Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, and educated at the Otis Art Institute in California, where he received a bachelor of fine arts degree and an honorary doctorate. The subject matter of his paintings, installation s and public projects is often drawn from African American popular culture and rooted in the geography of his upbringing: “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central (Los Angeles) near the Black Panthers’ headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility,” says Marshall. In his Mementos series of paintings and sculptures, Marshall pays tribute to the civil rights movement, with mammoth printing stamps featuring bold slogans of the era (e.g., “Black Power!”) and paintings of middle-class living rooms where ordinary black citizens tend a domestic scene populated by the ghosts of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and other heroes of the 1960s. Marshall’s work evokes a broad range of art history, from the grand tradition of narrative Renaissance painting to black folk art. A striking aspect of Marshall’s work is the emphatically black skin tone of his figures that he thinks is really beautiful. Marshall lives in Illinois, where he is an instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Before Viewing
Make a list of those things that are connected to their identity (e.g., people, experiences, race, religious values, interests, objects, places). Another way of asking this question is, “What makes you, you?”
After Viewing
To Think About and Discuss
• Marshall says he wants to “reclaim the image of blackness as an image of power.” What do you think he means and how does he try to do this?
• What do you learn about Marshall’s identity from this segment?
• Marshall says that he is either working with a set of conventions that have already been established or he is working against a set of conventions. Pick at least two works by Marshall that you saw in the video and tell which view you think they express and why.
• Do you think artists look at works in a museum differently than other people? How so? What connections exist between art of the past and the work Marshall is doing today?
• What inspired Marshall to create comic strips? How are Marshall’s comic books different from other comic books?
• What social responsibilities does Marshall assume? What social responsibilities do you have?
• For more information on Kerry James Marshall, see www.carnegieinternational.org/html/art/marshall.htm
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. She studied art at various schools there, including the Ecole du Louvre, Académie des Beaux-Arts, Académie Julian, and Atelier Fernand Léger. In 1938, she emigrated to the United States and continued her studies at the Art Students League in New York. Though she began as an engraver and painter, by the 1940s she had turned to sculptural work, for which she is now recognized as a twentieth-century leader. Greatly influenced by the influx of European Surrealist artists who immigrated to the United States after World War II, Bourgeois’s early sculpture was composed of groupings of abstract and organic shapes, often carved from wood. By the 1960s she began to execute her work in rubber, bronze and stone, and the pieces themselves became larger and more referential to what has become the dominant theme of her work — her childhood. The anthropomorphic shapes her pieces take—the female and male bodies are continually referenced and remade—are charged with sexuality and innocence and the interplay between the two. Bourgeois’s work is in the collections of most major museums around the world. She lives in New York.
Before Viewing
Discuss with students: Is it necessary to understand the artist’s meaning in a work of art in order to appreciate it? (Bourgeois herself has said, “A work of art doesn’t have to be explained. If it doesn’t touch you, I have failed.”)
After Viewing
To Think About and Discuss
• Bourgeois has said, “I am not what I am. I am what I do with my hands.” Discuss the meaning of this statement and reflect on why you think hands are such an important element in Bourgeois’s work.
• As a student at the Sorbonne, Bourgeois studied mathematics and geometry. How is this knowledge reflected in her work?
• Bourgeois states that it might be true that an artist has “something in them that either refuses or is unable to grow up.” What do you think she means by this?
• What is Bourgeois’s concern in putting her sculpture outside in a public setting? How does she resolve this issue?
• Develop a list of materials one might use for a sculpture. Compare and contrast the characteristics of each of these materials. Tell which you would select for a self-portrait and why.
Images on the Web
• Eyes at www.metmuseum.org/collections/view1.asp?dep=21&full=0&item=1986%2E397
• The Nest at www.sfmoma.org/collections/recentacquisitions/macollbourgeois.html
• Ste. Sebastienne, second version, State VI at www.moma.org/docs/collection/printsbooks/c48.htm
• The Blind Leading the Blind at www.walkerart.org/resources/resmsgmapframe.html
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