Kerry James Marshall – putting black people front and centre

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, as the son of a janitor, Kerry James Marshall had no idea what an artist was.

Poor and black, there were no family trips to museums or galleries – he didn’t know what they were either.

But when Kerry James Marshall was allowed a glimpse of a scrapbook his teacher kept in a drawer to show to children who’d been good, he knew he wanted to make pictures.

The white population is pretty good at projecting image of its ideal self Kerry James Marshall

A few years later and a ticket to the local library opened up the world of art to him. He devoured art books, carefully studying all the Old Masters. But he quickly realised that the “art world” presented for him was only a partial view of the real world.

Where were all the black people? Where were the people who looked like him?

‘No more white people’

They were, he realised, always on the periphery, in the background, never central to the picture.

Marshall and his family eventually moved to South Central in Watts, Los Angeles, where race riots in 1965 saw 34 people killed – one of many pivotal events which shaped him as an artist.

At 14-years-old he vowed never to paint a white person again.

He laughs when I ask him why. “There are already quite enough,” he tells me.

Untitled (Beach Towel), 2014 (Picture: Kerry James Marshall)

“The white population is pretty good at projecting image of its ideal self into the world,” he says.

So his work, in short, aims to put black people at the heart of his work, to “bring that subject to the centre”.

And his figures are really black. Beautiful. Striking. Powerful.

His way

He has his own version of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. She stares out at you. Not only, says Marshall, is she centre of the picture, but she is beautiful in her blackness.

She has short Afro hair. She has not been drawn into a “white” version of beauty. She doesn’t have straightened hair, she has not lightened her skin.

(Picture: Felix Clay 2014)

Marshall doesn’t claim that his art will bring about revolution, but for him it rights an obvious wrong. It allows black people a key role – they are truly in the picture and not like the slave in Manet’s Olympia, leaning at the side of the white mistress reclining nude but, as in his Untitled (Studio) they are the whole picture, both the artist and the subjects.

Marshall’s art is about taking control. He paints what he wants without having to ask anyone for the right to do it his way.

His take on art is the same as his take on racial politics. He stops short of saying protest is pointless when I ask him about the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting dead of the young black man, Michael Brown.

Self-starting

But he tells me this. Such protest is essentially asking for people in power – white people – to give up something they don’t want to. He believes it’s better to have something, a skill, a talent, to allow you to make your own way in the world.

Untitled (Pink Towel), 2014 (Picture: Kerry James Marshall)

He of course has his art. Not so easy for those living on the breadline in Ferguson, I say.

But for Marshall there are no excuses. Controversially he says too many people in communities like Ferguson sit back waiting for jobs to be created on schemes run by the white people who hold power.

Black people in America need to put themselves in the picture, he says. It is a country with a black president who was only elected because he wasn’t “too” black.

Kerry James Marshall is as interesting to listen to as his art is to look at.

Kerry James Marshall: Look See – at David Zwirner, London until 22 November 2014