User:YuanfeiZhang/sandbox/sandbox/sandbox

Influence
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 them with the help of books he’d find used, and resell them. 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 and deconstructed. His home in Los Angeles was near the Black Panthers’ headquarters which left him with a feeling of social responsibility and influenced directly into his artwork. .

Marshall was previously educated at the Otis Art Institute, and he received his BFA there. He also received an honorary doctuorate at the Otis Art Institute. He used to be an art professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and he was a recipient of the prestigious McArthur Foundation Fellowship. Now he lives in Chicago.

Marshall 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.

Marshall is one of the members of the contemporary artists of color such as Howardena Pindell, Charlene Teters, and Fred Wilson who often incorporated the issue of race into their work. His work is steeped in black history and black popular culture embracing 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. Using 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 that it was inherently unattractive. Marshall directly appropriates the slogan in some of his works by utilizing language. .

Most of Marshall’s painting engages allegory and symbolism. Most of his work’s subject matter relates to the iniquities of colonial regimes. .Marshall is best known for his richly designed large acrylic paintings on unstretched canvas. His works combined rough-hewn realism with elements of collage, signage, with lively and highly patterned settings. His images often suggest populist banners. Viewers often will see ornate texts and figures looking directly into them. Some of his works often are 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. Marshall’s work embraces black history and black popular culture. His artworks are closely related to the Black Arts movement. Through exploring the theme of being black in America, Marshall’s work also explores race in context with the “Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, housing projects, black beauty, and the political and social invisibility of blacks”. Marshall’s work was heavily influenced by his upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s and LA in the 1960s. His works were always based on the experience of being black in America during these time periods. Marshall created comic strips, such as Rythm Mastr which was a story of an African American teenager who gained superpowers through African sculptures using drum patterns. Marshall was concerned with the lack of African American heroes kids could look up to while growing up. He was one of the many African American artists who tried to incorporate themes of race and being black into his works. Often times Marshall’s works were perceived to be full of emotion portraying what it was like being an Urban African American. His works displayed middle-class African American homes and families. One of his most famous series of works The Lost Boys (1993-1995) displays the lives of and issues many African Americans faced. The series of portraits was of young African American boys from the shoulder up, with very dark skin tones, which contrasted with extreme whiteness of the subject's eyes which was common in Marshall’s works. The portraits also featured almost completely white imagery, with white orbs, flowers, and areas in the background to create even more contrast. The artist explained that this series of portraits was to show these young boys loss of innocence at an early age and being a victim to ghettos and public housing. .