Kerry James Marshall: Mastry - Hardcover

Alteveer, Ian; Molesworth, Helen; Roelstraete, Dieter; Winograd, Abigail

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0847848337 ISBN 13: 9780847848331

Publisher: Skira Rizzoli, 2016

Synopsis

The definitive monograph on contemporary African American painter Kerry James Marshall, accompanying a major traveling retrospective. This long-awaited volume celebrates the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of America’s greatest living painters. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. Best known for large-scale interiors, landscapes, and portraits featuring powerful black figures, Marshall explores narratives of African American history from slave ships to the present and draws upon his deep knowledge of art history from the Renaissance to twentieth-century abstraction, as well as other sources such as the comic book and the muralist tradition. With luscious color and brushstrokes and highly detailed patterning, his direct and intimate scenes of black middle-class life conjure a wide range of emotions, resulting in powerful paintings that confront the position of African Americans throughout American history. Richly illustrated, this monumental book features essays by noted curators as well as the artist, and more than 100 paintings from throughout the artist’s career arranged thematically by subject: history painting; beauty, as expressed through the nude, portraiture, and self-portraiture; landscape; religion; and the politics of black nationalism.

About this title

About the Author:

Ian Alteveer is associate curator in the department of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Helen Molesworth is the chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. Dieter Roelstraete is a curator of Documenta 14 and the former Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA). Abigail Winograd is a research associate at the MCA.

From Booklist:

A quote from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man inaugurates this superb treatise on the pictorially rich, intellectually spiky, and altogether masterful work of African American artist Marshall, who has as much to say about art as he does about racial identity and representation. Between Marshall's own forceful essay and the illuminating contributions of contemporary art curator Terrie Sultan and artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa, readers will discern the genesis of Marshall's belief that old-fashioned technical proficiency and true clarity of intent are essential to making authentic art. Having declared early on that each figure he painted would be black and each image would be one "that spoke directly to the issue of blackness," Marshall has created dramatic and arch narrative works that bring about collisions between white middle-class iconography and symbols of black culture both genuine and imposed. And he has deliberately linked his work to art's grand tradition, subtly alluding to such masters as Rembrandt and Jacob Lawrence. Donna Seaman
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About this edition

• Publisher: Skira Rizzoli
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0847848337
• ISBN 13: 9780847848331
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 288