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Hyper-Realism

Textures

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Kehinde Wiley - Artists - Sean Kelly Gallery

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Sean Kelly is a contemporary art gallery located at 475 Tenth Ave at 36th St, NY, NY 10018. Our hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11:00am - 6:00pm, and Saturday 10:00am-6:00pm.

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Painting

Griselle

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Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by Partner and President Marc Payot

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Painting

Textures

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Biography

Toyin Ojih Odutola (b.1985 in Ile-Ife, Nigeria; lives and works in New York, NY) is best known for her multimedia drawings and works on paper, which explore the malleability of identity and the possibilities in visual story-telling. Interested in the topography of skin, Ojih Odutola has a distinctive style of mark-making using only basic drawing materials, such as ballpoint pens, pencils, pastels and charcoal. This signature technique involves building up of layers on the page, through blending and shading with the highest level of detail, creating compositions that reinvent and reinterpret the traditions of portraiture. Ojih Odutola credits the development of her style from using pen, which holds a special significance through its function as a writing tool, as her work is also akin to fiction. She often spends months crafting narratives that unfold through series of artworks like the chapters of a book.

Her work is inspired by both art history and popular culture, as well as her own personal history-being born in Nigeria then moving as a child to America where she was raised in conservative Alabama. The idea of traveling or transporting the self is a recurring theme in her work and, for Ojih Odutola, the construction of her figures is a means of discovering an individual's character and personal story. Though the representation of skin has been a core focus of her practice, she has also explored depictions of landscapes, architecture and domestic interiors in more recent series.

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Toyin Ojih Odutola " Artists " Jack Shainman Gallery

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Toyin Ojih Odutola (b.1985 in Ile-Ife, Nigeria; lives and works in New York, NY) is best known for her multimedia drawings and works on paper, which explore the malleability of identity and the possibilities in visual story-telling.

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Printmaking

Collage

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Artist, Organizer & Social Justice Activist | Favianna Rodriguez

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Artwork by Interdisciplinary Artist | Favianna Rodriguez

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Favianna’s artwork is about manifesting a vision of the future and ranges from prints to installations to posters. Her works often take on important issues such as migration, feminism, climate change, and sexual freedom.

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Printmaking

Arbitrary Color

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JavaScript must be enabled in order to use this site. For help enabling JavaScript in your browser: www.enable-javascript.com If you are using plugins like NoScript or ScriptSafe please be sure to disable them or make an exception for this site.

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Collage

Painting

Textures

Glitter!

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Mickalene Thomas (born January 28, 1971) is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.

Mickalene Thomas was born on January 28, 1971 in Camden, New Jersey. She was raised in Hillside and East Orange. She was raised by her mother Sandra "Mama Bush" Bush, who, at 6'1" tall, modeled in the 1970s. She exposed Mickalene and her brother to art by enrolling them in after-school programs at the Newark Museum, and the Henry Street Settlement in New York. Thomas' mother raised her and her brother Buddhists. As a teenager, Mickalene and her mother had a very intimate and strenuous relationship due to her parents' addiction to drugs and Thomas dealing with her sexuality, which she documented in the short film Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman: A Portrait of My Mother.

Thomas lived and attended school in Portland, Oregon, from the mid-1980s to the early '90s, studying pre-law and Theater Arts. Thomas received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2002. Thomas participated in a residency program at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York from 2000 to 2003. She also participated in a residency in Giverny, France at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Artwork, style, and influences

During her early career, she found herself immersed in the growing culture of DIY artists and musicians, leading her to start her own body of work. Mickalene noted that when she became an artist, fashion was always "in the back of my mind" as a source of inspiration. She was influenced by Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson, and Romare Bearden Most influential to her was the work of Carrie Mae Weems, especially her Kitchen Table and Ain't Jokin series, which were part of a retrospective held at the Portland Art Museum in 1994. Thomas describes the encounter in this way: "It was the first time I saw work by an African-American female artist that reflected myself and called upon a familiarity of family dynamics and sex and gender." Weems' work not only played a role in Mickalene Thomas' decision to switch studies and apply to Pratt Institute in New York but to use her experience and turn it into art. Thomas has also stated that Faith Ringgold provided an strong influencing in establishing Thomas' path.

Her depictions of African-American women explore notions of celebrity and identity while engaging with the representation of black femininity and black power. Inhabiting the '70s-style genre of Blaxploitation, the subjects in Thomas's paintings and collages radiate sexuality, which has been interpreted by some as satire of misogynistic and racist tropes in media, including films and music associated with the Blaxploitation genre. Women in provocative poses dominate the picture plane and are surrounded by decorative patterns inspired by her childhood as in Left Behind 2 Again from 2012, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Her subjects are often well-known women like Eartha Kitt, Whitney Houston, Oprah Winfrey, and Condoleezza Rice. Her portrait of Michelle Obama was the first individual portrait done of the First Lady and was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery's Americans Now show.

In her 2017 solo exhibition " Mentors, Muses, and Celebrities" at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM), Thomas created multi-media installations that centered black women in the narrative-arcs of their own stories. According to art critic Rikki Byrd: "Positioning black women - artists, actresses, characters, and her own family - as mentors and muses, and as heroic figures in a lineage of their own, Thomas overrides oppressive narratives."

