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" Abstraction and representation are supposed to be going down two very different paths, one sociological and the other aesthetic. "
Kerry James Marshall
Two
Different
Paths
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" The invention of the African American, or the Haitian or Jamaican, is a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade. "
Kerry James Marshall
Invention
Trade
Slave
" I gave up on the idea of making art a long time ago, because I wanted to know how to make paintings; but once I came to know that, reconsidering the question of what art is returned as a critical issue. "
Kerry James Marshall
Art
Up
Time
" There's this idea that many of the attitudes and personality developments in black folks in the diaspora are a consequence of this unresolved trauma. There have been attempts by black artists to try and figure out how to represent that in some kind of way. "
Kerry James Marshall
Kind
Black
Try
" A close friend of mine described me as a radical pragmatist. I embrace this no-nonsense distinction wholeheartedly. It is a character trait that matches the sense of myself I've had from as far back as I can remember. I am not one who goes in much for magical thinking. I don't believe in destiny, fate, or things like divine guidance, either. "
Kerry James Marshall
Destiny
I Am
Myself
" Too often, if you look back through the history of representation and you take the work of African-American artists, the work is on such a modest scale that it becomes sort of inconsequential. "
Kerry James Marshall
Look
You
Work
" I stumbled upon Charles White purely by chance while looking through a book 'Great Negroes, Past and Present' in the library at Forty-Ninth Street Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles. I was in the fifth grade. "
Kerry James Marshall
School
Great
Book
" If you walk into any magazine store, I guarantee that nine out of 10 covers will feature white, blonde, blue-eyed, slim women because that's still the ideal of beauty. When a black or Asian figure shows up in a fashion magazine, she's the exception, not the rule. "
Kerry James Marshall
You
Women
Walk
" Blackness has always been stigmatised, even amongst black people who flee from the density of that blackness. Some black people recoil from black people who are that dark because it has always been stigmatised. "
Kerry James Marshall
Because
Always
Black
" The U.S. was founded as a white supremacist nation; that's just what it is. "
Kerry James Marshall
Founded
Nation
White
" If people keep telling you you can't do a thing, then you need to find a really good reason to continue. If someone tells you you can't do something, how will you know? If someone tells you something is impossible, how will you know? "
Kerry James Marshall
People
Know
You
" You don't see black people winning Nobel prizes for physics or economics or any of the industries or institutions that shape the way the world operates. "
Kerry James Marshall
Black
See
You
" The revision of any kind of established model is always a political act. "
Kerry James Marshall
Kind
Revision
Political
" I don't want the pictures to mean things. But the implication of the image and its relationship to the people that are viewing it is something I'm really interested in. "
Kerry James Marshall
People
Want
Pictures
" There are fewer representations of black figures in the historical record. "
Kerry James Marshall
Historical
Record
Black
" When you grow up looking at Superman, Batman, and all those superheroes, you take it for granted that is what superheroes are supposed to be. So then, when I see art books at the library, and I'm seeing Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and Rembrandt, I think that's what artists look like. "
Kerry James Marshall
Look
You
Think
" One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person. "
Kerry James Marshall
People
Black
Am
" When you go to an art museum, the thing you're least likely to encounter is a picture of a black person. When it comes to ideas about art and about beauty, the black figure is absent. "
Kerry James Marshall
Picture
Art
Beauty
" You have to recover the capacity to imagine yourself as an ideal and figure out how to project that into the world. "
Kerry James Marshall
World
Yourself
You
" My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at. "
Kerry James Marshall
Book
Myself
History
" My ambition was never to make a lot of money. It wasn't to travel around the world. I was really just struggling to make the best pictures I could make. "
Kerry James Marshall
Best
Money
Travel
" Artwork operates on two different levels: On one level, there's artwork as a mode of expressivity, and then there's the other side, where the image is a construction that is meant to engage in a discursive field in order to perform a particular function. "
Kerry James Marshall
Construction
Two
Side
" People don't really want to hear me say this, but a black person who will give a million dollars to the Museum of Modern Art but won't give a million to the Studio Museum in Harlem is simply mistaken. "
Kerry James Marshall
Me
Black
Art
" I used to always say - and I think a lot of artists think of it this way - that when you see a black figure, the way the critical establishment operated, you can only imagine that figure having a sociological value. They never say the ways in which their aesthetics were equally worthy of consideration. "
Kerry James Marshall
Black
Say
Think
" I think the only value of being in school is that everything you do should be a problem that needs to be solved. Everything should be a challenge. "
Kerry James Marshall
School
Challenge
Think
" The lighter the skin, the more acceptable you are. The darker the skin, the more marginalised you become. I want to demonstrate that you can produce beauty in the context of a figure that has that kind of velvety blackness. It can be done. "
Kerry James Marshall
Done
You
Beauty
" Progress has always been understood to be driven by exceptional white men. Whether it's the military victories we've achieved, the philosophical foundations that are the underpinnings of the nation, or our economic ingenuity, all this has been articulated through narratives of exceptional white men. "
Kerry James Marshall
Nation
Always
Men
" Working from live models is too much trouble; it takes too much time. "
Kerry James Marshall
Live
Time
Trouble
" When art works travel from place to place, what you have is the opportunity to engage with the intellect of another person who has made a thing that should have enough information in it in the way it's constructed to start thinking about why that picture got made - not why it is relevant to you. "
Kerry James Marshall
Travel
Opportunity
Art
" To me, if there is any sort of value added to the accumulation of knowledge over time, then the work of artists should be a reflection of that accumulated value, accumulated knowledge. You have to demonstrate that you have the sophistication to put that into play in the work you're making. "
Kerry James Marshall
Work
Knowledge
Reflection
" My first black-on-black picture was 'The Portrait of an Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self.' I started using it as an emblem of this undercurrent of wickedness, malevolence, and irony - all of that. "
Kerry James Marshall
Self
Artist
Picture