![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758815475_485_d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net\")
<\/p>\nKerry James Marshall, School of Beauty, School of Culture , 2012. Photo by Sean Pathasema . \u00a9 Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. <\/p>\n
Over the course of 11 themed rooms, \u201cThe Histories,\u201d a major survey of Kerry James Marshall<\/a>\u2019s work at the Royal Academy of the Arts<\/a> in London, demonstrates why the Chicago-based figurative painter is one of the most respected and well-known artists working today. \u201cAll of the paintings show Black subjects, and Kerry, in his own words, is unapologetic about centering Black figures and engaging with the history of art,\u201d said the show\u2019s curator, Mark Godfrey.<\/p>\n For over four decades, Marshall has placed Black bodies in everyday settings, using history painting<\/a> to challenge how Western art has often excluded and dehumanized Black people. He has since become known for his large-scale works combining art historical and Black cultural references. \u201cWhen I started out, my goal was to figure out how to make the most sophisticated paintings I could,\u201d he told Artsy. \u201cI want people to come back time and again, and each time to see something new they hadn\u2019t noticed before.\u201d<\/p>\n To celebrate the exhibition, which is on view through January 18, 2026, Artsy highlights some of Marshall\u2019s most iconic works on display in the London show.<\/p>\n A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self (1980)<\/p>\n Kerry James Marshall A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self, 1980 Photo \u00a9 Museum Associates\/LACMA \u00a9 Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the Royal Academy<\/p>\n At just eight inches tall, A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self (1980) is considered a pivotal turning point in Marshall\u2019s artistic career. The piece marks Marshall\u2019s shift from mixed-media abstract collages to painting Black figures in everyday settings. <\/p>\n Taking cues from painters such as Albrecht D\u00fcrer<\/a> and Rembrandt<\/a>, Marshall used the practice of self-portraiture<\/a> to signal his new direction. As he told art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh in the exhibition catalogue for \u201cThe Histories,\u201d the piece exemplifies \u201cmy escape from the limitations and the projections that accompany stereotypical representations of Black people.\u201d<\/p>\n Created on paper in egg tempera when he was only 25, the piece depicts the artist himself as a jet-black figure in a black coat against a black backdrop. Almost invisible, the man is brought to life by the whites of his eyes, his mischievous wide-toothed grin revealing one missing tooth and pink gums, and a white shirt underneath. <\/p>\n Decades after he created this work, the artist is still painting figures with pure black skin, though they are now rendered with more depth and dimension. \u201cBlack [in this way] is not reductive,\u201d he told Artsy. \u201cIt\u2019s a statement of complexity, because I make the blacks as rich as I possibly can.\u201d For Marshall, using black in this way works to emphasize that his subjects are not real but \u201crhetorical figures\u201d in realist spaces. <\/p>\n In 1984, the collector Steven Lebowitz bought the painting for $850, hanging it in a bar at his home. As a painting reflecting on historical racist stereotypes, many guests found it offensive out of context, prompting him to move the piece to a bathroom. It stayed there for over 25 years, until he and his wife gifted<\/a> it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art<\/a> in 2019.<\/p>\n De Style (1993)<\/p>\n Kerry James Marshall, De Style , 1993. \u00a9 Kerry James Marshall. Photo: \u00a9 Museum Associates\/LACMA. Courtesy of the Royal Academy.<\/p>\n De Style (1993) was the first of Marshall\u2019s works to be acquired by a major museum, also purchased in 2019 by LACMA for around $12,000, according to the artist. This milestone aligned with Marshall\u2019s intentions to insert Black figures into the Western canon of art history. At nearly 8 and a half by 10 feet, it was his largest work to date and set a precedent for many of the works he would later become known for. <\/p>\n Set in a Los Angeles barbershop (named Percy\u2019s House of Style, according to the window sign), De Style depicts five Black men, four of them facing the viewer. Three wait, and one sits in a chair as the barber cuts his hair. Like many of his works today, the piece draws on several aspects of Western art history. The men\u2019s placid stares echo Rembrandt\u2019s De Staalmeesters (1662), where six men\u2014five drapers and an attendant\u2014look up from their work to acknowledge the viewer. The large mirror behind Marshall\u2019s figures echoes \u00c9douard Manet<\/a>\u2019s A Bar at the Folies-Berg\u00e8re<\/a> (1882), and the primary colors of the barbershop cabinet alongside the piece\u2019s title nod to Piet Mondrian<\/a>\u2019s De Stijl<\/a> movement, founded in 1917. <\/p>\n For many Black communities across the globe, a barbershop is a haven. In an interview with The New Yorker, Marshall noted that young Black men of his generation were enchanted by the blaxploitation movies of the \u201970s, low- to mid-budget films featuring black protagonists in action-oriented roles. He recalled that this meant \u201cguys were spending as much on their hair as girls did.\u201d \u201cMy brother and I did each other\u2019s hair,\u201d he noted. Marshall brings the piece into contemporary events by depicting a calendar marking April 1991. This was the month after Rodney King, a Black man, was brutally beaten by the Los Angeles police. <\/p>\n Great America (1994)<\/p>\n Kerry James Marshall Great America, 1994. \u00a9 Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the Royal Academy. <\/p>\n In the early 1990s, Marshall created several works about the transatlantic slave trade, focusing on its enduring impact often through metaphor and depicting contemporary settings. In Plunge (1992), for instance, a woman in a bikini prepares to dive into a pool where a swimmer appears to be drowning. Voyager (1992) shows two partially obscured figures aboard a small vessel called Wanderer, which was named after a slave ship that illegally transported people from Africa to Georgia in 1858. Meanwhile, Great America (1994), which takes its name from a Californian theme park, illustrates a group of figures on a boat ride heading towards a haunted tunnel.