The Metaphysics and Racial Politics of Blackness through the work of Kerry James Marshall

The Metaphysics and Racial Politics of Blackness through the work of Kerry James Marshall

Michael Forbes MA Sculpture 2019 Royal College of Art

Words 9632

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Dedicated to:

Yamato Shaquille Leon Hylton Kennedy Ricardo Ben Arron

Nathan

Black boys and men can.

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The Metaphysics and Racial Politics of Blackness through the work of Kerry James Marshall

the (sur)real presence — of blackness serially brings online as persistent aeration, the incessant turning over of the ground beneath our feet that is the indispensable preparation for the radical overturning of the ground that we are under.

Fred Moten1

Content 1. Blackness (the manifesto) 2. Introduction

pg 5

pg 8

3. Developing the Blackness (the manifesto)

pg 9

4. Marshall / Work / Metaphysics / Ontology

pg 13

5. Making Blackness visible

pg 17

6. The context - Contemporary racial politics

pg 21

7. The Museum / exclusion / protection of whiteness / institutions of racism

pg 27

8. What do audiences want 9. Concluding

pg 35

pg 41

10. Glossary – Blackness, Metaphysics and Ontology 11. Bibliography

pg 42

pg 43

Abbreviation: KJM = Kerry James Marshall

1

Fred Moten, Blackness and Nothingness

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1. Blackness (the manifesto) Blackness is an evolving conversation on difference, race, history and politics.

Blackness acknowledges Whiteness, Asianness, Arabness and respects their differences.

Within the colour codings of humanity there is no oneness, but an acknowledgement of difference.

Blackness will change in context of location or environment, but blackness will stay the same.

Blackness allows ownership of oneself and intellect, which is not linked or limited to blackness.

Acknowledgement of Blackness allows one to stand next to another on equal terms.

Blackness allows for discussion of any subject in relation to blackness, but not exclusive to it.

Blackness gives to others.

Blackness will come through presence and boldness; therefore, express it, in the required accent and language.

In conversations Blackness shines through, comments are from Blackness, which have been shaped through thousands of years, and refined enroute.

Step forward into Blackness, there is much to do - people depend on the voice of Blackness, in all our narratives.

Seeing is through Blackness - a tree is green in relation to Blackness.

Blackness sleeps in dreams and wakes in the dreamer.

Blackness sets goals and aspirations, therefore embrace it.

Individual blackness ends with the body and soul, but the baton of Blackness is passed on to the next generation who refine their version of Blackness.

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Don't get complacent with Blackness, give it a voice – it’s a duty to others.

Society needs blackness expressed - it is by expressing Blackness, freedom is created for others.

Others have paid their Blackness debts.

There is no other purpose than to share and create for others.

Others are watching Blackness expressed, therefore make it valuable and worthwhile.

Blackness needs knowledge, to move forward with conviction.

Feed Blackness with Blackness, but not exclusive, as there is more.

Stand on Blackness to see over the masses, but own your membership to the masses, but with Blackness as the base.

Take the best society has, in defining Blackness, but be free of it.

Don't get boxed in by Blackness; equally don't let anyone define a frame to Blackness.

Blackness offers greatness and generosity.

Keep defining and refining Blackness away from others.

Thinking with Blackness will save one from the limitations of ego.

Blackness can see through ego - don't get drawn into petty games and manipulations.

Blackness does not invite violence as a subject or enactor, but history has soiled the water.

Blackness has had to fight for survival, and in the process has lost many along the way.

The physical loss coupled with the psychological loss has presented its challenges at times, but Blackness will come through.

There is always a price to pay.

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Blackness has had to face and does face white supremacy in cahoots white privilege, for its survival.

Blackness faces the challenges of white control of mass media, in love with whiteness and white beauty.

Blackness is sexual, but has been sexualised for the benefit of others.

Don't let Blackness get caught up in the difference of skin tones, one can never be too black, it just is.

Blackness is the African, Blackness is the Diaspora, Blackness is the small island.

Blackness is defined by more than your skin.

The soul is Blackness and love is Blackness, but not to the exclusion of all others - it cannot be exclusive, because that would be contradictory to Blackness.

Blackness needs humanity and humanity needs it.

Blackness in the face of power is the face of power, but there’s still work to do.

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2. Introduction I will explore the metaphysics of blackness through the work of Kerry James Marshall, which from a metaphysics perspective, poses a number of questions, such as: beyond the dictionary definition of blackness (see glossary) :•

Is blackness a valid concept, if so what are the properties and nature of blackness

•

Is there a distinction between blackness and whiteness beyond the difference of race.

Other metaphysical questions that may be posed in reference to art, could include; what are the properties and nature of art making:•

Can real concepts be expressed through art

•

Why make art

•

What value does art have beyond the artist’s pleasure of creating it

•

Are the narratives expressed by artists of any value or valid.

In exploring the above questions, I will discuss two of Marshall’s works, but the portfolio of his practice is not the main focus of this essay. My focus is the metaphysics of Marshall’s practice, in-line with an ontological narrative of blackness within the visual arts, which resonates between his practice and my own interests.

Beyond my reading of racial politics and research for new work I had not given much attention to the study of blackness from a Metaphysical or Ontological perspective. Metaphysics and Ontology are extensive subjects to research and study and whilst I want to develop my understanding of both, my focus will be on them in relation to blackness and the concepts contained in the work of KJM. -8-

Valerie Cassel Oliver, a writer and curator, in her essay Ontology of Blackness: Reinventing Blackness in the 21st Century for Kerry James Marshalls’ exhibition catalogue, poses a number of informative questions, which has helped shape my enquiry. 2

This paper will explore the ontological conversation explored by the artist and the metaphysics of creativity and the creative process, in relation to putting a visual representation to non-physical concepts. Marshalls’ art practice embraces the black diaspora, thereby his ontological conversation on blackness has universal appeal and relatedness; a black frequency and black sensibility within the visual language of art.

3. Developing Blackness (the manifesto) In developing Blackness (the manifesto), I wanted to first to understand the metaphysical space of defining blackness and complete it with an ontological response to the nature of blackness, by asking the following questions: What are the properties of Blackness, is there a distinction between Blackness and whiteness, beyond race difference.

Would removing blackness as a distinct category of conversation on race be like skinning a black cat, in terms of its’ black fur being one of the main properties of being a black cat.

Oliver poses the following questions, which helped define Blackness (the manifesto) into a meaningful set of ideas:

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Valerie Cassel Oliver - Exhibition catalogue: Along the Way, Kerry James Marshall at the Camden Arts Centre London in 2005/6

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1. How can we arrive at a new understanding of blackness that is less preoccupied with the paradox of race but more engaged with an authentic, yet inventive, voice that speaks to the complex and hyper-regenerative power of our being?

