Great America

1994

Kerry James Marshall

Artist, American, born 1955

Four people with black skin are squeezed into a narrow boat on bright, turquoise-colored water that nearly fills this stylized, square painting. All four sides of the unstretched canvas are lined with six gromets spaced along each edge. The boat approaches a carnival-like tunnel near the upper right corner. Cartoon ghosts loom at the tunnel entrance and a translucent, veil-like ghost hovers over the left half of the painting. The horizon comes almost to the top of the canvas, where white clouds float against an azure-blue sky. A long, lemon-yellow line curls back and forth in a tight, curving zigzag pattern that widens out from a tiny sun setting on the horizon. A red cross on a white field floats near the upper left. At the top center, the word “WOW” appears in white letters within a crimson-red, bursting speech bubble with long trailing tendrils, like an exploded firework. Below the boat and against the water to our right, the word “FUN” has been overlaid with a white square so the tall, white letters are barely visible. The words “GREAT AMERICA” appear in a curling banner across the bottom half of the painting.
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Great America (1994) by Kerry James Marshall is the Gallery's first painting by this major midcareer artist. A devoted student of the human figure and the history of art, Marshall draws upon the experience of African Americans to create imposing, contemporary history paintings.

Marshall's mature career can be dated to 1980, when, inspired by the opening lines of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, he developed his signature motif of a dark, near-silhouetted figure in A Portrait of the Artist as His Former Self. Refusing both negative and positive stereotypes of black people, Marshall's figures of "extreme blackness" operate, he explains, "right on the borderline," forcing the viewer to find nuance and articulation within only apparently black forms. This strategy has been influential for younger artists, including Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon.

Great America is contemporaneous with Marshall's well-known Garden Project (1994–1995), a series of paintings based on housing projects with "gardens" in their names, such as Nickerson Gardens in Watts, where he grew up. In those works, Marshall sought to convey the dignity and complexity of lives set within difficult circumstances. In Great America he re-imagines a boat ride into the haunted tunnel of an amusement park as the Middle Passage of slaves from Africa to the New World. What might in other hands be a work of heavy irony becomes instead a delicate interweaving of the histories of painting and race. The painting, which is stretched directly onto the wall, creates a screen or backdrop onto which viewers project their own associations triggered by the diaphanous yet powerful imagery.


Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Video:  Conversations with Artists: Kerry James Marshall

In this program recorded on June 26, 2013, exhibition curator James Meyer and Kerry James Marshall discuss the works and themes of his exhibition In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall, on view at the Gallery from June 28 to December 8, 2013.

Video:  Conversations with Artists: Kerry James Marshall

On October 27, 2013, Kerry James Marshall discusses his painting Great America (1994), acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 2011 as a gift of the Collectors Committee, and the inspiration for the Gallery’s exhibition In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall, on view June 28 through December 8, 2013.


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist; (Koplin Gallery, Culver City, California); purchased 1994 -1995 by (Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA); purchased April 1997 by Dr. Herbert and Shirley Semler, Portland, OR; [1] (Christie’s, New York, 10 February 2009, no. 15, bought in); purchased 9 May 2011 through (Jack Shainman Gallery, New York) by NGA.
[1] This information kindly provided by Greg Kucera (email dated 13 December 2024, in NGA curatorial file).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1995

  • Kerry James Marshall. Works on Paper and Canvas, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA, 5-29 October 1995, unumbered exhibition checklist.

1997

  • Civil Progress: Life in Black America, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA, 6 Februray-30 March 1997, repro.

2013

  • In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2013, unnumbered brochure, repro.

Bibliography

2013

  • Meyer, James. "In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall." National Gallery of Art Bulletin 48 (Spring 2013): 32-33, repro.

2024

  • Haw, Kate, Charles Brock, James Meyer, and Donna Kirk. "The Conversation Series. A Look Behind the Latest Installation." Art for the Nation no. 68 (Spring 2024): 3-6, 12, fig.1, 6.

Wikidata ID

Q20198047


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