters, without feeling a kind of social responsibility.
There was an almost total absence of images of Black people in the history of art I was studying. I wanted to fill that void, to bring these figures into the great narrative of painting.
The black of my subjects' skin is an assertive black, unapologetic. It is a statement about presence, beauty, and dignity.
Key Places
Marshall's birthplace, one of the cities most marked by segregation and the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.
Neighborhood of Los Angeles where Marshall grew up and witnessed the 1965 riots, a defining experience of his childhood.
Art school where Marshall trained and studied under the painter Charles White.
City where Marshall settled in 1987 and which became the center of his life and his studio.
Museum that opened the major retrospective “Mastry” devoted to his entire career in 2016.