2. How can blackness be reinvented? How can its essence be extrapolated from the muck and mire in which it now rests to be reformed and shaped into something well, useful?3 Oliver asks in relation to our collective history4: The history of blackness has been inextricably linked to a discourse of misery, resistance, survival, politics, and struggle. So how does one come to understand contemporary blackness outside of what Arthur Jafa has so eloquently defined as an historical ‘ontological existence'? 5 How do we as black people — and more specifically within this context, as black artists, historians, and scholars — move beyond this historical and experiential definition to arrive at a new understanding of blackness6.

Oliver continues: blackness is not static, but an evolving and hyper regenerative state of existence that provokes cultural production7.

In response to the comment ‘move beyond this historical and experiential definition to arrive at a new understanding of blackness’; I don’t believe that for black artists, there will be a significant shift in terms of the conversation of

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Valerie Cassel Oliver in her essay Ontology of Blackness: Reinventing Blackness in the 21st Century, pg 24.

I mention collective history, because there many sides to our history, such as; the oppressor and the oppressed, the victim of racial abuse and the perpetrator, exclusion and the excluder.

5 Arthur Jafa. My Block Death, in Greg Tate, ed. Everything but the Burden: What Whites Have Taken from Blacks (New York: Broadway Books. 2003 pp. 256-57) 6 Valerie Cassel Oliver in her essay Ontology of Blackness: Reinventing Blackness in the 21st Century, pg 24.

7 Valerie Cassel Oliver in her essay Ontology of Blackness: Reinventing Blackness in the 21st Century, pg 25 4

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the ontology of blackness within contemporary arts practice. Looking at many high profile black contemporary artists blackness defines their current conversations within their practice and seems likely to continue, for some time to come: Larry Achiampong, John Akomfrah, Barby Ashanti, Lynette Yiadom Boakye, David Hammond, Arthur Jafa, Huw Locke, Chris Offili, Keith Piper, Yinka Shonibare, Hank Willis Thomas, Barbra Walker, Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley etc.

The following question could be asked: is blackness in art making and creativity like the abused child, who never resolves the emotional damage of their childhood, and carries the emotional pain into their adult life, picking at the scars and keeping the wounds alive? Arthur Jafa, quoting Fred Moten says black artists, should ‘remain in the hold’ and furthermore, ‘black peoples ontological existence is bound up in horror’.8 This raises other questions for if it was not for the ontology of blackness and the history of trauma associated with it, where would black art practice be? It could be said that without the historical differentiation of race, would black art practice have the luxury of being more decorative.

Oliver answers elements of the above questions in her comments: Clearly there has been a paradigm shift among artists seeking to embrace blackness, many of them adopting a sophisticated and delightfully subversive strategy to subjugate the discourse of difference with a 'my blackness is fabulous, and now that we've established that, let's move on' mentality9.

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Arthur Jafa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAYSXam1vOA Valerie Cassel Oliver in her essay Ontology of Blackness: Reinventing Blackness in the 21st Century, pg 25

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Yinka Shonibare would be a good example of an artist who has navigated the conversation of blackness, historical racial politics, with African and European culture, whilst placing the work in museums and the contemporary art arena.

Oliver writes: The Reclamation of Corporeal Blackness While curators, historians, intellectuals and those artists who engage in this dialogue continue to grapple with this resurrected and liberated concept of blackness, many other black artists have continued with a politics of reclamation. This reclamation of blackness as both corporeal and metaphysical involves viewing blackness as an indispensable quality — as the bedrock and foundation upon which all else is layered10.

Blackness (the manifesto), presents new and existing ontological conversations surrounding Blackness, which puts black humanity at its core; by drawing together the synergy between the metaphysics of race, and the wider humanity.

Blackness (the manifesto) was also informed by the research for my work Facing Black (White Privilege Manifesto)11, which identified the disadvantages black people face in all walks of life, based on race, racism and history, as compared to advantages that white people experience, as a result of white supremacy thinking and whiteness ideology. Here I refer to, the writer and academic, bell hook’s definition of White Supremacy12, which was informed by

Ibid Michael Forbes - Photographic / Sculptural work which I have been developing over a number of years, drawing on my sculptural work with counterfeit handbags and text-based work. See website for details https://www.michaelforbes.org.uk/facing-black 12 Michael Forbes - I do not refer to far right racism activity (although that does play a role at the extreme end of White Supremacy), but I am referring to bell hooks’ - definition: “white supremacy” is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term “internalized racism”- a term most often used to 10 11

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Charles Mills definition of White Supremacy in his essay Revisionist Ontologies Theorizing White Supremacy. 13

4. The work of Kerry James Marshall in relation to Blackness.

My opening questions; in relation to metaphysics and art making are: •

Can the ontology of blackness be expressed through a painting or a work of art.

•

What is the nature of art making - can real concepts be expressed through art.

•

Why make art - what value does it have beyond the pleasure of making it by the artist.

•

Are the narratives expressed by artists of any value or valid.

•

What are the properties of art making.

In order to help me understand the metaphysics of the work of KJM, I found it interesting to look at one element of his work from the perspective of frequency, in relation to the work of the artist Arthur Jafa.

suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term “white supremacy” enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise “white supremacist control” over other black people.”

13 Charles Mills - Revisionist Ontologies Theorizing White Supremacy - Of course, some crucial disanalogies need to be noted. For one thing, gender as a system of power has been seen as practically universal, and it dates back, if not to the origin of the species, at least to an age thousands of years before ours, whereas white domination is clearly a product of the modern period. Moreover, many radical feminists appeal to varieties of biological determinism to explain patriarchy and regard it as the source of all other oppressions, Revisionist Ontologies Theorizing White Supremacy pg number 98 Charles Mills - I use the term white supremacy to conceptualise this system. But I intend a latitudinarian conception, one that encompasses de facto as well as de jure white privilege and refers more broadly to the European domination of the planet that has left us with the racialized distributions of economic, political, and cultural power that we have today. We could call it global white supremacy, pg number 98 Moreover, white supremacy evolves over time, in part precisely because of the other systems to which it is articulated, in part because of nonwhites’ political struggles against it. In a detailed treatment, one would need to develop a periodization of different forms, with one obvious line of temporal demarcation being drawn between the epoch of formal white supremacy (paradigmatically represented by the legality of European colonialism and African slavery) and the present epoch of de facto white supremacy (the aftermath of slavery and decolonization, with formal juridical equality guaranteed for whites and non-whites). The basic point, then, is that it would be a mistake to identify one particular form of white supremacy (e.g., slavery, juridical segregation) with white supremacy as a family of forms and then argue from the nonexistence of this form that white supremacy no longer exists. The changing nature of the system implies that different racial organizations of labour, dominant cultural representations, and evolving legal standings are to be expected, pg number 101 Third World nations are part of a global economy dominated by white capital and white international lending institutions, that the planet as a whole is dominated by the cultural products of the white West, that many First World nations have experienced a resurgence of racism, including biologically determinist ideas once thought to have been definitively discredited with the collapse of Nazi Germany, and that in general the darkskinned races of the world, particularly blacks and indigenous peoples, continue to be at or near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in both metropolitan and Third World polities, pg number 102

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In her essay; The Visual Frequency of Black Life, the academic, Tina M Campt set out three questions to help understand Jafa’s work, which I thought would be a useful starting point.

