Untitled Artist: Kerry James Marshall (American, born 1955)

2009

Modern and Contemporary Art

On view, 3rd floor, Modern and Contemporary Art and Design

In this portrayal of a stately painter who turns to face the viewer, Kerry James Marshall participates in a long art historical tradition of images about image making. The sustained, self-aware gaze of the painter demands that the audience engage actively with the work. On the hand that grasps the palette, the painter's thumbnail suggests her political stance: it is painted with the green, black and red of the Pan-African flag. Her own self portrait is a paint-by-numbers canvas, possibly implying that the reality of this painter upends our received and codified notions of gender, race, and identity.

Medium

Acrylic on PVC panel

Dimensions

61 1/8 × 72 7/8 × 3 7/8 in. (155.258 × 185.103 × 9.843 cm)

Credit Line

Purchased with the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund and a gift from Jacqueline L. Bradley, B.A. 1979

Accession Number

2009.161.1

Culture

American

Period

21st century

Classification

Paintings

Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance
Jack Shainman Gallery, to 2009; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
Bibliography
  • American Art: Selections from the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2023), 282–83, no. 143, ill
  • Kerry James Marshall and Elena Filipovic, Inside/Out, ed. Carla Cugini (Cologne: Gesselschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig Köln, e.V., 2018), 39, 89, fig. 21
  • Helen Molesworth, ed., Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, exh. cat. (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2016), fig. pl 56
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Unfinished, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 245,300, fig. pl 205
  • Matthew Monteith, "The Explainers," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2013), 55
  • Pamela Franks, Jessica Sack, and John Walsh, "Looking to Learn, Learning to Teach," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2013), 45, fig. 5
  • Jock Reynolds, "Director's Report: July 1, 2009–June 30, 2010," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2010), 12–13, ill
Object copyright
© Kerry James Marshall/Jack Shainman Gallery
In Copyright
Additional information

Object/Work type

human figures (visual works), portraits

Subject

African American artists African American women Pan-Africanism artists paint by number paintbrushes painters (artists) palettes women

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