Kerry James Marshall: A Must-See Exhibit at the Met Breuer

I escaped Scarsdale this week to visit a "must see" exhibit at the new Met Breuer Museum – formerly the Whitney Museum's uptown home, and I immediately understood why this exhibit is getting so much acclaim.

The entire third and fourth floors of this spacious museum are devoted to the lifework of an African-American artist whom some may not know. In his wall-size canvases Kerry James Marshall reflects the black experience in America, tying in cultural norms, politics, racial stereotypes and historical artistic references in a stunning panorama of the black population's suppression in white society.

Marshall was born in Birmingham Alabama in 1955 and moved to California at the age of eight to a public housing complex in Watts called Nickerson Gardens. An entire room of paintings picture the "Garden Projects" where black children are shown playing in an idyllic garden that's really a slum. In the painting "Past Times," blacks are pictured enjoying a picnic, motor boating and waterskiing – while the sound of the Temptation's Song, "Just my imagination running away from me," wafts from the radio. In this ironic work, Marshall illustrates how minorities are shut out of conventional recreational activities and the American Dream.

Another series echoes Ralph Ellison's book, "The Invisible Man," showing a jet black man against a black background, leaving only the whites of his eyes and teeth visible in the darkness.

The works are provocative and vibrantly painted. The life size images of people with black, black skin pop out from the bright colors of landscapes and detailed scenes of ordinary life such as the beauty salon and the barbershop. The works are filled with irony. For example, Marshall juxtaposes images of white women on the covers of Harlequin romance novels with voluptuous black women in a commentary on standards of beauty.

The exhibit includes works that reference significant historical events. In Souvenir 1, Marshall pictures the martyrs of the civil rights era, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King along with Malcolm X and the victims of the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham. In the center of the painting is a black figure with an angelic glittering gold wing.

Each tableau is more arresting than the next as many are life size and utilize intense color, metallic paint and glitter.

The exhibit is on until January 29, 2017 – and it's definitely worth a trip to town.

The Met Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021
Phone: 212-731-1675