The many years that Thomas has spent studying art history, portrait painting, landscape painting, and still life has informed her work. She has drawn inspiration from multiple artistic periods and cultural influences throughout Western art history, particularly the early modernists such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Édouard Manet as well as more contemporary influences such as Romare Bearden and Pam Grier. She models her figures on the classical poses and abstract settings popularized by these modern artists as a way to reclaim agency for women who have been represented as objects to be desired or subjugated.

Thomas is known for her elaborate mixed-media paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel that present a "complex vision of what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty." Rhinestones serve as an added layer of meaning and a metaphor for artifice. Rhinestones accentuate specific elements of each painting, while subtly confronting our assumptions of what is feminine and what defines a woman, specifically black women. According to the Financial Times, "Proclaiming her own visibility and that of other women of colour is at the heart of Thomas's practice, which inserts the black female body into art history by placing her muses in iconic poses and settings." Thomas, and curators of her work, see Thomas's status as a black lesbian as part of what makes her gaze different from that of white male artists in history.

Thomas's subjects are virtually always women of color; a means to portray and empower the women and celebrate their culture and beauty-sometimes by incorporating them into iconic Western paintings. As a member of, and inspired by, the Post-Black Art movement, Thomas' work redefines perceptions of race, gender, and sexuality. Thomas blurs the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary. Her subjects often look directly at the viewer, challenging the dominance of the male gaze in art. This assertive portrayal indicates that the models are at ease in their own skin, thus challenging the stereotype of the silent and inferior woman objectified by the viewer's gaze. In addition, seemingly insignificant decisions (like not straightening the figures' hair) have the important effect of encouraging women of color to accept themselves as they are and not conform to a particular ideology of beauty imposed by society.

Thomas's work is also distinctive in its foregrounding of queer identity; she is a queer woman of color representing women of color in a way that emphasizes their agency and erotic beauty. By emphasizing the women's striking presence and sensuality along with their assertive gazes, Thomas empowers these subjects, representing them as resilient, stunning women who command the spectator's attention. The sitters have the control and power of the gaze, and when this exchange is between women, it subverts the traditional dominance of the male gaze in art and visual culture. Thomas's queer identity is foregrounded, for example, in her painting and print edition entitled Sleep: Deux femmes noires (2012 and 2013), in which we see two female bodies intertwined in an embrace, on a sofa, thus highlighting for her audience the femininity, beauty, and sexuality of women lovers.

Thomas' has collaborated with the fashion house Dior on several occasions. Including designing handbags and her own design of the classic Dior Bar Jacket.

Le Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires is a painting created by African-American visual artist Mickalene Thomas. The title of the painting translates from French as The luncheon on the grass: The Three Black Women. The painting is a contemporary take on Édouard Manet's 1863 painting entitled Le dejeuner sur l'herbe. Thomas' piece portrays three black women adorned with rich colors, vintage patterned clothing, and radiant Afro-styled hair. The women's positioning and posing is reminiscent of the subjects of Manet's piece, but the powerful gazes of all three women are fixed on the viewer. Thomas created the painting, her largest piece at the time, in 2010 after being commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City to create a display piece for 53rd street window of the museum's restaurant The Modern.

Description

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires was created in three stages. First, Thomas photographed three models in the sculpture garden of the MoMA to make the piece "site-specific". Thomas then created a collage using the photograph as a base material and added other elements. This collage now hangs in the lobby of the P.S.1, an extension of the MoMA in Queens that houses unconventional contemporary artwork. The third, painted version was based on the original photograph but composed of collage-like painted segments on wood panels and rendered in acrylic, oil, enamel, and rhinestones.

The painting stands 10 feet tall and extends 24 feet wide. Thomas has stated that she chose the massive size of the painting to physically and symbolically "take up space" in spaces that were traditionally dominated by white male artists. The original installation of the painting was in the window of The Modern, MoMA's renowned restaurant. While on display here, the piece was visible every hour of the day because it could be seen by passersby on the street; this accessibility made Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires Thomas' most public piece yet.

The subjects of the painting are three rhinestone-studded, richly dressed women of color. The models who are the subjects of the original Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires photograph are all friends of Thomas which is common across many of her photographs. All three women are fully clothed- compared to the nude female subjects in Manet's version of the scene- in richly patterned dresses that Thomas herself designed, and they sit upon fabrics staged by the artists. Many vintage patterns are used throughout the work. Thomas claims that this juxtaposition of patterns serves to represent the "amalgamation of all of the different things we are as Americans." Behind the women in both the photograph and the painting sits a Matisse sculpture that was situated behind the women in the sculpture garden.

Influences

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires is unmistakably based on Édouard Manet's 1863 painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. Manet's piece, which caused intense controversy at the time of its creation, exhibits two undressed women who are sitting comfortably with two formally dressed men at a picnic. While one of the nude women is crouched in the background, the three other subjects lounge in the foreground. The female subject in the foreground is looking out, meeting the gaze of the viewer, while the two men next to her are casually looking around.

