User:YuanfeiZhang/sandbox/sandbox

/sandbox  Kerry James Marshall grew up in Birmingham, and then later in Los Angeles. He is the son of a hospital kitchen worker and a homemaker. His father's hobby was buying broken watches that he’d pick up in pawn shops for a song, figure out how to fix with the help of books he’d find used, and resell. From that story, we could derive the practical idea that Marshall, a companion on his father’s expeditions from a very early age, saw that something rarefied and complex, in which one had zero training, could be approached, deconstructed and — with education and application — mastered. His believes art is that the gears of historical and institutional power in Western art resided primarily in painting. When Kerry James Marshall studied at Otis, he was fascinated by the work of Bill Traylor, the self-taught artist who was born into slavery in Alabama, which inspired him to create more artwork relating to old-timey, grinning racial trope. His work steeped in black history and black popular culture embraces blackness as a signifier of difference to critically address the marginalization of blacks in the visual sphere. His artworks are identity-based, specifically, he made black aesthetic to be visible and brought black aesthetic into the fold of the grand narrative of art. Use his own words, he uses blackness to amplify the difference as an oppositional force, both aesthetically and philosophically. One such “black” issue Marshall takes up is that of beauty. “Black is beautiful” was one of the Black Arts movement’s slogans to counter the prevailing view inherently unattractive. Marshall directly appropriates the slogan in some of his works by utilizing language. Most of Marshall’s painting engage allegory and symbolism. Most of his work’s subject relates to the iniquities of colonial regimes.Marshall is best known for his richly worked large acrylic paintings on unstretched canvas. His works combined rough-hewn realism with elements of collage, signage, and lively and highly patterned settings. His images often suggest populist banners, views often will see ornate texts and figures looking directly into them. Some of his works often under-represented black middle class and many employ pictorial strategies. Most of Marshall’s artwork makes reference to the 1960s, depicting the civil rights movement.