Kerry James Marshall: Art, Identity, and Black Representation

Background and Early Influences

Kerry James Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955. He received a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) and an honorary doctorate from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. As quoted on the PBS Art21 website, Marshall has said: "You can't be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955, and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you've got some kind of social responsibility." He added, "You can't move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it." Much of his art was influenced, he explained, by his culture and the communities where he was raised and where he has lived.

Birmingham, Alabama, was the scene of massive civil rights demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963; Marshall was eight years old at the time. Police Chief Bull Connor ordered that high-pressure fire hoses be turned on demonstrators, and attack dogs were set upon the crowd. On September 15, 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls. President John F. Kennedy subsequently sent 3,000 federal troops into the city as violence against demonstrators and the bombing of churches continued.

This biographical and historical context is pertinent when considering the background, life, and times of Marshall. The turbulence of his formative years in Birmingham shaped not only his worldview but the moral and aesthetic concerns that run throughout his body of work.

Key Works: Souvenir and Rhythm Mastr

Marshall has created a series of paintings and sculptures called Souvenir, which includes stamp-like images bearing slogans such as "Black Power!" The series serves as a tribute to the Civil Rights Movement. Also within Souvenir are depictions of middle-class living rooms in which the ghosts of Dr. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy — all of whom were assassinated — float like angels through the space. The paintings are surreal in appearance, but their meaning is direct: many people who championed equal justice for all paid for that commitment with their lives.

In another series called Rhythm Mastr, rendered in the style of a comic strip, a "stereotypical young black hero is shown battling the nameless bureaucracies that are conspiring to tear down housing" in the boy's neighborhood, as described in Art Monthly. The work was painted on newspaper and "was originally displayed in random order on gallery windows" in the United States, in order to "echo the use of a newspaper as a means of blocking the view into empty buildings." The image of a vacant building with newspaper-covered windows becomes a metaphor for the blight that characterizes many inner-city neighborhoods.

Artistic Philosophy and Black Representation

In an interview published in the journal Callaloo (Rowell, 1998), Marshall was asked whether he was reinventing an artistic style in order to present Black people in a positive light — counteracting the distorted images of Black Americans that some artists have historically produced. Marshall acknowledged that "there has been a tradition of negative representation of black people," but noted there has also been a "counter-tradition" of Black artists working to offset that degradation. Both traditions, he argued, ultimately produced stereotypes that "denied a certain kind of complexity in the way the black image could be represented."

Understanding those dynamics, and seeking to create something fresh and honest with his own talents, Marshall said he has tried to address the problem of negative representation by depicting images on the "borderline" between negative and positive. He attempts "not to fall into the trap" of assuming that every depiction of a Black person must present an unambiguously "positive kind of picture."

Marshall also addressed a period in recent art history during which many Black artists wished to be "part of the mainstream" and felt that, to achieve this, they had to "let go of the black representation" and adopt a more abstract approach. He believes many Black artists made this choice because presenting images of Black people caused critics and audiences to frame the work not as art, but as something merely "social and political."

Works Cited

Bernard, Catherine. "Kerry James Marshall." African Arts. 34.4 (2001): 93–95.

Public Broadcasting Service. "Art: 21 Art in the Twenty-First Century / Kerry James Marshall." Retrieved 21 Nov. 2006 at http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marshall.

Rowell, Charles. "An Interview with Kerry James Marshall." Callaloo. 21.1 (1998): 263–272. Retrieved 21 Nov. 2006 at

Williams, Eliza. "Kerry James Marshall: Camden Arts Centre London." Art Monthly. Retrieved 21 Nov. 2006 at http://www.artmonthly.co.uk/.