In framing her questions Campt starts with: Three questions Synaesthetic queries that ask us to see the affects of sound and visualise the impact of music; queries that interrogate the overlap between sound and image, and ruminate on the fold that connects the two; queries that challenge us to synchronise the sonic with the visual to forge a modality capable of reckoning with the full complexity of Black life. Three questions in/on the visual frequency of Black experience.

What does Jafa mean when he asks us to imagine images that vibrate at the frequency of Black music? What does a cinematic practice 'look' like when it approximates a tonality that is not merely a sequence of notes, but instead creates forms of visual movement - vibrations - that synchronise with, rather than represent, the tonality of Black life? Jafa’s response, repeated and honed over time, has been consistently the same. Three words: Black Visual Intonation14.

Marshall’s work has the ‘Black Visual Intonation’ and frequency, which could be aligned with a range of sounds and vibrations. Some of the obvious sounds would be the Funk and Soul of the late sixties and early seventies, which would be bouncing around the interior spaces and Vignette paintings reflecting this

Tina M Campt - The Visual Frequency of Black Life, pg 20 – In the exhibition catalogue; A series of utterly improbable, yet extraordinary renditions – Arthur Jaffa

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period. Jazz would be rolling around some of the streetscapes of LA and Chicago, whilst Hip hop and Rap would be dictating the pace of the Rhythm Mastr comic series. Marshall places great importance on producing images and sculpture, which reflect the ontology of black life; to this end he presents paintings with black people doing everyday things - walking the dog, falling in love and being creative. Marshall’s says; ‘normality, mundane, ordinariness, lack of sensation, make it the common place’.

Although Marshall refuses to paint stereotypes, such as crime, violence and drugs, he found himself drawn into the conversations through a series of Lost Boys paintings, when his brother was imprisoned for seven years in 1992.

Although, I do not have all the answers to the questions raised in this paper, I feel they are important to raise here, within the context of Marshall’s work and art making. Marshall also asks his own ontological questions in reference to art making, he says: I have a chicken-and-egg thing that I was going to say, with respect ontology. For me, the question I begin with is, why are we here in the first place? Why are there black people in the Western hemisphere?

That’s the question that a lot of my activity is aimed at addressing.

So one might ask, when black people are trying to make art, are we really trying to do the same thing that white artists are trying to do or do we need different things? I think that on many levels we’re trying to do different things15.

15

Charles Gaines interview with KJM for the publication Kerry James Marshall pg 40

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To consider the above questions, there has to be a separation between the artists’ intentions, language and the physical objects of the paintings of KJM. On a physical level, the paintings are made of three main properties: - wooden stretcher, PVC panel and paint pigment – ontologically KJM brings these properties together to create a single entity, thereby a metaphysical narrative is created. The metaphysical level requires the artists intervention to bring the materials together, in a coherent way, to make a convincing case for the audience to complete the picture.

I’m not sure any painting or artwork can make a case for blackness, beyond a vague 2D / 3D form of representation – blackness is too vast to be contained within an artist’s body of work.

From a personal experiential perspective and having seen a lot of art I’m not sure of its value beyond entertainment and the assign fiscal value.

Occasionally, I will see and experience artwork that moves me emotionally for good or bad, some of Marshall’s work does and some not. I think some of the emotional engagement with his work is about the mastery, but some is about the representation of a black ontology.

In his essay What Do Pictures Really Want, the academic, W J T Mitchell asks the follow questions: In short, I think it may be time to rein in our notions of the political stakes in a critique of visual culture and to scale down the rhetoric of the "power of images." Images are certainly not powerless, but they may be a lot weaker than we think. The problem is to refine and complicate our estimate of their power and the way it works.

That is why I shift the question from what pictures do to what they want, from power to desire, from the model of the dominant power - 16 -

to be opposed, to the model of the subaltern to be interrogated or (better) to be invited to speak. If the power of images is like the power of the weak, that may be why their desire is correspondingly strong, to make up for their actual impotence16.

It is interesting to pose the question ‘What Do Pictures Really Want’ from us, I will develop this further in the final chapter, What do audiences want.

Mitchell continues: Pictures are things that have been marked with all the stigmata of personhood: they exhibit both physical and virtual bodies; they speak to us, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. They present, not just a surface, but a face that faces the beholder17.

5. Making Blackness visible Marshall discusses the impact on and direction of his work after reading The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, and how the main protagonist felt about being invisible to mainstream society, based on race and financial status.

Drawing inspiration from The Invisible Man, Marshall painted the Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self, (figure 1) a black male figure painted on black background, thereby only being detectable from the whites of his eyes and the over emphasised grin. The work was the start of Marshall’s engagement with the black figure in relation to Western art history.

Marshall plays with the sardonic grin or ‘coded smile’, which has racist overtones, in reference to black people being told to smile in the dark to be

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W J. T Mitchell - OCTOBER 77, Summer 1996, pp. 71-82. 1996.

Ibid

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seen or to placate their black presence in the company of whites. The work also has overtones of the fool, caricatures and the black minstrel. Although, Marshall said the smile was influenced by the horror film Mr Sardonicus all the above readings can’t be excluded from the possible narratives within the painting.18 The invisible man, a black man, ends up living underground after a series of significant life events, including rioting in Harlem. During the rioting, the protagonist escapes the events by falling down an open sewer grate and finds himself stuck in an underworld, which he makes his home.

In the opening lines of the prologue, Ellison sets out the thoughts of the ontological existence of the main protagonist, as he makes his way through the city at the end of the day; I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination indeed, everything and anything except me.

Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of

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William Castle director - Mr. Sardonicus is a 1961 horror film produced. It tells the story of Sardonicus, a man whose face becomes frozen in a horrifying grin while robbing his father's grave to obtain a winning lottery ticket.

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the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.19

Figure 1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self, 1980.

19

Ralph Ellison - Prologue to the Invisible Man.

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What I found intriguing was how the metaphysics of visibility and invisibility of blackness relate and are played out in to Marshall's work. This further highlighted the relationship of visibility and invisibility manifests itself in the physical world, the human world, but on a metaphysical level, how is visibility defined, beyond the light waves, why has race got caught up in the wider conversation on metaphysics? Are there any true metaphysical differences linked to race, beyond the social construct of race?

