Kerry James Marshall: The Histories arrives as the most comprehensive publication yet on one of the defining artists of the past half-century. It offers not only a survey of Marshall’s career but a critical intervention into how we understand the canon of Western art and its exclusions.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955, and raised in Los Angeles against the backdrop of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Marshall has long set himself the task of placing Black figures at the centre of a visual tradition that historically denied them presence. His paintings – monumental in scale, rich in colour, unapologetically ambitious – situate Black bodies in spaces ranging from domestic interiors and housing estates to beauty salons and public parks. The book makes clear how systematically he has dismantled and reassembled the conventions of European painting to claim its histories for those written out of them.
The scope of the publication is vast. Lavishly illustrated, it follows Marshall’s trajectory through portraiture, allegory, and historical painting. Works memorialising Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Olaudah Equiano sit alongside paintings drawn from contemporary Black life, insisting on a continuum between past and present. A newly unveiled series, reproduced here for the first time, shifts focus to Africa, engaging with histories and figures often overlooked in both African and Western art histories. This extension of Marshall’s project beyond the American and diasporic frame underscores the depth of his historical imagination.
The essays anchor Marshall’s practice within different critical contexts. Mark Godfrey provides a substantial survey that charts Marshall’s development, from early influences under Charles White to his mature work. Contributions from Aria Dean, Darby English, Madeleine Grynsztejn, Cathérine Hug, Nikita Sena Quarshie and Rebecca Zorach each open different lines of enquiry, while an extended interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh gives space for Marshall to speak in his own terms about the stakes of representation, history and artistic responsibility.
One of the book’s strengths is its attention to the full range of Marshall’s output. The Rythm Mastr comic project, often under-discussed in relation to his paintings, receives detailed treatment, as do his public commissions, including the stained-glass windows for Washington National Cathedral. These sections remind us that Marshall has consistently refused to confine himself to the studio or the gallery; his interventions reach into public space and popular culture, extending the conversation beyond the art world.
What emerges is a portrait of an artist who has not only changed the texture of contemporary painting but also altered the way we think about history itself. Marshall’s canvases – dense with reference, layered in meaning – function as counter-archives, works that record lives and stories neglected by traditional art history. The book insists on their place within a lineage stretching from the Renaissance to modernism, while also asserting their distinctiveness.
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories is a must-have catalogue; it is a sustained argument for Marshall’s centrality in any account of contemporary art. At a moment when questions of representation and the politics of the museum remain urgent, this publication feels both timely and necessary. – PCR