Kerry James
Marshall
(b. 1955)
Compositional Study for SOB, SOB
2002
graphite and charcoal on paper
24 x 19 inches (sheet)
signed and dated
Exhibited:
2003 Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Mediations on Black Aesthetics; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY.
“SOB... SOB..., hints at what artist Kerry James Marshall calls “that place in between where you experience both a certain sadness and also a certain kind of anger about the things that you’ve discovered.”
Kerry James Marshall, SOB, SOB, 2003, acrylic on fiberglass, 108 x 72 in. (274.3 x 182.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2010.29, © 2003, Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama and moved with his family to Los Angeles, where he studied at the Otis College of Art and Design in L.A. with, among others, Charles White. He realized under White’s tutelage that his art should have meaningful content, whether it be about politics, social issues, history, culture, etc.
Like most African American artists, one of Marshall’s main goals is to make it clear that the default American perspective is inaccurate and exclusive and by definition, false. Re-evaluation and redefinition is essential, and that process begins with exposing the inherent contradictions of the prevailing ideas.
Selected Exhibitions
Kerry James Marshall, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2004-05
Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, 2016-17
Kerry James Marshall: Works on Paper, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2018
Photography and Related Works at Glenstone, Glenstone, Potomac, MD , 2019-2020
EXQUISITE CORPSE: This Is Not The Game, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, 2022
Now and Forever (Stained Glass Commission), Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., Unveiled September 23, 2023
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, Royal Academy of Arts, London, September 20, 2025 to January 18, 2026
Everything Will Be Alright...
2004
woodcut and screenprint on grey BFK Rives paper
27 x 41-1/2 inches (image)
30 x 44 inches (sheet)
signed, titled, dated, and numbered, 2/25
Keeping the Culture
2011
color linoleum cut and screenprint on Arches paper
17-1/2 x 28 inches
signed, titled, dated, and numbered 18/100
Set in a revolutionary apartment in the cosmos, Kerry James Marshall's Keeping the Culture optimistically anticipates a future that pays homage to the past. Ushering in a new stage of the artist's output, Keeping the Culture shifts focus from the failed utopia of urban renewal and the commemoration of civil rights era heroes in favor of a more technically refined meditation on the preservation of the traditional and spiritual values that shaped a culture.
-Christie’s catalog, Lot essay for the painting, Keeping the Culture, on which this print is based.