Many black people do talk about the psychological invisibility they experience within society and in the work place, and how it impacts on their lives and careers. There is the wider acknowledgement that hidden racism exists beyond overt racist rants, violence, exclusion and discrimination. The silent form of discrimination includes not acknowledging a person’s comments, presence or their contribution to projects and society. Marshall discusses on many occasions the exclusion of black artists in the museum system and the history of art, which I will discuss in more detail later in the chapter on Museums / Gallery. Marshall plays with the ideas of black visibility and invisibility, the notion of being and not being, within the context of presence and absence: meaning, one can be present, but invisible.

The Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self was the start of Marshall’s engagement, with the black on black paintings. Here he makes the link to the use of black paint and blackness, thereby challenging any notion that black and blackness can be boxed into a simplistic state of being. Marshall discusses his use of black paint with Kevin Griffin:

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When you have black against black, you can still make the blacks chromatic so they can have colour complexity that most people don’t assign to black.

That was part of the reason for the paintings (he’s referring to several other black on black figurative paintings) in the first place: to break the notion that blackness was a reductive condition that it couldn’t be more complex, that you couldn’t make a painting with just black.20 Marshall discusses giving each character a personality, thereby not making the black reductive, a flat linear stereotype, which could be used as a template.

Moving on from the Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self, Marshall started to render all subjects with black pigments. By making his subjects black, Marshall set out to directly challenge the history of art.

KJM only uses the black in his paintings for people and adding other colours to create contours, light variations and create volume, thereby creating a surface tension. He also experimented with carbon black, iron oxide black and ivory black, to create warm and cool tones.

6. The Context - Contemporary Racial Politics Every person by nature is racist.21 On the most basal level, every human being is prejudiced, the matter is simply one of degree.22 However human beings cannot help being prejudiced. Prejudice as a mode of valuation and self-expression is part of our psychological thrownness. While we have choice over the objects of our

Kerry James Marshall and Kevin Griffin - Vancouver Sun interview Mills, Jon and Polanowski, Janusz A. Ontology of Prejudice. 1997, Vol. 58, p11 22 Ibid 20 21

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prejudice, we have no choice over our psychic proclivities to be other than prejudicial beings.23 Prejudice as a psychological a priori is ubiquitous within the domain of the unconscious and becomes manifested through its pervasive projection into conscious experience. Freud anticipates such prejudices in the nature of transference. Transference is a fundamental pillar of psychoanalytic thought and is generally known as an unconscious operation by which all objects (people) of perception are interpreted through the lens of our internal dynamic wishes, conflicts, and past experiences. We cannot help seeing others through the screens of our own personal histories.24

As, we move to a post Obama era, with Brexit dominating the airwaves and the far right on the rise, there is much talk about contemporary racial politics, on a national and international level. Writers and thinkers are airing their thoughts on race in the current climate, with many discussions referring to a malaise of racial prejudice, which has been bubbling under the surface for many years. The history of racial politics and the history of mankind has brought us here.

In many ways we are talking about a success story in Marshall and his career, but there are many issues to address which makes his work important. He is in a privileged position to open up conversations on racial politics in society, including the arts for people to visually and intellectually engage with. The

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Mills, Jon and Polanowski, Janusz A. Ontology of Prejudice. 1997, Vol. 58, p12 Mills, Jon and Polanowski, Janusz A. Ontology of Prejudice. 1997, Vol. 58, p20

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history of racism in America and Europe, have created a white supremacy ideology that is all pervasive and affects all areas of society.

The ontology of racial politics and prejudice are explored further in this section in relation to Marshall’s work and aspirations; when asked by Charles Gaines in a interview: Do you use painting to deepen our understanding of race, or do you use race to deepen our understanding of painting? Fully respecting what you said earlier about the inability of art to effect social change, how can we square that with the pedagogical impulse to broaden our understanding of racism in order, presumably, to improve society?25 Marshall responded with: I think about it, what I’m not doing is making work that addresses the idea of racism. What I am doing is establishing a black presence that isn’t traumatically conditioned by its relationship to a practice or structure called racism. If we think of the idea of racism as a set of relationships that have to do with power and powerlessness, it has an uneven effect on its perpetrators and victims.26

Reni Eddo Lodge spoke very directly and honestly about what most black people in the UK have been experiencing and feeling for many years, with reference to visibility, invisibility and current racial politics. Lodge in her first

25 26

Charles Gaines in conversation with Kerry James Marshall in the publication Kerry James Marshall pg 32 Ibid

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published book: WHY I AM NO LONGER TALKING TO WHITE PEOPLE ABOUT RACE, discusses her experience of engaging with the subject of race with white people and their inability to listen or interact with the subject,27 a situation that undermines her efforts to get people to fully engage with the wider conversation of racial politics within the UK, including the damaging effects of racism. In the narrative set out below, Lodge highlights the invisibility of blackness and the inability of white people to understand racial politics / blackness in relation to whiteness.

Lodge states in her Blog in 2014: I’m no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race. Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the legitimacy of structural racism and its symptoms. I can no longer engage with the gulf of an emotional disconnect that white people display when a person of colour articulates our experiences. You can see their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ears, blocking up their ear canals like they can no longer hear us. This emotional disconnect is the conclusion of living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is norm and all others deviate from it. At best, white people have been taught not to mention that people of colour are ‘different’ in case it offends us.

They truly believe that the experiences of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universalised. I just can’t engage with the bewilderment and the defensiveness as they try to

I include this footnote details, because it highlights the appetite to acknowledge the need to address racial politics and inequality.

The top 5 Sunday Times bestseller, winner of the British book awards non-fiction narrative book of the year 2018, Foyles non-fiction book of the year, Blackwell's non-fiction book of the year, winner of the Jhalak prize, longlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction, longlisted for the Orwell prize shortlisted for a Books are my Bag Readers Award

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grapple with the fact that not everyone experiences the world in the way that they do. They’ve never had to think about what it means, in power terms, to be white- so any time they’re vaguely reminded of this fact; they interpret it as an affront. The journey towards understanding structural racism still requires people of colour to prioritise white feelings. Their eyes glaze over in boredom or widen in indignation. Their mouths start twitching as they get defensive. Their throats open up as they try to interrupt, itching to talk over you but not really listen, because they need to let you know that you’ve got it wrong.

Even if they can hear you, they’re not really listening. It’s like something happens to the words as they leave my mouth and reach their ears. The words hit a barrier of denial and they don’t get any further.

That’s the emotional disconnect. It’s not really surprising, because they’ve never known what it means to embrace a person of colour as a true equal, with thoughts and feeling that are as valid as their own. Watching The Color of Fear by Lee Mun Wah, I saw people of colour break down in tears as they struggled to convince a defiant white man that his words were enforcing and perpetuating a white racist standard on them. All the while he stared obliviously, completely confused by this pain, at best trivialising it, at worst ridiculing it.

I’ve written before about this white denial being the ubiquitous politics of race that operates on its inherent invisibility.

