Kerry James Marshall. Painting and other stuff

small pin-up (FINGER WAG), small pin-up (LENS FLARE)

mementos

garden party

BELIEVED TO BE A PORTRAIT OF DAVID WALKER

The lady in Small Pin-up (Finger Wag) (2013), who is aware of being the subject of the viewer’s gaze, makes a gesture of denial towards the viewer. The other woman in Small Pin-up (Lens-Flare) (2013) turns away from us, but again her arm partially denies the typical view of women in eroticised imagery. The lens-flare in the image also blocks our ability to see everything clearly. With these works Marshall plays with ideas of visibility and invisibility.

In the Pin-up series Marshall remodels the classic idea of the pin-up as an object of desire, representing them as self-confident people who refuse to be seen only as sex objects.

In the group of artworks under the collective title of Mementos, Marshall focuses on both collective and individual notions of commemoration. The sculptures and prints that are included in the installation Mementos (1998) are more declarative than the paintings. The slogans emblazed on five prints still evoke the activism of Langston Hughes, Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, who once emoted them. Alongside are the enormous ink stamps that lie scattered across the floor, along with gigantic inkpads leaning against the wall in the colours red, black and green – the colours of the Pan-African flag.

Marshall’s painting Garden Party (2003) portrays a group of people at a party in a typical American suburban garden, which is in fact the artist’s own. The painting, and also the video of the same name, depict a group of people of engaged in an everyday leisure activity, atypical of how people from non-white backgrounds tend to be depicted in media imagery. This monumental painting, along with the setting of ‘the garden’ that recurs in Marshall’s practice, follows on from the Garden Projects series of paintings that he began in the 1990s. These works addressed various ‘urban renewal’ public housing projects in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles that were developed at the government’s behest, as part of utopian aspirations to create affordable housing for a growing population. The projects had names like Altgeld Gardens and Many Mansions. Though originally successful neighbourhoods, economic disparity and civil unrest turned them into desolate ones, bringing stark contrast to their given names.

Believed to be a Portrait of David Walker (Circa 1830) (2009) references the style of nineteenth-century stately portraiture. In place of the image of an aristocrat or monarch, Marshall portrays a black person in unique finery, posed in three-quarter profile.

According to the title, the subject might be David Walker, a key figure in the struggle to abolish slavery in America. In 1829, Walker published his famous pamphlet Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America. In this emotional text, with well-chosen expletives, he urged slaves to rise up against their masters, regardless of the great risk involved. With this portrait, Marshall looks to provide an image of those for whom none existed.

the art of hanging pictures The Art of Hanging Pictures (2002) is an installation that consists of a series of framed photographs.

Mainly taken by the artist himself in Chicago’s South Side, the images depict such things as empty streets and sports fields, emergency vehicles, a brick wall, numerous churches, a kitsch swan ornament, and portraits of couples and members of families. The work possesses a fragmentary character, and in some versions of the display, visitors are free to rearrange the photographs to make their own compositions and narratives.

RELATED ACTIVITIES Introduction to Painting and Other Stuff with Elvira Dyangani Ose Conversation between the artist Kerry James Marshall and Elvira Dyangani Ose (Curator, International Art. Supported by Guaranty Trust Bank Plc at Tate Modern).

Date: 10 June, at 6:00 pm.

Place: Fundació Antoni Tàpies.

Free admission.

introduce the programme and the film Daughters of the Dust

by Julie Dash (1991).

Date: 7 June, at 7:30 p.m. Place: Filmoteca de Catalunya, Plaça Salvador Seguí, 1-9, Barcelona.

More information about the film programme: www.filmoteca.cat

Approximations Guided tour to Antoni Tàpies.

Collection, # 8, and Kerry James Conversation with Marshall. Painting and Other Stuff.

Paul Gilroy Date: 2 July and 25 October, at Conversation between the 5:00 p.m. Admission: 5.50 €. Chilartist Kerry James Marshall and dren under 16 and Friends of FunProfessor of English and American dació Antoni Tàpies, free entrance.

Literature at King’s College of Limited places. Advance booking London, Paul Gilroy. recommended (932 075 862 / Date: 4 October, at 6:00 pm (date reserves@ftapies.com). to be confirmed). Place: Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Free admission.

Invisible Realities Family activity around the temporary exhibition Kerry James The Colour of History.

Marshall. Painting and Other Stuff.

Introduction by Kerry Date: 27 September, at 5:00 p.m.

James Marshall Group age: Children aged beAs part of the exhibition Kerry tween 6 and 12 and accompanyJames Marshall. Painting and ing adults. Admission: 3 €.

Other Stuff, the Filmoteca de Children under 16 and Friends Catalunya is organising the film of Fundació Antoni Tàpies, free programme ‘The Colour of Hisentrance. Advance booking tory’. Kerry James Marshall will recommended.

Kerry James Marshall. Painting and Other Stuff 11 June – 26 October 2014 Curated by Nav Haq Texts by Nav Haq and Sofie Vermeiren Organised by

Kerry James Painting Marshall and other stuff

Institutional Sponsors

With the support of

Kerry James Marshall, Believed to be a Portrait of David Walker (Circa 1830), 2009

f

Kerry James Marshall.

PAINTING AND OTHER STUFF Kerry James Marshall’s work addresses questions of identity – national, gender, but especially racial – and responds to an investigation in order to contextualise the African American experience in the current socio-political situation. Technically complex and risky in the invention of new images, he finds as much inspiration in popular culture – the cinema, and especially the comic – as in art. For Marshall, the breadth of visual media he uses becomes a site to ask some of art’s most profound and enduring questions. The Fundació Antoni Tàpies focuses on his recent works, not only in painting but also in other media such as photography, video and installation around themes like daily life, beauty, memory and the history of art, amongst others.1 The scope of the exhibition is complemented by the artist’s vast personal collection of image cuttings that form a reservoir of references on black representation in art and wider culture.

