Past Exhibition

In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall

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.
Kerry James Marshall, Great America, 1994, acrylic and collage on canvas, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 2011.20.1

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    East Building, Pod 3 Tower
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.
Kerry James Marshall, Great America, 1994, acrylic and collage on canvas, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 2011.20.1

One of the most celebrated painters currently working in the United States, Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955) has exhibited widely in both this country and around the world. His work explores the experiences of African Americans and the narratives of American history that have often excluded black people. Drawing upon the artist’s prodigious knowledge of art history and the African diaspora, his paintings combine figurative and abstract styles and multiple allusions, drawing from “high” and “low” sources.

In 2011, the National Gallery of Art acquired Marshall’s Great America (1994), a depiction of four figures in a boat exiting an amusement park Tunnel of Love. Including 10 paintings and more than 20 drawings, this exhibition—Marshall’s first in Washington—explores a sequence of works that both precede and follow Great America, affording a context for its powerful imagery. The dominant theme of these works is the transport of African slaves to America in the Middle Passage—the second or “middle” leg of the triangular trade of manufactured goods, slaves, and crops that transpired between Europe, Africa, and the American colonies from the colonial period until the middle of the 19th century. Marshall’s works explore the economic, sociological, and psychological aftermath of this foundational episode of US history. In his art, the past is never truly past: history exerts a constant, often unconscious pressure on the living.
 

In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall marks the sixth in a series of Tower installations focusing on developments in art since midcentury.

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Sponsor: The exhibition is sponsored by Dr. Anita Blanchard and Martin Nesbitt and Cari and Michael Sacks. Additional support is provided by The Tower Project.

Attendance: 66,748

Brochure: In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2013.

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