In Thomas' version of the painting, the three subjects in the foreground are all women of color who are fully clothed in colorful dresses with patterns reminiscent of the 1970s, and all three of the women's gazes confront the viewer. The woman in the background of Manet's scene is represented in Thomas' piece by a Matisse sculpture in front of which she positioned the models in the photograph taken in the MoMA sculpture garden. Paying homage to Matisse by using his sculpture as a figure in her piece is not anomalous for Thomas as she often includes allusions to the iconic artist in her works. Thomas has cited Romare Bearden as an influence. In addition to these explicit allusions, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires, along with many of Thomas' other pieces, is inspired by Dada, cubism, and the Harlem Renaissance.

The majority of critical responses to Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires address the piece's interaction with post-black and post-feminist ideas.

Thomas' work has received criticism common of post-black art claiming that, through the overtly sensual representation of her subjects, she is reveling "in the glittery spoils of success at the expense of meaningful social engagement."

Proponents of her work, however, believe that her approach to representing her subjects "reflects the shift in black art from didactic political narrative to post-black satire."

Regarding the way in which the subjects meet the viewer's gaze, Seattle Art Museum curator Catharina Manchanda remarked, "these women are so grounded and perfectly comfortable in their own space... While we might be looking at them, they are also sizing us up."

MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach who originally commissioned the painting for the 53rd street window display explained that he requested Thomas largely because "her treatment of surfaces as complex layers of material, lacquer, rhinestone and paint corresponds with the libidinous nature of the contents she depicts."

Since the original installment of this painting wherein the piece was exhibited as a singular display, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires has been included in a number of exhibits across North America including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Film, music, and video art

In addition to her paintings, the Brooklyn-based Thomas works in the mediums of photography, collage, printmaking, video art, sculpture and installation art. Her works, in particular the Odalisque series (2007), have been interpreted as "investigating the artist-model relationship [...] but from an updated perspective of female inter-subjectivity and same-sex desire." ( La Leçon d'amour, 2008) She has restaged themes and symbolism with a long lineage in Western art in her references to the odalisque representation of women in exotic settings. She experimented with institutional images in FBI/Serial Portraits (2008), based on mug shots of African-American women. In 2012, Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe, her first major solo museum exhibition, opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum. This show, the title of which references Gustave Courbet's 1866 painting L'Origine du monde, showcased a series of recent portraits, landscapes and interiors.

Thomas has collaborated with musician Solange, creating the cover art for her 2013 EP True. The cover began as a portrait of Solange the artist herself commissioned. Thomas and Solange also collaborated on a trailer for the music video for the song " Losing You."

Her short film Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman, created for her exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, is about Sandra Bush, her mother and longtime muse. In it, Sandra talks about careers, relationships, beauty, and her fatal illness. The film made its television debut on HBO on February 24, 2014, and has run regularly since.

Thomas has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the BOMB Magazine Honor (2015), MoCADA Artistic Advocacy Award (2015), AICA-USA Best Show in a Commercial Space Nationally, First Place (2014), Anonymous Was A Woman Grant (2013), Audience Award: Favorite Short, Second Annual Black Star Film Festival (2013), Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Award (2012), Timehri Award for Leadership in the Arts (2010), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2009), Pratt Institute Alumni Achievement Award (2009) and Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2007).

Thomas has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine (2013) (resident faculty); Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program, Giverny, France (2011); Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Aspen, Colorado (2010); Studio Museum in Harlem (2003); Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont (2001); and Yale Norfolk Summer of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut (1999).

Thomas is represented by Lehmann Maupin in New York; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Kavi Gupta in Chicago and Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris.

Mickalene Thomas's work is held in many collections, including 21c Museum, Akron Art Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Modern Art, National Portrait Gallery, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Public Library, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Rubell Family Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Taschen Collection, Mikki and Stanley Weithorn Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, West Collection, and Yale University Art Gallery.

Thomas is an out lesbian. Her partner, and current collaborator and subject, is Racquel Chevremont. With Racquel, Thomas founded The Josie Club - which is a support network for queer female artists of color to help support, fundraise and sponsor their work.

2006 - Something About You... at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL

2006 - Brawlin' Spitfire at The Proposition Special Project, DUST Gallery, Las Vegas, NV

2007 - An Imitation of Love, Brawlin' Spitfire Two at Project Room, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA

2008 - Girlfriends, Lovers, Still Lifes and Landscape at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL

2008 - What's Love Got To Do With It? at Bloom Projects, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, CA

2009 - Mickalene Thomas Alumni Achievement Award Exhibition at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

2009 - Something You Can Feel at La Conservera Contemporary Art Space, Ceutí, Spain

2009 - She's Come UnDone! at Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY

2010 - Put A Little Sugar In My Bowl at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA

2011 - More Than Everything at Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY

2011 - Mickalene Thomas - Mama Bush: One of a Kind Two at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan

2012 - How to Organize a Room Around A Striking Piece of Art at Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY

2012 - Origin of the Universe at Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; traveled to Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

2014 - I Was Born To Do Great Things at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL

2014 - Tête de Femme at Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY

2014 - Femme au divan II at l'Ecole des Beaux Art, Monaco

2014 - Femme au divan I at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

2014 - Mickalene Thomas: Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

2015 - Mickalene Thomas: I Am Your Sister, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels

