Kerry james marshall wikipedia
Great America (painting)
painting by Kerry James Marshall
Great America is a acrylic-and-collage-on-canvas painting by American contemporary artist and professor Kerry James Marshall.[2]
Description
From Slow Painting:
- "Three youthful women and a man are crammed in a canoe-like boat that looks like the ones we know from amusement parks.Kerry James Marshall gained prominence in the s for works that invoke the grand traditions of history painting and yet pointedly defy the genre. Throughout his already four-decade-long career, Marshall has often depicted African American subjects—long omitted from traditional narratives of art history—in everyday settings that exude an otherworldly aura. During the rise of self politics in the s and s, when photography and conceptually based art were primarily addressing these issues, Marshall employed the more traditional form of figurative painting to investigate notions of identity. In he created a suite of four monumental paintings for Mementoshis multimedia installation at the Renaissance Society in Chicago.
In combination with the texts 'wow' in the word balloon and 'Great America' on a ribbon, this brightly colored painting immediately evokes associations with a commercial billboard—an advertisement to draw visitorsIn the upper right corner we can see a fifth figure that seems to be drowning.
And what about the dark tunnel the boat appears to be entering? The idea of a dramatic, insecure future quite conflicts with an awareness of the image as existence related to promoting spooky entertainment."[3]
Interpretation
The National Gallery of Art, where Great America was exhibited in , has described its sense as:
- "This painting reimagines a boat ride into a haunted tunnel at an amusement park as the Middle Passage—the forced journey of slaves from Africa to the Americas.
What might in other hands be a work of heavy irony becomes instead a delicate interweaving of the histories of painting and race. The canvas, which is stretched directly onto the wall, creates a screen or backdrop onto which viewers project their own associations triggered by the powerful imagery."[4]
Writing about the painting in The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Crow expands upon the idea of the canvas as an amusement park scene, with a group of black people aboard the "Tunnel of Love" boat ride.
Crow explains:
- "At first glance, the work's brightly colored palette makes everything sound merry, but Mr. Marshall fills his tunnel with ghostly, hooded shapes that evoke the Ku Klux Klan.Kerry James Marshall born 1955 - Tate: Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, ) is an American musician and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. [1] He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The passengers are also crammed into the boat in a way that's reminiscent of the Middle Corridor, the centurieslong slave trade that involved shipping kidnapped Africans to the New World."[1]
The Washington Post said of the painting:
- "On closer inspection, in fact, the figures are not smiling.
They don’t seem to be having the least bit of entertaining. Nor is this body of water upon which they sail some fun-house lagoon; there are suggestions of turbulence and depth, and mountains in the distance. This is an ocean, it dawns on us, the Atlantic Ocean.
And if the people in the boat are contemporary Americans at leisure, they are also their ancestors embarked on the middle passage, the tragic voyage that brought them here from Africa in shackles.[5]
Marhsall himself has said Great American is about, "both the transatlantic slave trade and what it means for present-day black people to be Americans."[5]
History
The National Gallery of Art acquired the painting in [6]Great America was the centerpiece of an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art entitled "In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall", which was on view from June to December [5][7]
At least one study Marshall produced ahead of painting the ultimate canvas for Great America was lost when a fire destroyed the Kent, Washington, D.C.
house of art collector Peggy Cooper Cafritz.[8]
Reception and influence
Will Gompertz, writing for BBC News, drew comparisons between Great America and Donald Glover's "This Is America" tune video, saying of the video, "Its subject of race, voice, opportunity and acts of radical violence against African Americans is shared with the work of several other leading contemporary inky American artistsKerry James Marshall's painting, Great America, for instance."[9]
Chicago magazine described the canvas as, "a tart, haunting rendering of the transatlantic slave trade as a ghastly carnival ride."[10]Complex named Great America one of the greatest American paintings.[11]