In reference to a state of invisibility often relates to black Americans in their representation to culture and society. The concept of black and invisibility are connections in the art work of Kerry James Marshall. The subject matter of Marshall’s paintings, installations, and public projects is often drawn from African-American popular culture, and is rooted in the geography of his upbringing. Marshall shares that:
“Blackness has always been stigmatised, even amongst black people who flee from the density of that blackness. Some black people recoil from black people who are that dark because it has always been stigmatised. In Western Catholicism darkness was evil, in the colonial and imperial context dark skin was always weak, powerless, subjugated. If you see these images all the time they become commonplace, and they no longer become a spectacular or sensational thing,”
Kerry James Marshall, a black artist, had his childhood centered around the …show more content…
The rich iconography of the painting offers a plentiful range of colorful, almost idealized, images of childhood abundance. The toy racing car, soccer balls and the white picket fences project an image of plenty in suburban America.
“When I made The Lost Boys, I really felt that I can done everything that I wanted to do in a painting - the scale and everything. It had the complexity, control, a mastery surface in paint… It had monumental quality - a kind of grandeur. And accompanying that grandeur is a kind of surface beauty and facility that demonstrate skill. But this grandeur is also in the themes: The work is about something larger than its parochial subject. It’s about painting as well.”
This series is driven from personal experience; Marshall's youngest brother was imprisoned shortly before he started the series. J.M. Barrie's literary work Peter Pan, had also been a source for
“Blackness has always been stigmatised, even amongst black people who flee from the density of that blackness. Some black people recoil from black people who are that dark because it has always been stigmatised. In Western Catholicism darkness was evil, in the colonial and imperial context dark skin was always weak, powerless, subjugated. If you see these images all the time they become commonplace, and they no longer become a spectacular or sensational thing,”
Kerry James Marshall, a black artist, had his childhood centered around the …show more content…
The rich iconography of the painting offers a plentiful range of colorful, almost idealized, images of childhood abundance. The toy racing car, soccer balls and the white picket fences project an image of plenty in suburban America.
“When I made The Lost Boys, I really felt that I can done everything that I wanted to do in a painting - the scale and everything. It had the complexity, control, a mastery surface in paint… It had monumental quality - a kind of grandeur. And accompanying that grandeur is a kind of surface beauty and facility that demonstrate skill. But this grandeur is also in the themes: The work is about something larger than its parochial subject. It’s about painting as well.”
This series is driven from personal experience; Marshall's youngest brother was imprisoned shortly before he started the series. J.M. Barrie's literary work Peter Pan, had also been a source for