2016 - the desire of the other at Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY and Hong Kong, China

2016 - Mentors, Muses, and Celebrities at Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO

2017 - "Mentors, Muses, and Celebrities" at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA

2018 - Mickalene Thomas: I Can't See You Without Me at Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University

2019 - Mickalene Thomas: A Moment's Pleasure, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

2021 - Mickalene Thomas: Beyond the Pleasure Principle at Lévy Gorvy New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong

2010 - Le Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires for The Modern Window at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

2010 - Le Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires for On-Site, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY

2012 - Untitled for Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York

2013 - Faux Real for Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL

2013 - Portrait de Priscilla la Petite Chienne Deux :) for Little Collector, New York, NY

2013 - Better Days for Volkshaus, Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland

2013 - Mickalene Thomas for Brother Vellies for Brother Vellies, New York, NY

2014 - Untitled for Art in Embassies Program, Dakar, Senegal

2020 - Leimert Park station for the Los Angeles County Metro Rail system.

2013 - Second Annual Black Star Film Festival at International House, Philadelphia, PA

2013 - The Poetics of Unforgetting at Hackney Picturehouse, London, England

2013 - Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA

2013 - Reel Artists Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto, Canada

2014 - Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman HBO Premiere at HBO Theater, New York, NY

2014 - HBO: Documentaries on HBO, New York, NY

2015 - Atlanta Television Festival at Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta, GA

2009 - Oh Mickey! for Kreemart and the American Patrons of Tate, Haunch of Venison, New York, NY

2009 - Professor of Music and DJ Dean of Admissions for MoMixx at Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

2013 - Takeabite: The Opera at Performa 13, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY

Tinson, Teddy. "Making Up with Mickalene Thomas", Interview Magazine. June 25, 2014.

Frank, Priscilla. "Mickalene Thomas Delivers the Most Stylish Philosophy Lesson of All Time", Huffington Post. June 26, 2014.

Murray, Derek Conrad. "Mickalene Thomas: Afro-Kitsch and the Queering of Blackness." American Art: Smithsonian American Art Museum. Spring 2014.

Frank, Priscilla. "Mickalene Thomas Directs Stunning Documentary For Her Mother And Muse", Huffington Post. February 21, 2014.

Bissmeyer, Tyler. "An Art House and Hotel", The Wall Street Journal. January 10, 2013.

Bratburd, Rebecca. "Brooklyn Artists Build Momentum", The Wall Street Journal. December 17, 2013.

Sykrett, Asad. "Inside the Artist's Studio", Architectural Digest. December 16, 2013.

"Série Mode: Mickalene Thomas." L'Officiel Art, Paris. October-November 2013.

Traff, Thea. "Away with Clichè", The New Yorker. July 29, 2013.

Vogel, Carol. "At Art Basel, an Unslaked Appetite For Buying", The New York Times. June 14, 2013.

Cole, Lori. "Critic's Picks", Artforum. February 2013.

"A whole lotta woman", The Economist. November 30, 2012.

Hudson, Suzanne. "Mickalene Thomas", Artforum. November 2012.

Smith, Roberta. "Loud, Proud and Painted", The New York Times. September 28, 2012.

"Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe", The New Yorker. September 21, 2012.

Cotter, Holland. "Tête-à-Tête", The New York Times. August 19, 2012.

Wender, Jessie. "A Tête-à-Tête with Mickalene Thomas", The New Yorker. July 16, 2012.

Finkel, Jori. "Mickalene Thomas, up close and very personal", Los Angeles Times. April 22, 2012.

Frankel, David. "Previews: Mickalene Thomas: The Origin of the Universe." Artforum. January 2012.

Zimmer, Lori. "Reconstructing the Glittering Female Gaze: A Conversation with Revolutionary Artist Mickalene Thomas", PMC Magazine. December 2011.

Rosenberg, Karen. "Mickalene Thomas: 'More Than Everything'", The New York Times. October 21, 2011.

Landers, Sean. "Mickalene Thomas". BOMB Magazine. Summer 2011.

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Mickalene Thomas (born January 28, 1971) is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance.

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Collage

Abstract

Textures

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L.A. Liberty, 1992 , Caught at the border, 1991 , From Doro Wat to sushi and chicken wings and tings, 1991 , I thought the streets were paved with gold, 1991 , If my friends could see me now, 1991 , Girls in Ermita, 1983 , Cross-cultural dressing (Julia, Amina,...

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Drawing

Coloring

Social Justice

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This series is dedicated to the many Black people that were robbed of their lives at the hands of the police. I use time as a medium to define how long each portrait is colored in. 1 year of life = 1 minute of color.

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Painting

Social Justice

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Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. He was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama and moved in childhood to South Central Los Angeles. He now lives in Chicago, Illinois.

A retrospective exhibition of his work, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, was assembled by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2016.

Kerry James Marshall was born October 17, 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama. He was raised in Birmingham and then later in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of a postal 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. Marshall was able to learn to deconstruct items that we saw as rarefied and complex to make it his own.

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.

