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" The U.S. was founded as a white supremacist nation; that's just what it is. "
Kerry James Marshall
Founded
Nation
White
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" 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 Marshall
Darkness
You
Time
" You don't see black people winning Nobel prizes for physics or economics or any of the industries or institutions that shape the way the world operates. "
Kerry James Marshall
Black
See
You
" At a certain point, you have to decide whether you'd be satisfied always acknowledging the beauty and the greatness of what other people create or if you want to be in the same arena. "
Kerry James Marshall
Beauty
You
People
" There's this idea that many of the attitudes and personality developments in black folks in the diaspora are a consequence of this unresolved trauma. There have been attempts by black artists to try and figure out how to represent that in some kind of way. "
Kerry James Marshall
Kind
Black
Try
" I don't want the pictures to mean things. But the implication of the image and its relationship to the people that are viewing it is something I'm really interested in. "
Kerry James Marshall
People
Want
Pictures
" People don't really want to hear me say this, but a black person who will give a million dollars to the Museum of Modern Art but won't give a million to the Studio Museum in Harlem is simply mistaken. "
Kerry James Marshall
Me
Black
Art
" I gave up on the idea of making art a long time ago, because I wanted to know how to make paintings; but once I came to know that, reconsidering the question of what art is returned as a critical issue. "
Kerry James Marshall
Art
Up
Time
" 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 Marshall
Book
Myself
History
" I see myself as having fulfilled a lot of my ambition. All the things I dreamed of achieving, I've achieved for the most part. "
Kerry James Marshall
I See
Achieving
See
" If you ever find yourself on a boat in the middle of the ocean, you look around in every direction and don't see anything. That's a terrifying experience. "
Kerry James Marshall
Look
Yourself
Boat
" The revision of any kind of established model is always a political act. "
Kerry James Marshall
Kind
Revision
Political
" I used to always say - and I think a lot of artists think of it this way - that when you see a black figure, the way the critical establishment operated, you can only imagine that figure having a sociological value. They never say the ways in which their aesthetics were equally worthy of consideration. "
Kerry James Marshall
Black
Say
Think
" Progress has always been understood to be driven by exceptional white men. Whether it's the military victories we've achieved, the philosophical foundations that are the underpinnings of the nation, or our economic ingenuity, all this has been articulated through narratives of exceptional white men. "
Kerry James Marshall
Nation
Always
Men
" Abstraction and representation are supposed to be going down two very different paths, one sociological and the other aesthetic. "
Kerry James Marshall
Two
Different
Paths
" Working from live models is too much trouble; it takes too much time. "
Kerry James Marshall
Live
Time
Trouble
" I don't believe in hope. I believe in action, if I'm an apostle of anything: There are always going to be complications, but to a large degree, everything is in your hands. "
Kerry James Marshall
Hands
Action
Hope
" The invention of the African American, or the Haitian or Jamaican, is a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade. "
Kerry James Marshall
Invention
Trade
Slave
" When I go to the movies, I'm expected to identify with all of the characters, and most of them are white. But when you put a black character in there, somehow the white audience isn't expected to identify with them. That's a problem. "
Kerry James Marshall
Black
Character
Movies
" Every step on my way to becoming an artist seemed preordained. The right people were always in the right places at the right times to boost me to the next level. I was fortunate to be selected for a summer drawing class offered to teens at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County. "
Kerry James Marshall
Step
Drawing
Artist
" Blackness has always been stigmatised, even amongst black people who flee from the density of that blackness. Some black people recoil from black people who are that dark because it has always been stigmatised. "
Kerry James Marshall
Because
Always
Black
" There's nothing more special than intellect and labour that makes painting work. There's no magic there; it's information, and it's work. "
Kerry James Marshall
Magic
Information
Work
" For black people, everything we do has to be ratified and endorsed by a power structure that is white. And that reinforces a kind of racial hierarchy where whiteness is the privileged position to be in, and ethnicity is problematic. "
Kerry James Marshall
White
Kind
People
" When art works travel from place to place, what you have is the opportunity to engage with the intellect of another person who has made a thing that should have enough information in it in the way it's constructed to start thinking about why that picture got made - not why it is relevant to you. "
Kerry James Marshall
Travel
Opportunity
Art
" You can't be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central near the Black Panthers headquarters and not feel like you've got some kind of social responsibility. "
Kerry James Marshall
Responsibility
Black
Feel
" People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That's the rhetorical position we occupy. "
Kerry James Marshall
Music
Black
Culture
" If you walk into any magazine store, I guarantee that nine out of 10 covers will feature white, blonde, blue-eyed, slim women because that's still the ideal of beauty. When a black or Asian figure shows up in a fashion magazine, she's the exception, not the rule. "
Kerry James Marshall
You
Women
Walk
" I see life and the world simply as an arena for competition. That's just what people do, and there are always going to be winners and losers. "
Kerry James Marshall
World
Competition
Life
" 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 Marshall
Picture
Art
Beauty
" One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person. "
Kerry James Marshall
People
Black
Am
" As a black person, I'm used to going to places in which I might be the only black person that shows up there. This experience has an effect on the way you see yourself in the world and what it means to be black in the world. "
Kerry James Marshall
You
Experience
World