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
The lighter the skin, the more acceptable you are. The darker the skin, the more marginalised you become. I want to demonstrate that you can produce beauty in the context of a figure that has that kind of velvety blackness. It can be done.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the societal bias towards skin color and emphasizes the beauty of darker skin tones.
Kerry James Marshall's quote addresses the pervasive issue of colorism, highlighting the societal preference for lighter skin while acknowledging the marginalization faced by individuals with darker skin. Through his art, he aims to challenge these perceptions by asserting that beauty exists in all shades, particularly in the richness of deeper skin tones, thereby encouraging a broader appreciation of diversity in beauty.
Themes
Skin ColorBeautyColorismBlacknessArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on colorism in art, this quote can be used to highlight how artists like Kerry James Marshall challenge societal norms.
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
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.
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
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