The day before his survey exhibition “The Histories” opened to the public — his largest presentation of work in Europe, with more than 70 works made over four and a half decades — Kerry James Marshall sat in one of the soaring picture galleries of the Royal Academy of Art.
On the walls were his newest paintings, from the series “Africa Revisited,” several of which focus on the considerable role African elites played in capturing and selling other Africans to European slave traders. It is a subject that has been widely written about by historians, but has rarely, if ever, been broached in the visual arts.
After days of showing collectors and V.I.P.s through the show — “doing the necessaries,” as he put it — Marshall, 69, was feeling good. “This body of work really represents a high-water mark,” he told me. “I’m pouring everything — the accumulated knowledge, the ability, all of that stuff — into these pictures.”
He created the new series over the past two years. “Abduction of Olaudah and His Sister” shows figures in a forest — not, as one might expect, heroically self-emancipating, but rather being kidnapped by an African man to be sold to Europeans. It is based on a 1789 account by Olaudah Equiano, who after years of enslavement, played a key role in the British abolition movement.
“Six for One” depicts a village celebrating after closing a deal — a half dozen human beings for a horse that sits, stiff and wooden, like a Trojan gift. A triptych — “Outbound,” “Haul” and “Cove”— shows Black figures in boats, rowing to and from unseen European vessels waiting offshore. In “Outbound,” a totem of figures — bound male captive, child and sea gull — teeters precariously. In “Haul,” an ebony-skinned woman lounges on a bag of cowrie shells, surrounded by luxury objects — an ornate clock, some porcelain, an empty, gilded picture frame, a blond wig with a gold tiara.
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The post ‘I’m Always Trying to Make the Paintings Nobody Else Is Making’ appeared first on New York Times.
