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Kerry James Marshall's Art Analysis

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Kerry James Marshall’s work is informed by his deep appreciation for the history of artistic expression, and profoundly influenced by urban culture, the African-American experience, and civil rights. “What I want to happen when I go to a museum is that expectations of what you find in there are completely altered, so that it’s not commonplace to just see European paintings with European bodies, but it’s also as likely that you will see ... black figures, Asian figures, or Hispanic figures.” Marshal’s art references a number of movements such as Fauvism, abstraction, and perception. He also has a unique way of using of cultural symbolism and pictorial devices that are informed by his own experiences of the world and his avid collecting of artefacts from classical mythology, folklore, African and African-American history, film history, art, literature, posters and comic books. Marshall 's pictures use a …show more content…

While the gate at the entrance to the pool is painted PRIVATE, it is unclear if the diver resides inside this private space—or has been excluded from it. The red cross embodied in the painting — a symbol in a number of his works — takes on multiple connotations; it can be thought of as indicating a state of emergency or an intersection, meaning a place of exchange. It could also possibly be a reference to the amount of foreign aid offered by the USA to African countries, whilst not addressing the problems of current and historical racial tensions and inequalities in their own country. Marshall explained that most of us have a “shallow understanding of histories.” In Plunge, the diver seems apprehensive about taking that plunge which is sometimes representative of how we take on history: “Afrocentricity as backwards one and a half”, explains Marshall. The idea that blacks can take back things stolen from African Americans, the idea that only when you go back can you go

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