The Importance of Being Figurative

Whenever Black artist and art professor Kerry James Marshall would tour a major art gallery, he was reminded of the old Sesame Street song that goes "one of these things is not like the other, one of these things is just not the same." The problem, as Marshall saw it, was that all the art work, at least when it came to forms and figures, was exactly the same. All those pictured were of European descent. Rarely, if ever, were there black or brown faces.

When he consulted the major art history books, the situation was much the same. There might be mention of Jacob Lawrence, or Romare Bearden, or Jean-Michael Basquiat, but for the most part African-American art and artists were dismissed as primitive and not worthy of the acclaim awarded their white counterparts.

"There needs to be more about people of color. There is scant representation of black folk at every level," Marshall says. "We ain't goin' nowhere. We're here and we've been here."

Marshall, 57, has spent his career as an artist focusing on black figures. Last year, his painting "Great America" was selected to be included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery. And today, he appeared at the East Wing of the Gallery to deliver a lecture on the state of art entitled "The Importance of Being Figurative."

Including more faces of diverse colors in a collection of art benefits all the works, Marshall contended. "If everything is the same, those things fade into the other things that are just like them," he said. "You want the clearest distinction possible. That has a value in its own right regardless of what you think of the work. You can make the case that an expanded field is not a diminished field."  To prove his point, Marshall showed a slide containing all white portraits; then he replaced one portrait to include a black female face and the contrast did enhance the entire collection.

He said that much of his art work has been designed to "fill in the gaps" that have been created by the exclusion of Black artists from the mainstream.

For example, is perusing books claiming to define beauty, black representation isn't there. "In the Great American Pin-Up there is not a single black figure. That is a problem," Marshall said, adding that he created a series of pin-up posters depicting black females.

The idea of a hero in art culture also excludes blacks. "To allow that to stand unchallenged is unhealthy," he said. To remedy that deficiency, Marshal is continuing to display a comic book character series called Rythm MASTR. There, black figures escape from the Chicago Art Museum to do good and battle evil.

In another series of works called Monuments, Marshall attaches some type of slave reference to established symbols of freedom such as the Washington Monument. "This is to show that there were other people fighting for their freedom, too," he said.

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips

With its elements of folk art, myth and social consciousness, I don't find Black figurative art primitive, I find it powerful. And James Kerry Marshall's "Great America" (1994) is a prime example of that power. The large painting, which is now hanging in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in DC, is an absolute must-see. It re-imagines Black freedom as a theme park boat ride through a haunted house. So much symbolism. The boat trip as Middle Passage journey. The haunting ghosts as white sheet-clad KKKers. The ribbons bearing the title reminiscent of patriotic mottoes. The use of red (and blue and white). The word WOW in stark white letters surrounded by a field of red. The red cross. Judy and I spent more than 10 minutes in front of the painting, talking and trying to take it all in. Powerful, powerful, stuff, indeed.