On Thursday, February 18th join us for a virtual talk featuring conceptual artist and activist Hank Willis Thomas. Click here to register. Hank Willis Thomas is an internationally renowned conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His photographs, sculptures, videos, and public art projects confront histories of […]
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Kerry James Marshall, (born 1955, Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.), American painter and printmaker whose work examines aspects of African Americanculture in the United States. His unique images extend the grand traditions of history painting and populistvernacular imagery.
Educated at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles (B.F.A., 1978), Marshall moved to Chicago in 1987 soon after completing a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City. From 1993 to 2006 he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and in 1997 he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”
Marshall is best known for his richly worked large acrylic paintings on unstretched canvas that investigate many aspects of modern African American vernacular existence. Whether his subject is the neighbourhood barber shop or beauty salon (
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From the fall of 1976 through the summer of 1977, the same scene repeated itself at art museums around the country long lines of people stretching outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and finally at the Brooklyn Museum, all to see David Driskell’s exhibition,
Two Centuries of Black American Art.
With this exhibit, Driskell, who died last year at the age of 88, pushed audiences to view and recognize the vastness of art by Black artists across mediums, practices, and schools of thought a trove of American art that had gone largely unacknowledged by the (white) mainstream. This exhibition is the root of the conversation in
HBO s Black Art: In The Absence of Light debuts February 9
Sanford Biggers. Photo: Courtesy HBO.
NEW YORK, NY
.- Firmly rooted in the history of the Black American experience, Black Art: In The Absence of Light, debuting Tuesday, February 9 (9:00-10:25 p.m. ET/PT), is directed and produced by award-winning documentarian Sam Pollard (HBOs Atlanta Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children). A vital and illuminating introduction to the work of some of the foremost African American visual artists working today, including Theaster Gates, Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, Amy Sherald and Carrie Mae Weems, the film is a testament to the indelible contributions of Black American artists in todays contemporary art world. Black Art: In The Absence of Light is executive produced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Thelma Golden serves as consulting producer. The film will be available on HBO and to stream on HBO Max.
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Amy Sherald at work on her portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, as featured in HBO s Black Art: In the Absence of Light.
Courtesy HBO Black Art: In the Absence of Light, A Celebration of African American Artists , a documentary premiering on HBO on February 9th surveys African-American artists who have contributed to the art canon in the U.S. over two centuries. Directed by Sam Pollard, the film draws on âTwo Centuries of Black American Art,â the 1976 exhibition curated by the late David Driskell. Interviews with artists include Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, Jordan Casteel, Radcliffe Bailey, Amy Sherald, Theaster Gates, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kehinde Wiley. Driskell and writer and curator Maurice Berger both provided insights in the film prior to their deaths in 2020.