In high school Marshall began figure drawing under the mentorship of social realist painter Charles White, which continued on into Marshall's college career. Marshall stated that during the years of his training, White "became as much as a friend as a mentor; I kept in touch with his family, even after his death." While studying at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, he worked to "not have a representational image or a specific story to tell," over abstraction. Marshall earned a B.F.A. degree in 1978 from Otis College of Art and Design.

Kerry James Marshall is a MacArthur Fellow, awarded in 1997. He was a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago in the School of Art and Design from 1993 until 2006. In 2013, Marshall was named for the Committee on the Arts and the Humanities by President Barak Obama, one of seven new appointees chosen.

Work influence, social views and themes

His childhood time spent in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California where the Black Power and Civil Rights movements happened, had a significant impact on his paintings. Strongly influenced by his experiences as a young man, he developed a signature style during his early years as an artist that involved the use of extremely dark, essentially black figures. These images represent his perspective of African Americans, specifically black men with separate and distinct inner and outer appearances. At the same time, they confront racial stereotypes within contemporary American society. This common theme appeared continuously in his work throughout the subsequent decades, especially in the 1980s and 1990s and still appears in his most recent works.

Marshall is known for large-scale paintings, sculptures, and other objects that take African-American life and history as their subject matter. In a 1998 interview with Bomb Magazine, Marshall observed,

"Black people occupy a space, even mundane spaces, in the most fascinating ways. Style is such an integral part of what black people do that just walking is not a simple thing. You've got to walk with style. You've got to talk with a certain rhythm; you've got to do things with some flair. And so in the paintings I try to enact that same tendency toward the theatrical that seems to be so integral a part of the black cultural body."

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, utilizing a wide range of styles. 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. He stated that since most figures in advertising are white, he wanted to produce images of black bodies to "offset the impression that beauty is synonymous with whiteness" "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. Along with "Black is beautiful", he wanted to create an epic narrative in his paintings in the "grand manner". His focus was to create new works of art that were not a part of the western art-historical tradition.

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. 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 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 Rhythm 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. Some of his works, such as La Venus Negra and Voyager combine African aesthetics with Western traditions, showing the struggle of African Americans to find their place in American society. Oftentimes Marshall's works were perceived to be full of emotion portraying what it was like being an Urban African American, displaying middle-class African American homes and families. Other projects of Marshall's, namely The Garden Project and Souvenir, demonstrate the issues of race in America from the 1960s and 1970s and onward. The Garden Project also critiques the glorified names of housing projects that conceal desperate poverty while the Lost Boys series examines young black men "lost in the ghetto, lost in public housing, lost in joblessness, and lost in literacy." Marshall's work is dynamic and consistently relevant, especially to the problem of finding an identity.

Marshall reflected, "Under Charles White's influence I always knew that I wanted to make work that was about something: history, culture, politics, social issues. ... It was just a matter of mastering the skills to actually do it."

The painting Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self (1980) was a departure for Marshall, and was the first painting he made of a Black figure. Prior to this work, Marshall was working in collage. It is a small painting, made with egg tempera on paper. It was created primarily in shades of black and depicts the bust of a black man with a large white smile and gapped teeth. Since 2019, this painting lives in the collection at Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art (LACMA).

Marshall based several of his pieces in the early 1990s on actual events in American history. One such painting, Voyager, painted in 1992, has special pertinence in a discussion of race issues in the United States because Marshall based it on a "luxury schooner ... secretly outfitted to carry African slaves". Symbols of this representation abound, from the two black figures in the boat and the flowers draped around the woman's neck to the contrast between the light and airy clouds and the darkness of the upper background. A skull lies in the water, just beneath the ship, hinting at the doomed future of the Africans, and the unknown woman has an expression of uneasiness. He thus brings to the forefront the irony of a ship with a beautiful, high class appearance and a dark secret purpose, forcing people to think about something they would rather forget.

Black beauty, Untitled (La Venus Negra) (1992) and Untitled (Supermodel) (1994)

Marshall explored the concept of black beauty in contrast to Western ideals with his painting, Untitled (La Venus Negra) (1992). The figure, this time a nude woman, literally blends into her dark surroundings, her sensuous shape barely discernible. Yet once the viewer looks closely, her curvaceous figure evokes a womanly power only enhanced by the deep black of her skin. The painting Untitled (Supermodel) (1994), is in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, this work portrays a black woman trying to look like blond Caucasian models. The work also references self-portraits of the artist, who adorns himself with pale lipstick and a long blond wig.

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.

As Marshall admits, he himself "had not considered that a black woman could be considered a goddess of love and beauty," but with this painting he proves its possibility. He challenges the classic perception of a goddess as a white woman with long flowing hair, speaking again to the issue of African American identity in the Western world. This concept has more meaning when looking at the African pattern on the top quarter of the background. With this addition, he references the movement begun during the Harlem Renaissance to incorporate traditional African aesthetics into African American art. In an attempt to reconcile the African art and Western ideals, Marshall places both in his painting. Thus he highlights the search for a black identity that involves all aspects of their ancestral history and their current situation. Although African Americans may feel connected to two differing cultures, Marshall's painting of a classically Western figure represented with a new black aesthetic brings the two together, showing that they can live in harmony.