<\/p>\n In 2011, the National Gallery of Art<\/a> in Washington, D.C., acquired Great America, and two years on, it became the centerpiece for their solo exhibition \u201cIn the Tower: Kerry James Marshall.\u201d The idea for the piece emerged from the 1993 film Sankofa, directed by the Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima. Marshall worked on the movie as a production designer. The story follows an African American model on a photoshoot in Ghana who is transported to the 18th century and forced aboard a slave ship. <\/p>\n In this work, Marshall reimagines the Middle Passage of enslaved Africans traveling to the Americas in an amusement park setting, featuring a dinghy and haunted house ghouls. One man, submerged in the water, appears to have fallen out of the small boat\u2014a scene often likened to John Singleton Copley<\/a>\u2019s Watson and the Shark (1778), depicting a true account of a 14-year-old, Brook Watson, being mauled by a shark after falling overboard.<\/p>\n Past Times (1997) <\/p>\n Kerry James Marshall Past Times, 1997 \u00a9 Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of David Zwirner, London<\/p>\n When Past Times was sent to auction in 2018, the piece sold for nearly 800 times more than the Chicago Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) had originally paid. The corporation bought the piece directly from Marshall in 1997 for $25,000 and consigned it to Sotheby\u2019s with an estimate of $8 million\u2013$12 million. The painting ultimately sold for $21 million, making it the highest auction price ever achieved for a work by a living Black artist at the time.<\/p>\n Often compared to French Impressionist Georges Seurat<\/a>\u2019s portrayals of working-class and petit-bourgeois leisure, Past Times offers a scene of Black respite in a Chicago park. In the foreground, his figures play croquet and listen to music on a red-checkered blanket. Around them, people go golfing, boating, and water skiing.<\/p>\n The record-breaking sale not only cemented Marshall\u2019s place as one of the most important artists alive today but also fueled a renewed interest in Black figurative art among artists, collectors, and institutions alike. <\/p>\n Untitled (Underpainting) (2018)<\/p>\n Kerry James Marshall Untitled (Underpainting), 2018. \u00a9 Kerry James Marshall Courtesy of David Zwirner, London \/ Damian Griffiths<\/p>\n In 2020, two years after Marshall made Untitled (Underpainting), The Washington Post hailed it as \u201ca tour de force by a painter at the top of his game.\u201d The painting, which presents two nearly identical scenes of Black visitors in a gallery space, sold for $7.3 million, three times its high estimate, at Sotheby\u2019s the year prior. <\/p>\n The 10-foot-tall diptych is divided by two white stripes, evoking a gallery wall and creating the effect of two separate panels. On both sides, a busy museum is filled entirely with Black exhibition-goers, including cross-legged children. The scenes contradict the idea of museums and galleries being unwelcome spaces for marginalized groups, transforming them into places where Black visitors feel at home. <\/p>\n The artist first showcased Untitled (Underpainting) at David Zwirner<\/a>\u2019s London gallery in 2018, in an exhibition of new works titled \u201cHistory of Painting<\/a>.\u201d Unlike the vibrant works Marshall was known for at this point, the piece presented a scene almost entirely in shades of taupe. This unique approach harkened back to traditional art academies where students created underpaintings in gray or earth tones. \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in unfinished underpaintings, like Leonardo<\/a>\u2019s Saint Jerome in the Wilderness,\u201d Marshall told Apollo Magazine<\/a> the following year. \u201cThat\u2019s how I learned how paintings were constructed, from those sorts of works.\u201d<\/p>\n Haul (2025)<\/p>\n Kerry James Marshall, Haul, 2025. \u00a9 Kerry James Marshall. Photo by Kerry McFate. Courtesy David Zwirner, London. <\/p>\n Near the end of \u201cThe Histories,\u201d in a section titled \u201cAfrica Revisited,\u201d Marshall returns to his exploration of the Middle Passage. On a single wall, three paintings present a new series of works exploring Africans\u2019 role in the transatlantic slave trade. The exhibition wall text describes Outbound, Haul, and Cove (all 2025) as \u201cchallenging moments in the recorded history of Africa, not often represented by artists.\u201d<\/p>\n Together, these images illustrate Africans taking Black captives to canoes to be sold, paddling to slave ships and returning to shore with their earnings. In Haul, a woman reclines on sacks holding payments for the slaves. Other items supposedly a part of their bounty are spread across the boat, visible to the viewer, including a Victorian teacup, a clock, and an empty gold frame.<\/p>\n In an essay, Nikita Sena Quarshie, one of the curators of \u201cThe Histories,\u201d describes Marshall\u2019s new paintings for the Royal Academy exhibition as \u201chis most conventional approach\u201d used over four decades of \u201cdismantling history painting.\u201d Why Marshall chose a more orthodox style here is unclear, though perhaps the complex subject matter demanded it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Kerry James Marshall, School of Beauty, School of Culture , 2012. Photo by Sean Pathasema . \u00a9…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":253931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,15354,1033,171,134070,134071,134072,22119,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-253930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artworks-list","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-exhibition-reviews","14":"tag-kerry-james-marshall","15":"tag-precious-adesina","16":"tag-royal-academy-of-arts","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115265738620477405","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758815477_83_d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758815478_305_d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758815480_819_d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758815482_533_d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758815484_848_d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758815484_411_d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net\")