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So, I can’t talk to white people about race anymore because of the consequential denials, awkward cartwheels and mental acrobatics that they display when this is brought to their attention. Who really wants to be alerted to a structural system that benefits them at the expense of others?

I can no longer have this conversation, because we’re often coming at it from completely different planes. I can’t have a conversation with them about the details of a problem if they don’t even recognise that the problem exists. Worse still is the white person who might be willing to entertain the possibility of said racism, but still thinks we enter this conversation as equals. We don’t.

Not to mention that entering into conversation with defiant white people is a frankly dangerous task for me. As the heckles rise and the defiance grows, I have to tread incredibly carefully, because if I express frustration, anger, or exasperation at their refusal to understand, they will tap into their pre-subscribed racist tropes about angry black people who are a threat to them and their safety. It’s very likely that they’ll then paint me as a bully or an abuser. It’s also likely that their white friends will rally round them, rewrite history and make the lies the truth. Trying to engage with them and navigate their racism is not worth that.

Here Lodge emphasises her frustration with the failure of (as she sees it) some white people to engage fully with the subject of race and racial bias, by denying any bias exists. From my personal experience when the subject of race and history are discussed with some of my white colleague, they are quick

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to point out Africans involvement in the slave trade and black people can be prejudice too; all of which I know.

7. The Museum / Gallery This section addresses the museum / gallery, their presence in the trajectory of KJM’s career and the role the institution plays in society. The first set of questions that come to mind, when exploring this area of interest, within the context of this paper are: •

What is the purpose of a museum

•

What constitutes a museum

•

Who are museums for

•

What is the curatorial logic of a museums

•

What do we want from going to museums

Here are some facts about museums, which helps to frame the context of the conversation:28 •

Museums have a long history going back to the 3rd century B.C

•

The first known museum was opened in the University of Alexandria in Egypt.

•

The traditional role of museums is to collect objects and materials of cultural, religious and historical importance, preserve them, research into them and present them to the public.

•

The early museums were elitist… as they encouraged only the educated people to visit them and the general public were excluded.

28

Emmanuel N. Arinze, President - The Role of the Museum in Society: Commonwealth Association of Museums

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•

The museum as an institution tells the story of man the world over and how humanity has survived in its environment over the years.

If we are to take the comments (on page 21, 22 and below) from Mills and Polanowski at face value, why would we expect any difference from the museum system and the art world sector, in terms of prejudice and exclusion?

The history of Europe and America contain institutionalised racism and prejudice, and in the process, conditioned society to adhere to white supremacy ideology, racism and prejudice are at the ontological heart of modern America.

Mills and Polanowski continue their statements on the nature of prejudice and discrimination: Prejudice is a neutral psychological predisposition that is the ontological ground of the inner world and thus a necessary faculty that gives rise to the self, the nature of personal identification, and individual and collective identity. Prejudice as a universal expression of our narcissistic facticity is by nature perverse; thus, it has neither bounds nor restrictions.29 For Hegel, subjectivity is the essential ground of consciousness that is dialectically engaged in the process of its own selfunfolding. Prejudice is entrenched in the ontological structures of subjectivity itself. As an a priori organization, prejudice is innately prefigured in the ontological fabric that makes thought and

29

Mills, Jon and Polanowski, Janusz A. Ontology of Prejudice. 1997, Vol. 58, p13

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consciousness possible. Not only does subjectivity require a priori operations; without prejudice, subjectivity would not exist.30

Historically museums have been the bastions of ‘our’ collective history and show the world who we are as a people and the journey we came from, to arrive at the present moment. They have been developed with a range of resources, from public funds to private endowments and everything inbetween, reflecting on their location and the local narrative to the wider nation state. National museums reflect on the nation’s pride of achievement and evolution.

Marshall has been attending museums from an early age, with his mother and school friends. The museum represented to him, the finest achievement in art practice, man and woman has created, the ‘Old Masters’, were truly that, masters of their craft, which included painting, sculpture and print. For, Marshall the term ‘Old Masters’, started to mean old white men presenting, almost exclusively white subjects, with the exception of the black servant, valet or slave; he says ‘there are no black Old Masters’.

This exclusion of the black figure started to become a problem for Marshall, as it prevented him from fully engaging with the narrative of the art work, it was always the Other. The Other was always:- white, royalty, victor, love, family, nude, success and industrial labour, Marshall says: When I go to the museum, I have to look at a lot of things that don’t have anything to do with me. I’m expected to value things

30

Mills, Jon and Polanowski, Janusz A. Ontology of Prejudice. 1997, Vol. 58, p16

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that don’t have anything to do with me particularly. But when people see a black figure in a painting all of a sudden, sometimes, they think it only has to do with black people. We have to break that pattern that the presence of a black figure of a black person is limited to black issues.31 In her essay; Moving the Outside Inside Petra Frank-Witt makes the point, which supports Marshall’s thoughts and experience on the museum: The side-lining of black artists, especially in large museum collections, has been the norm and a manifestation of the absence of black art and artists from the Western canon of art. Only within the last two decades have art historians, in an interdisciplinary effort with other scholars, drawn attention to this deficit through such anti-Eurocentric investigations as Postcolonialism or AfroModernism. Kerry James Marshall's artistic activism has successfully contributed its part by insisting that an identity-based, specifically black aesthetic be made visible and brought into the fold of the grand narrative of art. 32

The metaphysics of blackness is something that most black artists do not shy away from and proactively engage with; therefore there is always going to be a disjuncture between the work of many talented black artists and what we see in museums.

31 32

Kevin Griffin - An interview in ART SEEN: Craft and concept aren't opposites for artist Kerry James Marshall Vancouver Sun June 8, 2018 Petra Frank-Witt - Third Text Vol 30 18th July 2017

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Oliver states, in relation to black artists; What they are wary of is the limitation that the term 'blackness' imposes on them within the art world.

So, to my colleagues who disparage anything with 'blackness' in the title. I ask: why devalue blackness as a liability, particularly when it encompasses such wealth? Why evoke blackness within the context of the implied 'other' when we are all so eager to move beyond 'difference' and the post-postmodernist paradigm?

The exclusion of the Black figure in the museum / gallery is emblematic of society as a whole; I recognise in many areas of contemporary life, particularly broadcast media, art and culture, blackness is marginalised for a range of reasons. Blackness has been devalued, and presented as less valuable and worthy of representation and documentation. The black figure is the least likely figure you're going to see when you go to a museum today, throughout Europe and the Americas – all other beings will be well represented.

The museums have played a role in protecting whiteness and the history of western European art, to the exclusion of other cultures, unless it has become part of the western narrative; such as colonialism and for the most part glorifying the achievements of the western powers.

Museums in the UK and other parts of the world should be playing a more important role in opening up the nations’ true diverse history, which has contributed to the wider nation state, within history and contemporary life.