The Garden Project series

The Garden Project is an insightful series of paintings, both in its shrill outcry against the false promises and despairing reality of low-income public housing and in its capacity to show the incredible ability of African Americans to find happiness and build community despite these conditions. Through this series, Marshall reveals the inherent contradictions and profound juxtapositions between the idealized promises of Public Housing Projects and the often harsh, despairing reality of those living in them. But Marshall goes beyond merely exposing the discrepancy between this ideal and its corresponding reality, as his work alludes to the sense of community and hope that African American's were able to create within the grinding conditions of low-income housing. Inspired by his former home, Nickerson Gardens, Marshall's series "The Garden Project" makes an ironic play on the connotations inherent in the word "garden." The five paintings in the series depict different public housing projects - Rockwell Gardens, Wentworth Gardens, Stateway Gardens, etc. - exploring how the almost eden-like imagery used in the names is absurd in regards to these failed projects. Executed on unstretched canvas, these massive paintings appear mural-like. Their collaged elements and, at times, rough surface treatment signify the decrepitude of public housing projects and the difficulty of life within them.

Marshall's Many Mansions, from 1994, exposes the contradiction between the name "Stateway Gardens", and the reality of life there. There is a deceitful cheerfulness permeating the piece, as the landscape is illustrated in full bloom. The exaggeratedly black figures are planting blossoming flowers, the trees are pristinely cut, and everything appears bountiful. But Marshall's black figures, as Michael Kimmelman notes in his New York Times piece, are "stiff and stylized: almost stereotypes". They epitomize the impoverished black man living in public housing and unlike the landscape that surrounds them, they are not cheerful. One stares condemningly at the viewer, while the other two avert their gaze, all devoid of happiness. The buildings they live in appear as cardboard backdrops, calling attention to the falsity of the situation. Truth is not found in the beautiful utopianism of the scenery or flowers, but rather in the artificiality of the buildings and the stereotypical, damning images of the men who live in them.

The Souvenir series chronicles the loss dealt to American society from the deaths of leaders in politics, literature, arts, and music. Souvenir III, finished in 1998, centers on the angel that arbitrates the present with the past. She is an angel of annunciation and the caretaker of the living room's arrangements. However, in creating a new rhetoric of black people in America, he highlights their differences from conventional white power structures. There is a subtlety to the characters that compels the viewer to look deeper: these figures are directly in opposition to the abstraction black artists felt they had to incorporate in order to become mainstream artists. Marshall calls this incorporation of a strong aesthetic and political commentary a "visual authority" that commands the attention of society Within Souvenir III, the names of prominent black historical figures and the years of their deaths are featured at the top of the mural-sized painting. Thus, the theme of timelessness emerges: the viewer is in the present ruminating on the legacies of figures who are both civil rights champions and African American artists. The paintings reinforce these symbols of remembrance with the phrases "We Mourn Our Loss" and "In Memory Of". Souvenir IV (1998), likewise set in a middle-class living room based on Marshall's family's living quarters, is realism with a touch of the intangible. Through the painting the viewer is traveling to the Civil Rights era and the painting itself is a postcard that also marks the journey. The entire scene echoes Egyptian rituals of supplying the dead in the afterlife with furnishings and food. Souvenir III and IV are done in the grisaille style, an "old-master narrative painting" technique, while Souvenir I and II (1997) are done in color. As one examines the backgrounds of the Souvenir series, the viewer realizes the lushness of the settings even within the monochromatic natures of III and IV. A Marshall hallmark is the stamping repeated through a painting, seen here as angel wings surrounding the black leaders, and floral backgrounds, seen here as glittered ornamentation.

In 2017, Marshall was commissioned by the non-profit, Murals of Acceptance to produce a public mural entitled, Rush More. Located on the west façade of the Chicago Cultural Center, the piece was intended to be an homage to woman who have contributed to the culture of Chicago.

In 2018, two of Marshall's large masterpieces came to public attention in a clash between public art, and commerce. In May, Past Times (1997) was sold by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority to Sean Combs for a $21 million funding windfall to the public agency, after hanging in McCormick Place for many years. Past Times had played an important role during its loan to the 2016 museum exhibition. In October, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced plans to upgrade the Legler Branch of the Chicago Public Library on the West Side. The upgrade would be financed by the auction of the library's Knowledge and Wonder (1995). After criticism, including from Marshall, the Mayor cancelled the auction.

Marshall's first major solo exhibition, which traveled throughout the country, was organized at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago in 1998. His work has been exhibited in many American and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2003) and the Documenta (1997 and 2007).

In April 2016, Marshall's retrospective Mastry debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago as the largest retrospective to date of Marshall's art, which spanned the artist's 35-year career and included nearly 80 original pieces. In October 2016, the retrospective traveled to the Met Breuer in New York City.

In 2018, Marshall had a solo exhibition, Kerry James Marshall: Works on Paper at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Marshall's work is included in many public museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Harvard Art Museums, Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, amongst others.

He is married to playwright, director, actress Cheryl Lynn Bruce. They met while Bruce was working at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Marshall was beginning an art residency there. In 1987, Marshall and his wife move to Chicago's South Side.

