Kerry James Marshall
His home in Los Angeles was near the Black Panther Party's headquarters, which left him with a feeling of social responsibility and influenced his work directly.
In 1963 he moved with his family to the Nickerson Gardens public housing project in the Watts district of Los Angeles, just a few years before the race riots began.
"[8] While studying at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, Marshall worked to "not have a representational image or a specific story to tell," over abstraction.
[15] Marshall's childhood time spent in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, where the Black Power and Civil Rights movements happened, had a significant impact on his paintings.
[16] Strongly influenced by his experiences as a young man, he developed a signature style during his early years as an artist that involved the use of extremely dark, essentially black figures.
When he studied at Otis, he was fascinated by the work of Bill Traylor, the self-taught artist who was born into slavery in Alabama, which inspired him to create more artwork relating to old-timey, grinning racial trope.
[5] Marshall is one of the members of the contemporary artists of color such as Howardena Pindell, Charlene Teters, and Fred Wilson, who often incorporated the issue of race into their work.
Marshall created comic strips, such as Rhythm Mastr, a story of an African-American teenager who gained superpowers through African sculptures using drum patterns.
Oftentimes Marshall's works were perceived to be full of emotion portraying what it was like being an Urban African American, displaying middle-class African-American homes and families.
Marshall reflected, "Under Charles White’s influence I always knew that I wanted to make work that was about something: history, culture, politics, social issues.
[17] Symbols of this representation abound, from the two black figures in the boat and the flowers draped around the woman's neck to the contrast between the light and airy clouds and the darkness of the upper background.
A skull lies in the water, just beneath the ship, hinting at the doomed future of the Africans, and the unknown woman has an expression of uneasiness.
He thus brings to the forefront the irony of a ship with a beautiful, high-class appearance and a dark secret purpose, forcing people to think about something they would rather forget.
Marshall explored the concept of black beauty in contrast to Western ideals with his painting, Untitled (La Venus Negra) (1992).
The painting Untitled (Supermodel) (1994), is in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, this work portrays a black woman trying to look like blond Caucasian models.
[17] He challenges the classic perception of a goddess as a white woman with long flowing hair, speaking again to the issue of African-American identity in the Western world.
Although African Americans may feel connected to two differing cultures, Marshall's painting of a classically Western figure represented with a new black aesthetic brings the two together, showing that they can live in harmony.
The series of portraits was of young African-American boys from the shoulder up, with very dark skin tones, which contrasted with extreme whiteness of the subject's eyes which was common in Marshall's works.
The artist explained that this series of portraits was to show these young boys loss of innocence at an early age and being a victim to ghettos and public housing.
[11] The Garden Project is an insightful series of paintings, both in its shrill outcry against the false promises and despairing reality of low-income public housing and in its capacity to show the incredible ability of African Americans to find happiness and build community despite these conditions.
Through this series, Marshall reveals the inherent contradictions and profound juxtapositions between the idealized promises of Public Housing Projects and the often harsh, despairing reality of those living in them.
But Marshall goes beyond merely exposing the discrepancy between this ideal and its corresponding reality, as his work alludes to the sense of community and hope that African Americans were able to create within the grinding conditions of low-income housing.
Their collaged elements and, at times, rough surface treatment signify the decrepitude of public housing projects and the difficulty of life within them.
Truth is not found in the beautiful utopianism of the scenery or flowers, but rather in the artificiality of the buildings and the stereotypical, damning images of the men who live in them.
The Souvenir series chronicles the loss dealt to American society from the deaths of leaders in politics, literature, arts, and music.
Marshall calls this incorporation of a strong aesthetic and political commentary a "visual authority" that commands the attention of society[25] Within Souvenir III, the names of prominent black historical figures and the years of their deaths are featured at the top of the mural-sized painting.
[34] Thus, the theme of timelessness emerges: the viewer is in the present ruminating on the legacies of figures who are both civil rights champions and African-American artists.
A Marshall hallmark is the stamping repeated through a painting, seen here as angel wings surrounding the black leaders, and floral backgrounds, seen here as glittered ornamentation.
In May, Past Times (1997) was sold by Chicago's Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority to Sean Combs for a $21 million funding windfall to the public agency, after hanging in McCormick Place for many years.