Specialist museums on ‘Slavery’ etc, all serve a purpose, but they do not make up for the general exclusion of the black presence in the museum as a whole – - 31 -

in fact, such specialist museums, which present a sliver of black life and existence, probably do more harm than good, because there is very little to balance with the wider ontological narrative of blackness – slave museum or nothing ?

Marshall discusses his experience and the impact of the museums on his general perceptions of life and beauty: They were biblical stories, or mythological stories, or naked women and so on. When I first started seeing things, it formed my whole orientation of what is beautiful, what is powerful, or attractive. I couldn’t look at those things and say: Well, that’s not good. It was just there and it looked good. People said it is the best that could ever be done. But then at some point you have a crisis of consciousness. Then you have to make a decision on whether you identify with one thing or another. Once you discover there is an imbalance of power in determining how things are valued, you have to decide: Which way am I going to go? It happened early for me, through the encounter with an artist named Charles Wilbert White. Why didn’t I see his paintings in these books? It looked as powerful as anybody else’s stuff. But nobody was talking about it.

This was critical to me. Why is there this discrepancy between what I think I see and what people claim to be the most important? 33 In a changing world, museums have become very important institutions that are respected and valued, but I don’t think they deserve, such honours from

33

No author credited - Making Blackness Visible – Elephant 16 Dec 2016.

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black people, particularly if the expectation is to see blackness represented, in the hallowed halls.

Marshall continues to say: I’m not trying to dismantle the canon, the museum or any of that, he insists. On some level, the goal is to match the brilliance and… the complexity of things that are already there, [which] caused you to want to be an artist in the first place. It’s less about changing the narrative than it is about participating, being a part of it.

34

If

you want to achieve a certain level of equality, for me, that means that you are able to operate independently without fear of the consequences of having it done. If what art history is structured around is privileged artists who seem to have contributed something to the practice of making pictures or paintings that had an impact on how other artists who followed you were able to think about what they were able to do well then, that’s my goal there.

My thing was that I wanted to have images like those in the museum. A single encounter with an image like that has the capacity to change your expectation of what you’re likely to see when you go to the museum the next time. It is no longer the exception to the rule. It is a commonplace.35

34 35

Griselda Murry Brown - Financial Times October 3rd 2018 Chris Dercon interview with Kerry James Marshall - 032c Online Magazine May 9th 2017

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KJM comments on the effects of visiting museums, where blackness is excluded: It is psychologically damaging to continue go to places to observe other people in a place of privilege and never finding yourself able to get there, that’s psychologically damaging – it has nothing to do with whether it’s good or bad, that experience matters, seeing a reflection of oneself matters, and having the capacity to project oneself into those space matters too. 36

It’s important to understand that the museum sector belongs to a wider ‘system’, which includes; colleges, higher education and art galleries, who all sign up to codify knowledge of reading and seeing art; therefore for the curators / gatekeepers to secure their positions, they sign up to the current status quo. With this in mind, we can see the problem black artists face in terms of getting their work on the walls of the museum. As museums are not democratic institutions, and show little accountability to the population as a whole, they are free to include and exclude as they see fit. It is only when there is pressure from funders or the profile of the artist is high, that the doors slowly creek open.

What we should see in a democratic society is the broadest demographic to reflect the society – thereby allowing people to feel they have a stake in the museum. The idea that the museum knows what’s best and worthy of showing or preserving and has value, is elitist and continues the white supremacy ideology rhetoric.

36

Kerry James Marshall and Helen Molesworth in Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jQJSuw4Jbk

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8. What do audiences want Finally, I would like to explore the metaphysical conversation generated by one of KJM paintings, Untitled, Club Couple directed to audiences in a museum / gallery; framed as one person providing a service to another.

This metaphysical concept was generated by the essay of W J T Michell; What do Pictures Really Want?

Michell sets out his proposition: "What do pictures want?" I'm well aware that this is a bizarre, perhaps even objectionable question. I'm aware that it involves a subjectivizing of images, a dubious personification of inanimate objects, that it flirts with a regressive, superstitious attitude toward images, one that if taken seriously would return us to practices like totemism, fetishism, idolatry, and animism. 37 Art historians may "know" that the pictures they study are only material objects that have been marked with colors and shapes, but they frequently talk and act as if pictures had will, consciousness, agency, and desire38. Everyone knows that a photograph of their mother is not alive, but they will still be reluctant to deface or destroy it39.

W J T Michell - This paper is a condensed and rather different version of an essay entitled "What Do Pictures Want?" that will appear in Visual Culture, Modernity, and Art History, ed. Terry Smith (Sydney, Australia: Power Institute, forthcoming) pg 71.

38 This footnote accompanied the text in the original text. The full documentation of the trope of the personified and "living" work of art in Western art-historical discourse would require a separate essay. Such an essay might begin with a look at the status of the art object in the three canonical "fathers" of art history, Vasari, Winckelmann, and Hegel. It would find, I suspect, that the progressive and teleological narratives of Western art are not (as is so often suggested) focused primarily on the conquest of appearance and visual realism, but on the question of how, in Vasari's terms, "liveliness" and "animation" are to be infused into the object. Winckelmann's treatment of artistic media as agents in their own historical development and his description of the Apollo Belvedere as an object so full of divine animation that it turns the spectator into a Pygmalion figure, a statue brought to life, would be a central focus in such an essay, as would Hegel's treatment of the artistic object as a material thing that has received "the baptism of the spiritual."

39This paper is a condensed and rather different version of an essay entitled "What Do Pictures Want?" that will appear in Visual Culture, Modernity, and Art History, ed. Terry Smith (Sydney, Australia: Power Institute, forthcoming). Pg 72 37

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In the painting Untitled (Club Couple) 2014, the work offers up an ontology of blackness, which embraces the normality of a young couple being in love, in a social setting of a club.

Figure 2. Untitled (Club Couple) 2014

In figure 2, we are presented a painting, a 2D form of black representation, of a young couple sitting having drinks in a cocktail club, which looks like a copy of a photograph, where the couple are posing for the photographer. The young couple are dressed in smart fashionable clothing holding hands over a table,

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whilst having a couple of drinks. There are a number of key features to the painting, which include; •

the synergy of the pattern structure from the wall paper, with the woman's dress and purse

•

The male figure is holding behind the woman's back an engagement or wedding ring in a case, which he is displaying to the photographer – one assumes, he will present it to the woman during their date

•

the colour of the drinks, purse and spot on the wall offer a balance to the painting and matching sunglasses

•

The black of their skin tones is sharply contrasted against the white of the man's jacket

The contemporary setting of the painting and the framing device highlights the influence of photography on painting to record the ‘original’ scene, before the interpretation is created.

In this hypothetical metaphysical conversation, the painting and characters talk independently to the audience by presenting them with a series of direct questions.

The Male character speaks: As, a black man, I love the idea of the black woman in front of me, who I can express my love towards. I want you to know, I have hopes and dreams of creating a family, love is possible for me.