English, Darby. To Describe a Life: Essays at the Intersection of Art and Race Terror. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2019. ISBN 9780300230383. Chapter 1, "The Painter and the Police."

Marshall, Kerry J., Richard J. Powell, Susanne Ghez, Will Alexander, Cheryl I. Harris, and Hamza Walker, Kerry James Marshall: Mementos, Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 1998. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43702402

Marshall, Kerry J., Terrie Sultan, and Arthur Jafa. Kerry James Marshall. H.N. Abrams, New York, 2000. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43318234

Marshall, Kerry J., Okwui Enwezor, Nav Haq, Dieter Roelstraete, and Sofie Vermeiren. Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Stuff, MHUKA, Antwerp, 2014. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/869741733

Marshall, Kerry J., Robert Storr, and Angela Choon. Kerry James Marshall: Look See, David Zwirner Gallery, London, 2015. Print. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/904542035

Marshall, Kerry J., Ian Alteveer, Helen Molesworth, Dieter Roelstraete, and Lanka Tattersall, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, Skira Rizzoli, New York, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8478-48331 https://www.worldcat.org/title/kerry-james-marshall-mastry/oclc/948822926

Marshall, Kerry J., Charles Gaines, Greg Tate, and Laurence Rassel, Kerry James Marshall, Phaidon Press, London, 2017. ISBN 978-0-7148-7155-4

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kerry James Marshall: A Creative Convening. Conference proceedings, January 29, 2017. New York: The Museum, 2018.

Mercer, Kobena: Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices Since The 1980s. Duke University Press, Durham, 2016. ISBN 978-0822360803. Chapter 17, "Kerry James Marshall, The Painter of Afro-Modern Life."

Meyer, James. The Art of Return: The Sixties & Contemporary Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2019. ISBN 9780226521558. Part 3, "The End of the Sixties."

Kerry James Marshall at the Miami Art Museum

Kerry James Marshall. Painting and other stuff. Exhibition at Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain

"Kerry James Marshall, Boldly Repainting Art History", The New York Times, September 9, 2016 by Randy Kennedy

"Kerry James Marshall: A Black Presence In The Art World Is 'Not Negotiable'", NPR, Morning Edition, March 28, 2017, by Susan Stamberg

Oral history interview with Kerry James Marshall, 2008 August 8 from Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

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Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.

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Mixed Media

Social Justice

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Photography

Fiber Art

Texture

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Textile artist, interested in cultures & human spirit, looking at how cultures connect to each other in a fragmented, post-digital world.

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Painting

Surrealism

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Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is remembered for her self-portraits, pain and passion, and bold, vibrant colors. She is celebrated in Mexico for her attention to Mexican and indigenous culture and by feminists for her depiction of the female experience and form.

Kahlo, who suffered from polio as a child, nearly died in a bus accident as a teenager. She suffered multiple fractures of her spine, collarbone and ribs, a shattered pelvis, broken foot and a dislocated shoulder. She began to focus heavily on painting while recovering in a body cast. In her lifetime, she had 30 operations.

Life experience is a common theme in Kahlo's approximately 200 paintings, sketches and drawings. Her physical and emotional pain are depicted starkly on canvases, as is her turbulent relationship with her husband, fellow artist Diego Rivera, who she married twice. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits.

The devastation to her body from the bus accident is shown in stark detail in The Broken Column. Kahlo is depicted nearly naked, split down the middle, with her spine presented as a broken decorative column. Her skin is dotted with nails. She is also fitted with a surgical brace.

Kahlo's first self-portrait was Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress in 1926. It was painted in the style of 19th Century Mexican portrait painters who themselves were greatly influenced by the European Renaissance masters. She also sometimes drew from the Mexican painters in her use of a background of tied-back drapes. Self-Portrait - Time Flies (1929), Portrait of a Woman in White (1930) and Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky (1937) all bear this background.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best." - Frida Kahlo

In her second-self portrait, "Time Flies," Kahlo uses a folk style and vibrant colors. She wears peasant clothing, and the red, white and green in the painting are the colors of the Mexican flag.

During her life, self portrait is a subject that Frida Kahlo always returns to, as artists have always returned to their beloved themes - Rembrandt his Self Portrait, Vincent van Gogh his Sunflowers, and Claude Monet his Water Lilies.

Frida and Diego: Love and Pain

Kahlo and Rivera had a tumultuous relationship, marked by multiple affairs on both sides. Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair (1940), Kahlo is depicted in a man's suit, holding a pair of scissors, with her fallen hair around the chair in which she sits. This represents the times she would cut the hair Rivera loved when he had affairs.

The 1937 painting Memory, the Heart, shows Kahlo's pain over her husband's affair with her younger sister Christina. A large broken heart at her feet shows the intensity of Kahlo's anguish. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera divorced in 1939, but reunited a year later and remarried. The Two Fridas (1939) depicts Kahlo twice, shortly after the divorce. One Frida wears a costume from the Tehuana region of Mexico, representing the Frida that Diego loved. The other Frida wears a European dress as the woman who Diego betrayed and rejected. Later, she is back in Tehuana dress in Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (1943) and Self Portrait (1948).

