Heroes and martyrs - Kerry James Marshall, Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York - Brief Article

At a time when the succes of the 1960 Civil Rights motion is widely debated in the U Kerry James Marshall pays tribute to its leaders in a traveling exhibition of new work.

"Mementos," Kerry James Marshall's traveling exhibition popularly at the Brooklyn Museum, is an evocation of things past and, in particular, a poignant meditation upon the Civil Rights movement. A requiem for a tumultuous era and its martyrs, the display reminds us of what was missing and gained during those years and what is at the same time to be realized now, when the labor for racial equality has grown diffuse and resistance has resurfaced.

As neared at the Renaissance Society in Chicago this past spring, this multifaceted exhibition included four paintings, sum of two units photographs, sculptural objects, prints and a video installation. With sum of two units exceptions, all are new works conceived as interrelated parts of a conceptual whole.

Like any wake, "Mementos" is purposefully wistful at the same time celebratory. We Mourn Our Los (1997) a small acrylic-on-masonite painting that hung in the gallery's entranceway, functions as an index to the repose of the show. Centrally placed against the painting's ink-black background are medallionlike portraits of John F Kennedy Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.--a trinity that returns throughout the show. Above this saintly looking clump hovers a swatch of pale amethystine paint that proves to be a of the soul image of Malcolm X, the controversial black separatist leader. And running along the bottom cutting side of the painting is its title, incantationed out in gold Gothic lettering.

The Kennedy-Kennedy-King trinity is likewise the dominant motif in the sum of two units untitled C-prints included in the present to view In one, a murky visual field is pierced by dint of the tip of what appears to be a alphabetic character opener marked with an image of the threesome In the other, an interior display the trio's portrait is prominently displayed upon a wall in a gilded frame, the cutting sides of which hold photographs, political buttons and newspaper obituaries, all related to the exhibition's theme. In the lower left-hand corner of this image, a small mirror reveals the arm of a male figure, presumably the artist, in the act of photographing his shrine.

The words of venerable King, "We Shall Overcome," and Malcolm X "By Any Means Necessary," are quot in an untitled series of text-based relief prints. These simple on the other hand powerful pieces repeat these and other well-known dicta, like as Stokely Carmichael's "Black Power" and the rallying make an outcry "Black is Beautiful." Executed in the black nationalist colors of verdant black and red, these ink prints bespeak a narrative of diverse political strategies, ranging from black pride to separatism to violent revolution. The plates from which these multiples were printed, meanwhile, have been incorporated into separate works as the faces of five colossal rubber stamps, fabricated to Oldenburgesque scale. Fusing burst art's product fetishism and Hans Haacke's turned to one side social commentary, Marshall questions the meaning of these canonical phrases today: are they still important calls to political action, or have they become overused rubber-stamp cliches?

While these works expand the formal parameters of Marshall's previous investigations, his forces still reside in his paintings. For instance, "The Garden Project" (1994-95) his assemblage of satirical, mural-sized canvases of housing casts presented last year at Documenta X and the Whitney Biennial, has proven Marshall an astute pictorialist [see A.i,A., Oct '97] Subverting the images of violence and distress often associated with low-income housing, Marshall nears idealized cityscapes where black residents live and work as a community and in harmony with nature.

Primary constitutings in the current exhibition are three paintings from the "Souvenir" series, which is closely related to "The Garden Project" However, in place of the public realities addressed in the earlier series, the "Souvenir" works tender tableaux of black private life. Here, a suite of well-tended living spaces reflects the black middle class whose rise coincided with the Civil Rights change Presiding over these rooms--and acknowledging the viewer's presence--are solitary black angels with stoic, dignified faces reminiscent of African masks. These winged caretakers appear to be the agents of celebrated African-American figures who died during the '60s--artistic and political leaders whose visages appear above them in clusters of heavenly mists Souvenir III and Souvenir IV (both 1998) pay homage to various African-American musical and literary icons and are returned in a subdued palette of acrylics emulating advanced in years black-and-white photographs. The colorful, more decorative Souvenir I (1997) mourns the los of those who died in the endeavor for freedom, including Malcolm X Medgar W at any times Black Panthers Mark Clark and Fr Hampton, and the four young girls killed in the bombing of the 16th highway Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963