RADAR 11 - H ²0
Publication Date: June, 2004
Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics, Baltimore Museum of Art

Originally intended as a twenty-year retrospective, Kerry James Marshall’s Meditations is its polar opposite. Composed of experimental and somewhat unfinished new work, Marshall’s restless search for his next great idea imbues the show with intensity. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Marshall favors a sketchbook approach over a polished appearance. A scientific curiosity allows Marshall to investigate a variety of art media including painting, sculpture, installation, and video in order to isolate and apply the essential qualities of each medium to radically different pieces. There is no formula to the work in this show, only the artist’s authenticity and commitment to content linking the disparate works into a coherent exhibit.

Purposely problematic, the title One True Thing sets up a hierarchy of contradictions. Marshall’s intentionally diverse media choices and layered combinations of the personal, the historical, and pop culture add up to a splintered view of the world, in which opposing views come together to generate new ideas and forms. Playful references to art history, from ancient to modern, also reinforce a unique and modern aesthetic which accepts both seriousness and superficiality. Marshall’s fractured view of the world, in direct opposition with the idea of "one true thing," illustrates the paradoxical message of the exhibit: Black people see the world differently than others. Issues with freedom, history, and identity are explored in Meditations to create a varied and subjective viewpoint, as true and valid as any other.

Marshall describes each piece of artwork in this exhibit as a conceptual, message-bearing object. Loaded with layers of contradictory meanings, "Africa Restored," a series of three figure-sized wall pieces, punctuates the beginning, middle, and end of the show. Originally shown together as a triptych in Chicago, the series depicts the African continent as a black relief sculpture with a fragmented, three-dimensional surface. The piece's fractured structure is itself a challenge: it makes the point that Cubism itself was appropriated from African sculpture without recognizing the achievements of the original artists.

The first piece in the exhibit, "Africa Restored Part One," is painted coal black, with a visceral surface of lumpy scars. Imbedded in this surface, circular white medallions of varying sizes display photos and words. Each shiny disc bears a vignetted photo of a single black face, peering out from the center. Marshall attached several new discs to the sculpture at the BMA press preview, despite the fact that the show was already hung and had been previously exhibited. Like the Congolese nail fetishes which inspired this additive technique, more discs will be added until the sculpture reaches what the artist describes as "maximum density." The community of faces, including Marshall’s own family members as well as photos of anonymous African Americans, serves to represent the larger African "family," torn apart by literal and figurative forms of slavery. Nat Turner and Little Richard were among the newest faces added to extend the definition of family and to reinforce the Congolese idea of ancestor worship. Marshall’s crowded layering of the personal, the historical, and pop culture reaches out to a wide audience. This additive technique is itself a metaphor for historical revisionism, tacking on names, dates, and concepts to emphasize a uniquely Black view of history.

"Africa Restored Part Two," halfway through the exhibit, looks almost exactly like the first, but instead of photos, a printed name of a musician is emblazoned on each medallion. Eminem, Benny Goodman, Janis Joplin, and John Travolta are a few of the dozens of white musicians named whose success can at least partially be attributed to African and African American influences. More educational than accusatory, this rebellious definition of "family" acknowledges white appropriations of African art forms, and reframes the accomplishments of white artists as an homage to unrecognized and undervalued black ones.

All of the additions to "Africa Restored part Three," found near the end of the exhibit, relate to what Marshall calls "Afrocentric Fetishes." Portraits of African Kings and Queens, African words, Ebonic slang, and symbolic colors all reinforce an oppositional view in which African influences resonate. One medallion which stands out from the rest features Cheryl Bruce’s face with the caption, "Cheryl Bruce in her role as Cleopatra. Cleopatra was Black." Like the direct provocation in the show’s title, Marshall teases out an argument, not in order to win it, but to point out history’s subjectivity.

"Africa Restored" is completely unlike any other work in this exhibit, except for its layers of formal and narrative meaning. Each piece of art in the show differs equally from every other one in appearance, medium, and mood. Marshall’s dense conceptual framework and scientific exploration of material brings the different "meditations" together to paint a rich and contradictory world, viewed through a uniquely Black aesthetic.

Cara Ober