Art & Context 101
This guide includes information about the fine art prints on the 9th floor of Wells Library at Indiana University Bloomington. Use the resources on each page to uncover how art reflects the society in which it was created.
Articles
- A Towering Retrospective: Kerry James Marshall at the MetThe word "Mastry" in the show's title hints at slavery, southern slang, and mastery - the career-long aspiration of [Kerry James Marshall] to summon the traditions and techniques of the Old Masters and render the black figure with prominence in the canon of Western painting.
- at lastThe article discusses the increasing exposure and art market interest in the works of African-American and nonwhite artists as of December 2016. Topics covered include Mark Bradford's representation of the U.S. at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and the individual visions of artists like Kerry James Marshall, Adrian Piper, Betye Saar, and Kara Walker.
Question: Why aren’t there more representations of people of color in western artworks?
The materials from IU Libraries can help us answer questions like these. Use the links on this page to learn more about how people of color are represented in the history of western art.
Books from IUCAT
Kerry James Marshall by Call Number: ND237.M24623 A4 2016ISBN: 9780847848331Publication Date: 2016The definitive monograph on contemporary African American painter Kerry James Marshall, accompanying a major traveling retrospective. This long-awaited volume celebrates the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of America's greatest living painters. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. Best known for large-scale interiors, landscapes, and portraits featuring powerful black figures, Marshall explores narratives of African American history from slave ships to the present and draws upon his deep knowledge of art history from the Renaissance to twentieth-century abstraction, as well as other sources such as the comic book and the muralist tradition. With luscious color and brushstrokes and highly detailed patterning, his direct and intimate scenes of black middle-class life conjure a wide range of emotions, resulting in powerful paintings that confront the position of African Americans throughout American history. Richly illustrated, this monumental book features essays by noted curators as well as the artist, and more than 100 paintings from throughout the artist's career arranged thematically by subject: history painting; beauty, as expressed through the nude, portraiture, and self-portraiture; landscape; religion; and the politics of black nationalism.
Beyond Mammy, Jezebel and Sapphire by Call Number: N6538.N5 J68 2016ISBN: 9780692803172Publication Date: 2018Engaging a wide range of experiences, techniques and materials, the nine artists featured in this volume challenge the images of black women that continue to pervade our culture and influence perceptions: stereotypes such as the suffering mama, the angry black woman and the temptress. Brought together in this publication, works by Romare Bearden, Mildred Howard, Wangechi Mutu, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Robert Colescott, Ellen Gallagher, Alison Saar and Mickalene Thomas disrupt expectations and replace simplistic narratives with nuanced, sophisticated meditations on contemporary identity.
Travel and See by Call Number: World Wide WebISBN: 9780822374510Publication Date: 2016Over the years, Kobena Mercer has critically illuminated the visual innovations of African American and black British artists. In Travel & See he presents a diasporic model of criticism that gives close attention to aesthetic strategies while tracing the shifting political and cultural contexts in which black visual art circulates. In eighteen essays, which cover the period from 1992 to 2012 and discuss such leading artists as Isaac Julien, Renée Green, Kerry James Marshall, and Yinka Shonibare, Mercer provides nothing less than a counternarrative of global contemporary art that reveals how the "dialogical principle" of cross-cultural interaction not only has transformed commonplace perceptions of blackness today but challenges us to rethink the entangled history of modernism as well.
Kerry James Marshall by Call Number: ND237 .M24623 A35 2000ISBN: 0810935279Publication Date: 2000An illustrated monograph on the work of Kerry James Marshall, painter, photographer, print maker, and installation artist. Marshall's work explores contemporary African-American experience through lyrical, Matissian images.
Kerry James Marshall by Call Number: ND237.M24623 A4 2017ISBN: 9780714871554Publication Date: 2017The most comprehensive book yet on this inspired, inventive chronicler of the African-American experience Alabama-born, Chicago-based Kerry James Marshall is one of the most exciting artists working today. Critically and commercially acclaimed, the painter is known for his representation of the history of African-American identity in Western art. Conversant with a wide typology of styles, subjects, and techniques, from abstraction to realism and comics, Marshall synthesizes different traditions and genres in his work while seeking to counter stereotypical depictions of black people in society. This is the most comprehensive overview available of his remarkable career.