I value the woman at the side of me and to prove it, I am going to invest myself in her, financially and emotionally, with the symbols of marriage or engagement.

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We love each other and each other's company, we are connected by sharing a sense of style in our dress and environment.

Our blackness is contained within the visual image presented to you here.

I speak to you as the subject of the painting; I am nobody in particular, even if I modelled for KJM my representation is not me, I don't have a real voice, therefore what are you projecting on me.

If I am talking to a black man, do I act as counter balance to all the negative images of you – as black man is there a bond between us.

The female character speaks: Here I sit, with my man at my side – I feel great and enjoying the moment.

I’ve got my party frock on and planning on having a good time.

What do I represent to you – history has not been kind to black women, we have experienced many situations from murder, rape and all other forms of abuse to Queens and wives of great men, but here I sit in front of you in the 21st century, with my future ahead of me.

My man I have been dating for a while, which is going great, so we will see how it pans out.

I am not sure what I can offer you; hope, a sense of normality, if so why do you need it from a painting.

As, a black women looking at me, I know you are searching for something in the image, that others do not see or feel – I hope you get it.

I have great plans, but it is important for you to realise, I am just a metaphor, a symbol and paint on canvas – painted with great skill and use of colour.

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The painting speaks: I want you to acknowledge my ontological existence represents a wider conversation, which may take different forms, based on a number of key properties of the audience such as; race, gender and age, to name but a few.

I want you to see me for what I am, a 2D image made of key properties of paint, canvas and wood.

You stand there in expectation of something, what is it you want from me.

Do I confirm your ontological existence, a black presence.

By seeing me here, does it confirm anything for you, or am I entertainment for you, to join your selfie collection. What does a selfie in front of me suggests, does it confirm your existence and show you are cultured.

Beyond entertainment what are you getting from me, do you pin your hopes on me, does my presence here give you hope for the future.

Does my presence in the gallery really mean anything to blackness, if so is the museum the best place to sight me.

Do you like me as a work of art or are you drawn to me, because the characters are black: am I correct, if you the viewer are black or white the narrative will be interpreted differently.

I am in the museum, is this a great achievement, to be up against my peers, such as; Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rembrandt et cetera.

Marcel Duchamp claims; audiences complete the picture in their minds, if so, what is the completed narrative for you.

Mitchell continues with his analysis: If one could interview all the pictures one encounters in a year, what answers would they give?‌ pictures would want to be worth a lot of money; they would want to be admired and praised as - 39 -

beautiful; they would want to be adored by many lovers. But above all they would want a kind of mastery over the beholder.

Michael Fried summarizes painting's "primordial convention" in precisely these terms: "a painting... had first to attract the beholder, then to arrest and finally to enthrall the beholder, that is a painting had to call to someone, bring him to a halt in front of itself and hold him there as if spellbound and unable to move."40 The painting's desire, in short, is to change places with the beholder, to transfix or paralyze the beholder, turning him into an image for the gaze of the picture in what might be called "the Medusa effect."41 It's crucial to this strategic shift that we not confuse the desire of the picture with the desires of the artist, the beholder, or even the figures in the picture. What pictures want is not the same as the message they communicate or the effect they produce; it's not even the same as what they say they want. Like people, pictures don't know what they want; they have to be helped to recollect it through a dialogue with others.

40

Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980),p. 92.

Terry Smith ed - A condensed and different version of an essay entitled "What Do Pictures Want?" that will appear in Visual Culture, Modernity, and Art History. (Sydney, Australia: Power Institute). Pg 72

41

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9. Concluding Blackness, Metaphysics, Ontology and Racial Politics are extensive areas of study and research, which requires a great degree of faith, disbelief, scepticism and openness to know there is something in the concepts for oneself and learning.

The ontology of blackness is a given, but it needs ownership and autonomy by all who come under its existence and an acceptance by a wider society who control its representation in relation to it. Whiteness and white supremacy are all pervasive, smothering all that comes under its canopy – its’ been asked before by a number of commentators including bell hooks and Arthur Jafa and I’ll ask it again, does whiteness and white supremacy need to die, to create equality and allow everyone the chance to get ahead on merit.

Marshall is very vocal on his thoughts and ideas surrounding his practice, the many books, YouTube videos and articles on him give a fuller picture of his ideas as an artist, who is on a mission to have an impact on the wider arts sector.

Whilst I have only used two paintings to illustrate my debate, I hope this paper gives a sense of how as an artist of KJM stature has become a vehicle for something greater than the art work.

Unfortunately or fortunately we are left with many more questions than answers, but that’s metaphysics for you.

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10. Glossary: Blackness /ˈblaknəs/ noun noun: Blackness 1. the property or quality of being black in colour. "it restores grey hair to blackness" o

complete darkness; the absence of any light.

"the entire house was plunged into pitch blackness" 2. the fact or state of belonging to any human group having dark-coloured skin. "my experiences have made me far more aware of my blackness than ever before" the quality or character associated with black people. "the blackness of his poetry is an inextricable aspect of his subject matter" 3. a state characterized by despair or depression. "there is a little hope amid the blackness of his life" a state or condition of being evil or wicked. "the blackness of the human heart through the atrocities of war"42 Metaphysics noun, plural in form but singular in construction meta·phys·ics | \ ˌme-tə-ˈfi-ziks. \ Definition of metaphysics 1a(1): a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology metaphysics… analyzes the generic traits manifested by existences of any kind43

42 43

Google Merriam Webster Online dictionary

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Ontology 1. mass noun 2. The branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.

3. A set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.

4. Origin Early 18th century from modern Latin ontologia, from Greek ōn, ont- ‘being’ + -logy.

Pronunciation – ontology. /ɒnˈtɒlədʒi/44

44

Lexico.com

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11.Bibliography Asserate, Asfa-Wossen. African Exodus: Migration and the Future of Europe. London: Haus Publishing 2018 Beebee, Helen, Effingham, Nikk and Goff Philip. Metaphysics Key Concepts.

Oxon, Routledge 2011 Bhopal, Kalwant. White Privilege: The myth of a post-racial society. Bristol: Policy Press 2018 Browne, Simone. Dark Matters, On the Surveillance of Blackness. United States of America: Duke University Press 2015.

Campt, Tina M. The Visual Frequency of Black Life In the exhibition catalogue; A series of utterly improbable, yet extraordinary renditions Arthur Jaffa.

Serpentine Galleries, London and the authors: 2017 Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory. New York: New York University Press 2017 Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. The Souls of Black Folk. Greenwich Connecticut.

Fawcett Publications 1961 Eddo-Lodge, Reni. Why I am no longer talking to white people about Race.

