You have to recover the capacity to imagine yourself as an ideal and figure out how to project that into the world.
Kerry James MarshallRead
My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the idea that traditional art history often lacks representation of diverse identities.
Kerry James Marshall reflects on his experience with art history, indicating that the classical works typically included in art history books, crafted by renowned artists like Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, do not resonate with his own identity. This highlights the broader issue of representation in the art world, where many people fail to see themselves or their experiences reflected in the celebrated works of the past, prompting a call for a more inclusive narrative in art history.
Themes
ArtRepresentationIdentityHistoryInclusivity
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on art education, this quote can highlight the need for diverse representation in curricula.
More from Kerry James Marshall
All quotes →In Western Catholicism, darkness was evil. In the colonial and imperial context, dark skin was always weak, powerless, subjugated. If you see these images all the time, they become commonplace, and they no longer become a spectacular or sensational thing.
Kerry James MarshallRead
If you think about the way we experience art, the paradigm is still Western European. If I go to the National Gallery, what am I going to see the most of? I'm not going to see a whole lot of black figures in pictures.
Kerry James MarshallRead
When you go to an art museum, the thing you're least likely to encounter is a picture of a black person. When it comes to ideas about art and about beauty, the black figure is absent.
Kerry James MarshallRead
The history of political movements in the African diaspora is that the solution to the problem is never in the hands of people who are advancing the movement. I try and operate on my own terms.
Kerry James MarshallRead
Too often, if you look back through the history of representation and you take the work of African-American artists, the work is on such a modest scale that it becomes sort of inconsequential.
Kerry James MarshallRead
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