1

Although not comprehensive or complete, this booklet contains clues to understand the background and complexity of some works in the exhibition, and serves both as an introduction to many of the themes in the work of Kerry James Marshall. The order of presentation of the texts on the works corresponds to the alphabetical order of the original titles.

ALANA, BLACK CHRISTMAS, NAOMI AND TYLA

BLACK STAR

GLEANING: AN IMAGE RECLAMATION PROJECT

SHOOTING STARS

VIGNETTES 2, 2.25, 2.50, 2.75 AND 3

WAKE

Alana, Black Christmas, Naomi and Tyla (all from 2012) belong to the series of photographs Black Light, images taken under ultraviolet light. Marshall’s intention for many of them was to experiment with images of the black subject taken in the dark. The series, which has a deliberate contradiction in its title, considers ideas of visibility and invisibility for individuals in society, as well as looking to raise an awareness of the conditions that frame our perception of others.

In Black Star (2011) a naked black woman bursts through a painting in a geometric-abstract style inspired by Frank Stella’s Black Paintings that he began in the late 1950s.

The title refers to the Black Star Line shipping company, established in the early twentieth century by Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and a leading campaigner of the Pan-African movement. The Black Star Line was originally conceived as a means for giving African-Americans the opportunity to return to Africa. The company possessed three steamships that sailed between the USA, the Caribbean, Central America and Africa. As a corporation, it stood as a symbol for black emancipation.

The video Gleaning: An Image Reclamation Project (2003–ongoing) focuses on the examination of visual culture from a black perspective. Combining sequences of the many found print images as well as footage the artist took himself, which together form his personal image bank, the video is a visual essay on representations of the black subject in society. Marshall adds images to the video regularly, and thus it continues to extend in duration.

Shooting Stars (1994) is about the shifts in meaning of a symbol according to time, place and user. On a black-and-white Polaroid from 1930 we see a Jewish girl with a yellow Star of David as a symbol of identification. Other Polaroids present ‘tags’ posted by gangs from various American neighbourhoods, used as emblems to mark their territory. The uppermost photograph is a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli terrorist of American origin. Goldstein was a member of a group of extremists who took up the Jewish star to wear as a power symbol. The remaining Polaroids present the star-shaped badge that American police officers wear. As a form, it has similarities to the Jewish star, but in this case it is an emblem of law enforcement. Shooting Stars reflects on the different ways this symbol is seen.

Marshall’s Vignette series present African-American people in romantic scenes that are both idyllic and visually rather flattened. The title and style of the series refer to the eighteenth century Rococo style with its more graceful and fluid approach to compositions. Marshall studied the Rococo period, including the work of Fragonard (1730–1806), absorbing these images of pleasure and excess. But Marshall combines these subjects with a certain soberness in order ‘not to give in to all the promises of this decadent genre’. Marshall makes use of stylistic parody in order to represent the hypothetical emotional life of the black subject, as if they too could lead a life of romantic, pastoral bliss. This sub-set of five paintings, numbered Vignettes 2, 2.25, 2.50, 2.75 and 3 (2005-8), depict the same joyous scene from different angles, each including different symbols and artefacts associated with black American and African culture.

Wake (2003) consists of a cluster of images that deal with the transportation and transformation of Africans as a consequence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Two Black Light photographs present cargo vessels that carried slaves from Africa to America, and 20 round plaques bearing images pay homage to the first 20 Africans who came to be sold in the slave auctions at the Jamestown Settlement in 1619. Another plaque is an image of Marshall in his youth, included as a symbolic marker of the first African-American born. The work also includes portraits of three black ballerinas. Ballet was long seen as not ‘fitting’ for people of an African-American background. Indeed, it used to be commonly taken that the black body was not suited for this dance form. Yet the activity is now seen as a marker for middle-class aspirations. The title Wake here brings together its two definitions – as well as being the name for commemorative religious ceremony for someone that has died, it is also the name for the trail left behind a ship as it moves through water.

BAOBAB ENSEMBLE Baobab Ensemble (2003) is an impromptu seating area made from found objects, such as crates, logs, discarded objects and plastic-covered mats and cushions. The installation also includes photographs of makeshift seating areas located under trees, referring to the traditional places of congregation under Baobab trees in Africa.

Baobab Ensemble also incorporates selected video works by Marshall, and occasionally his personal archive of image clippings that are fundamental reference material for his artworks.

DAILIES Dailies (1999–ongoing) is a serial comic strip that Marshall has produced over numerous years that addresses the lack of black superheroes in mainstream culture. The strip tells interwoven stories of a group of teenagers in an African-American inner-city neighbourhood where lawlessness has reached extreme levels.

When superhuman intervention is called for, a protagonist named Rythm Mastr steps up to teach the young heroes how to unlock the secret powers of a series of traditional African sculptures.

LAID TO REST The video installation Laid to Rest (1999) is viewed from the outside of a rectangular three-dimensional grey construction. The three-channel projection presents animated montages of stereotypical images of ‘black’ behaviour, including people involved in fragmentary, random acts of violence like robberies and drive-by shootings. Underneath is a doll laid out in a coffin surrounded by funeral wreaths. The mausoleum-like space is closed off, and the projected images may only be seen by peering through small holes in the wall.