![]() ![]() What immediately sets the work apart is that the figures in his paintings are Black (as is the artist himself), and until somewhat recently, images of Black figures relaxing or lounging-who are, decidedly, not suffering-were not particularly celebrated within mainstream art institutions. Marshall’s figures are just as relaxed and at ease as any of those painted by Sargent, Seurat, or Katz. This intimacy between subject and viewer is similar to that shared between the grinning pair enjoying each other’s company over a couple of drinks in Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Club Couple) (2014), a print of which hangs from my living room wall and, without fail, always prompts my guests to mirror the contented smiles of the figures. We can find similar sentiments in response to the work of contemporary artists like Alex Katz, whose 250-plus paintings of his wife Ada elicit a certain undeniable warmth. There was something about Sargent’s lounging women reading in the grass that moved people, not unlike the way Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86), an iconic portrayal of bucolic relaxation, inspires serenity. 1 The museum’s PR campaign for the exhibition used the word “dazzling” more than once and, sure enough, visitors would exit the show enamored, perusing rubber erasers, scarves, postcards, and umbrellas featuring the artist’s paintings with a newfound buoyancy. “To live with Sargent’s water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held.” This line, borrowed from the artist’s first biographer, was one that I would become intimately familiar with during my time working in the gift shop at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, which holds the most complete collection of his works. Image courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angelesĭominic Chambers, Self-Summoning (shadow work) (detail) (2022).Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library (New York, NY) USC Fisher Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA) University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. ![]() The Baltimore Museum of Art Library & Archives (Baltimore, MD) Sotheby’s Institute of Art (New York, NY) School of the Art Institute of Chicago, John M. Point Loma Nazarene University (San Diego, CA) NYS College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Scholes Library (Alfred, NY) Northwest Nazarene University (Nampa, ID) Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Emerging Leaders of Arts (Santa Barbara, CA) Midway Contemporary Art (Minneapolis, MN) Maryland Institute College of Art, The Decker Library (Baltimore, MD) Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Research Library (Los Angeles, CA) Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (Los Angeles, CA) Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, CA) Bard College, Center for Curatorial Studies Library (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY)Ĭenter for the Arts, Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT)Ĭharlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, MO)Ĭranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI) ![]()
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