Kerry James Marshall has quietly glided into the RA on a red eye from Chicago O’Hare. Every blessed visitor who can make a pilgrimage to the holiest of current exhibition sites globally (Lourdes on canvas) will leave open-eyed to the sheer brilliance, revelation, jubilation and rehabilitory power of his work.
At 69, he glows with the light of a life well lived and perfectly executed. I enjoy the fact that he was occupying a Professor appointment at the University of Illinois in Chicago in the School of Art and Design from 1993 until 2006, producing the seminal work “Past times” (1997), which went on to sell for 21 Million dollars to Sean “Baby Oil” Combs, lubricating the way for KJM to obtain the auction record for a living African American Artist, whilst raising vital funds to support arts programmes in Chicago.. The takeaway here is that some record-breaking blue-chip artists do deserve the accolades and status that the value of their auction records purports.
The first draft of this section was a clumsy attempt to construct a mound of praise for the artist. This would have been placed in midtown Piccadilly via numerous metaphorical suggestions. Frankly, this mound would have soon morphed into a mountain in St James’s, the first one since the plague, so I’ll be direct in my unbridled adulation for the show and the significance that should be placed on this body of work, the largest such survey in Europe to date for KJM.
Upon entering via the Polythemus Esq. entrance, one has access to over 60 excursions into perfectly formed worlds, some canvases so voluminous that it’s hard not to be overpowered by awe at the scale, accuracy of depth, proportions, execution, and precise balance between colour theory/narrative execution. KJM never wastes a brushstroke, and this decision lies in his approach to being very particular about the things he wants the viewer to know about the specific image. He views his paintings as straightforward and not difficult to interpret. Being obscure is not an objective that makes much sense to him. This no-frills methodology echoes throughout every work in the show. Still, with his clarity of intention, it paves the way for the viewer to take an excursion with their own imagination to live and breathe in the worlds outlined in each powerful tableau executed on a linen canvas with vibrant, colour-conscious acrylic paint.
“Six for One”, 2024, is one of the new works that I enjoyed spending the most time with, and I appreciated the balance between the stillness of some characters and the in-motion movements of others, all illuminated by a day-glow umbrella shielding a handsome horse. It’s hard not to want to jump into paintings like this, 219.3 x 320.7 cm vista, akin to what vaguely happened in that shit Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris (2011). Still, ultimately, KJM wants to celebrate black lives, culture, and history, and through his benevolence, holds every viewer’s hand and gives them permission to enter these spaces and be part of them. It’s an incredibly life-affirming and celebratory body of work.
The RA has taken larger steps than other institutions in addressing its colonial skeletons, some of which are still in storage. Adopting the idea of George Bernard Shaw, that “If you have skeletons in your closet, you’d better teach them how to dance”. The show is a triumphal waltz in the shameful face of historical injustices and inhumane behaviour. It feels apt that this validation of one of the leading voices in figurative painting is at the RA, especially as his predominant central theme in early work aimed to place black figures into art history, where they have been historically excluded. The RA was a prime location for such exclusion and forms of negative visual depictions of persons of colour.
Many retrospectives don’t involve work that’s so fresh, the paint is barely dry, but KJM has never been about just playing the greatest hits on a heritage tour. He’s always pushed his conversation forward, finding new slices of life to unpack and serve up, whilst never losing sight of making his unique tableaus as accessible to a viewer as possible, alive in ways few artists can really execute with any conviction.
This is never truer than in the new body of work focusing on Africa. Pastoral scenes give way to unique tales within and depictions of fateful journeys away from the continent onto the perilous Atlantic. KJM’s Africa is here verdant, rich, and vital, but this body of work within the wider show, entitled “Middle Passage,” forms the most politically charged images within the whole retrospective. They sit together as collected fragments of the African that was always there but never shown or respected in the manner it should have been.
Words/Photos: Oliver Malin © Artlyst 2025
If I could give this show 10 out of 10, I’d give it eleven. Open now and runs until Jan 2026