[...] By way of example, listen to Gilbert, who was leading a public tour through the exhibition at the time of my visit and who paused in front of Marshall's "Black Painting," a barely legible all-black acrylic-on-fiberglass that depicts -- but only if you look reallly close -- a couple lying in bed: "I personally have a tough time," Gilbert said, "figuring out where to stand in relation to this painting."
On one level, Gilbert was talking about the difficulty of knowing where to stand, quite literally, in the room, in order to be able to see what the painting represents. Because it is rendered in ever-so-slightly graduated shades of black, its subjects (a man and a woman sleeping in a bed, a dresser, artwork on the walls) only become visible as the viewer moves about the gallery to gain the best light. Gilbert's comment also refers figuratively to Marshall's implication that black people endure a kind of invisibility in the larger culture, that images of black people, particularly everyday, boring, domestic scenes that avoid the extremes that find their way in the papers and on television, are hard to find. With its strong conceptual component, Marshall's art invites us to ask ourselves whether we agree with his contention and whether we are willing to make the effort to look harder. [...]
| Michael O'Sullivan's Washington Post article "Mixed 'Meditations'" makes us wish we could attend "Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics."
posted in reviews on July 2, 2004 12:43 PM | t (0)
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