London Bloomsbury Publishing 2017 & 2018 Ellison, Ralph. The invisible man. United States of America: Random House 1952 English, Darby. How to See a Work of Art in the Darkness. Massachusetts: MIT 2007 Gilroy, Paul. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Oxon: Routledge 2004 Gilroy, Paul. Between Camps: Nations Cultures and the Allure of Race. Oxon: Routledge 2000 & 2004 Harvey, Stefano & Moten, Fred. The Undercommons, Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Wivenhoe, New York, Port Watson: Minor Compositions 2013 hooks, bell. Black Looks Race and Representation. London: Turnaround 1992 Le Poidevin, Robin, Simons, Peter, McGonigal, Andrew, Cameron, Ross P. The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. Oxon 2009 Molesworth, Helen Anne – editor. Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2016 Moten, Fred. Blackness and Nothingness. The South Atlantic Quarterly Fall 2013 - 44 -

Mumford, Stephen. Metaphysics A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012 Pears, D. F. (ed) The Nature of Metaphysics. London, MacMilliann and Co Ltd. 1957 Robecchi, Michele – editor. Kerry James Marshall. London and New York 2017 Scruton, Roger. Beauty: A Short Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009 & 2011 Shukla, Nikesh (ed). Good Immigrant. London: Unbound 2019 Smith, Deborah. Kerry James Marshall Along the Way. Camden Arts Centre 2005 Sinaiko, Eve - editor. Kerry James Marshall. New York, Harry N Abrams, Inc 2000 Articles online Andrews, K. The Psychosis of Whiteness: the celluloid hallucinations of Amazing Graze and Belle. Journal of Black Studies. (2016) Bakare Lanre. Kerry James Marshall: 'As an artist, everything should be a challenge' The Guardian. 15th March 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/15/kerry-jamesmarshall-mastry-moca-los-angeles-black-artists> Biro Matthew. Representing Blackness, Kerry James Marshall’s recent work rethinks the meaning of “black art”. Art Paper <https://www.academia.edu/28286916/_Representing_Blackness_Art_Papers _March_April_2004_34-39._Kerry_James_Marshall_> Brown Griselda Murry. Kerry James Marshall: ‘You don’t see black people in trauma in my work’ The African-American painter on stereotypes, the western canon and who decides market value. <https://www.ft.com/content/7f16afe4c6ed-11e8-ba8f-ee390057b8c9> Cathy Byrd. Is there. a "post-black" art? Investigating the legacy of the "Freestyle" show. <https://docplayer.net/62712165-Is-there-a-post-black-artinvestigating-the-legacy-of-the-freestyle-show-by-cathy-byrd.html Cutrone, Chris. A Feast of Scraps – Glen Ligon’s art, photography and the social history of blackness in America. University of Utah 2003 Dercon Chris. Kerry James Marshall and the INVISIBLE MAN. 032c JOURNAL. < https://032c.com/kerry-james-marshall> - 45 -

Di Piero W.S. Kerry James Marshall addresses the absence of blackness We’re the violators of their culture of leisure. [assessed May 31, 2017] <https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/may/31/art-review-kerryjames-marshall/#> Douglas Sarah. The Painter of Modern Life: Kerry James Marshall Aims to Get More Images of Black Figures into Museums. Artnews 2nd March 2016. <http://www.artnews.com/2016/03/02/the-painter-of-modern-life-kerryjames-marshall-aims-to-get-more-images-of-black-figures-into-museums/> Griffin Kevin. ART SEEN: Craft and concept aren't opposites for artist Kerry James Marshall. <https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/art-seen-craftand-concept-arent-opposites-for-artist-kerry-james-marshall> More, P Mabogo. Black Consciousness Movement’s Ontology: The Politics of Being. Philosophia Africana 2012 Mallon, Ron. Passing, Traveling and Reality: Social Constructionism and the Metaphysics of Race, Oxford. Blackwell Publishing 2004 Mills, Jon and Polanowski, Janusz A. Ontology of Prejudice. 1997, Vol. 58, p1143. 33p.

Picard Caroline. Kerry James Marshall, Profile of the Artist. <http://theseenjournal.org/art-seen-chicago/kerry-james-marshall-profileartist/> Tuite Diana. Kerry James Marshall <http://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/kerry-james-marshallmastry/>[summer 2017 3.1] Sayej Nadja. From South Central LA to Sotheby’s;the record breaking rise of Kerry James Marshall. The Guardian Wednesday 23rd May 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/may/23/kerry-jamesmarshall-past-time-painting-record-breaking> Thomasson, Amie L. Debates about the Ontology of Art: What are We Doing Here ? Philosophy Compass 2006.

Mills Charles. Revisionist Ontologies Theorizing White Supremacy. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27865977?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Frank-Witt Petra. Kerry James Marshall Moving the Outside Inside. Third Text Moving the Outside Inside

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No author credited. Making Blackness Visible. Elephant 18th December 2018 <https://elephant.art/making-blackness-visible/> Non-print sources Arinze, Emmanuel N. The Role of the Museum in Society. Public lecture at the National Museum, Georgetown, Guyana 1999 Hudis, Peter. Racism and the Logic of Capitalism, Fanon Reconsidered (Historical Materialism) <https://brill.com/abstract/journals/hima/26/2/articlep199_9.xml> Forensic Oceanography. Death by Rescue: The lethal effects of the EU’c policies of non-assistance < https://deathbyrescue.org/> Contreras, Narciso - <https://narcisocontreras.photoshelter.com/> Kington, Tom. Matteo Salvini ejects thousands of migrants from Italian state shelters <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/salvini-to-eject-40-000-migrants-fromstate-run-accommodation-jgwh0kxbj> [assessed 3rd December 2018] Einashe, Ismail. Our Sea, Reading the ‘black Mediterranean’ through Europe’s migrant crisis (Frieze No 199) https://frieze.com/article/reading-blackmediterranean-through-europes-migrant-crisis [assessed Nov / Dec 2018 The Black Ponderer. Metaphysics by Aristotle | Book Discourse. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O12-Wsdxw1c Harman, Graham. On Metaphysics, Art, & Speculative Realism.

Philosophy Overdose, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckfRgNUOAs&t=606s What is Metaphysics? (Definition). Carneades.org 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxV0zGVDXKo

Web research references 1. Definition of Blackness pg 1 https://www.google.com/search?q=blackness+definition&oq=Bla&aqs=c hrome.0.69i59j69i60j69i61j69i60j69i57j0.2969j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie =UTF-8 - 47 -

2. Definition of Metaphysics https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphysics 3. Definition of Ontology https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ontology 4. bell hooks definition of White Supremacy https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/308248-white-supremacy-is-amuch-more-useful-term-for-understanding 5. Landmark Education https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/thelandmarkforum?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIptCuyYDY4AIVrGQVCB06vw1XEAEYASAAEgIn GPD_BwE&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIptCuyYDY4AIVrGQVCB06vw1XEAEYASAA EgInGPD_BwE 6. http://renieddolodge.co.uk/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-peopleabout-race/

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