Pre-Columbian artifacts were common both in the Kahlo/Rivera home (Diego collected sculptures and idols, and Frida collected Jewelry) and in Kahlo's paintings. She wore jewelry from this period in Self-Portrait - Time Flies (1926), Self-Portrait With Monkey (1938) and Self-Portrait With Braid (1941), among others. Other Pre-Columbian artifacts are found in The Four Inhabitants of Mexico City (1938), Girl With Death Mask (1938) and Self-Portrait With Small Monkeys (1945).

My painting carries with it the message of pain." - Frida Kahlo

Surreal or Realist?

Frida Kahlo participated in the "International Exhibition of Surrealism" in 1940 at the Galeria de Arte, Mexicano. There, she exhibited her two largest paintings: The Two Fridas and The Wounded Table (1940). Surrealist Andrew Breton considered Kahlo a surrealistic, a label Kahlo rejected, saying she just painted her reality. However, In 1945, when Don Jose Domingo Lavin asked Frida Kahlo to read the book Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud - whose psychoanalysis works Surrealism is based on - and paint her understanding and interpretation of this book. Frida Kahlo painted Moses, and this painting was recognized as second prize at the annual art exhibition in the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Kahlo did not sell many paintings in her lifetime, although she painted occasional portraits on commission. She had only one solo exhibition in Mexico in her lifetime, in 1953, just a year before her death at the age of 47.

Today, her works sell for very high prices. In May 2006, Frida Kahlo self-portrait, Roots, was sold for $5.62 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York, sets a record as the most expensive Latin American work ever purchased at auction, and also makes Frida Kahlo one of the highest-selling woman in art.

Widely known for her Marxist leanings, Frida, along with Marxism Revolutionary Che Guevara and a small band of contemporary figures, has become a countercultural symbol of the 20th century, and created a legacy in art history that continues to inspire the imagination and mind. Born in 1907, dead at 47, Frida Kahlo achieved celebrity even in her brief lifetime that extended far beyond Mexico's borders, although nothing like the cult status that would eventually make her the mother of the selfie, her indelible image recognizable everywhere.

At the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, her personal belongings are on display throughout the house, as if she still lived there. Kahlo was born and grew up in this building, whose cobalt walls gave way to the nickname of the Blue House. She lived there with her husband for some years, and she died there. The facility is the most popular museum in the Coyoacan neighborhood and among the most visited in Mexico City.

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Frida Kahlo: 100 Paintings Analysis, Biography, Quotes, & Art

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Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is remembered for her self-portraits, pain and passion, and bold, vibrant colors. She is celebrated in Mexico for her attention to Mexican and indigenous culture and by feminists for her depiction of the female experience and form. Kahlo, who suffered from polio as a child, nearly died in a bus accident as a teenager.

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Stylized

Painting

2-D Design

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Hi! I am an artist and illustrator based in Cancun, Mexico. Here you can see some of my latest WORK
(which is mostly extremely colourful stuff ). Feel free to snoop around on my SOCIAL MEDIA.
For inquiries or a how you doing CONTACT ME,
I will be happy to hear from you. And for you dear big spender…

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Collage

Mixed Media

Digital

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Collage artist | Photographer residing in San Francisco, California

This collection of images are pulled from various projects done throughout the years.

These are a few of my favorites from my Queer History project and Black History project as well as some of my commercial work.

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Collage artist | Photographer residing in San Francisco, California This collection of images are pulled from various projects done throughout the years. These are a few of my favorites from my Queer History project and Black History project as well as some of my commercial work.

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Manga Style

Line Art

Drawing

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Abstract

Cartoon Style

Pastel

Textures

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This site collects comprehensive material on the artworks, exhibitions, bibliographic information, and other artist activities of Yoshitomo Nara, spanning from 1983 when he began his professional career to the present day. The Yoshitomo Nara Foundation manages and operates this site with the objective of collecting and providing accurate information on the artist and his works.

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Collage

Mixed Media

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Deborah Roberts~ Mix Media Collages

In my collage series entitled The Miseducation of Mimi, 2013 I have done one hundred and twenty five 14x17inch drawings and paintings of little black girls and deliberately distorted their features. Most of the images are roughly done with large heads and hands and unpleasant facial features or grimaces staring back at you. In these collage works, beauty is wished for, taken, fabricated, borrowed and owned; the gestures explore the destruction that erupts over time when ones beauty is specifically targeted as being inferior. I think the story that reverberates loudest in these works is the need for individual beauty rather than a perceived notion of ideal beauty. These collages were created to show the destructive effect that contemporary and pop culture has had on black girls as it relates to black beauty.

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Printmaking

Textures

Drawing

Realism

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Collage

Mixed Media

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Want the latest news on Romare Bearden? Join our mailing list. Join Get InvolvedWelcome to the official website of The Romare Bearden Foundation. This site offers a wide range of resources and information on the art and life of preeminent African-American artist Romare Bearden. Please explore our we…

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Painting

Mixed Media

Surrealism

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Illustration

Manga Style

Textures

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Watercolor

Textures

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Paitning

Textures

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Painting

Realism

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Geometric

2-D

Flat

Colorful

Abstract