Which was in part, built around certain stances of chance. I had been interested in finding a way out of the aesthetic sensibility that collage allowed one to operate within. It’s probably that scale because I was doing a lot of collages, a lot of mixed media collages at that time that were about that size too. KERRY JAMES MARSHALL: It didn’t have to be so tiny. Why did you start with that single portrait as a kind of manifesto? And why did it have to be so tiny? But what’s interesting is that you refer to Ralph Ellison’s book, Invisible Man, written in 1952. You show this portrait with this amazing gap between the teeth, almost like a caricature. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self,” Kerry James Marshall (1980)ĬHRIS DERCON: It all started with a very tiny self-portrait that was not larger than a book, and that painting was called A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self. As an allusion to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the artwork clearly defines the political and aesthetic notion that visibility - and its opposite, invisibility - is the strongest tool of power. The artist’s figurative and often historical paintings began with a powerfully singular work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self - a self-portrait in which the white surfaces of Marhsall’s eyes and teeth float on top of a largely black expanse. Aside from its critical acclaim, the exhibition has been a success in terms of Marshall’s own bluntly-stated aim: to populate the museum with more black figures. Since April of last year, Kerry James Marshall’s retrospective “Mastry” has been criss-crossing the United States - from premiering at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to the Met Breuer in New York to where it is currently on exhibit at MOCA in Los Angeles. During a visit to Berlin, painter Kerry James Marshall speaks with future Volksbühne director Chris Dercon about his legendary self-portrait, the futility of abstraction, and the scandals surrounding Dana Schutz and Kelley Walker.
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