About

If Kerry James Marshall is justly celebrated as a pioneering figure in Black Portraiture, it is because he utilises the flatness of Pop Art to examine the objectification of the black body, its seeming invisibility and threat. Like Toni Morrison, Marshall chooses to play in the dark. Her objective? ‘To free up the language’ whereby ‘racially informed and determined chains’ are predictably employed in a manner sinister and lazy. Black Portraiture is never innocent. It is what one does with the codes for blackness, that ensures the significance and value of an artist or dealership.

Eclectica is …