In January 1995, the Gallery of Art at Johnson County Community College opened an exhibition of the work of Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall. The exhibit garnered considerable acclaim, as numerous viewers were enthralled with Marshall’s depictions of African American life.
Subsequent to the college’s exhibition, the Art Institute of Chicago organized About Place: Recent Art of the Americas in March 1995. This exhibition featured a gallery devoted to Kerry James Marshall’s paintings. It was from this show that Johnson County Community College acquired Untitled (Altgeld Gardens) (1995). An iconic painting, it has become one of the most celebrated works in the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art’s Permanent Collection.
Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience.
Marshall studied in Los Angeles with acclaimed social realist painter Charles White and participated in the residency program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has received solo exhibitions throughout Europe and North America, and his work has been included in such prestigious international exhibitions as the 1997 Whitney Biennial, the 2003 Venice Biennial, the 2009 Gwangju Biennial, two Documentas (1997 and 2007) and the 1999 Carnegie International. His paintings are in private collections and foundations, as well as major public collections including the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (whose Marshall painting is also included in the current traveling exhibit).
As Marshall commented in 1994, “I stylize my figures purely for effect, to be troublesome, to be extreme, to try to explore the cultural stereotypes that polarize us in our everyday interactions. Nothing is simple black or white. Both of these are extreme positions, and I want to take a position against the rhetorical stances people use to define themselves. This is a part of the theatrical spectacle of narrative picture making. I want a slow read; I want people to be intrigued enough by the arrangements to spend the time to unravel the narratives.”
Untitled (Altgeld Gardens) is now featured in Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Following its premiere in Chicago, the exhibit travels to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 25, 2016 – Jan. 29, 2017 and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, March 12 – July 2, 2017.
–Bruce Hartman, Executive Director, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art
