Beauty Examined

Kerry James Marshall, American

Beauty Examined, 1993

In this exceptionally terrifying painting, Kerry James Marshall explores the history of scientific racism, eugenics, and the treatment of the Black body as the “sacrifice zone” that Franz Broswimmer describes in Ecocide. The painting shows a Black woman, with her skin rendered impossibly black in Marshall’s signature style, laying on an examination table—surrounded by the faint ghosts of funerary flowers. Surrounding the woman’s body are the words and diagrams of an anatomy lab: “anatomical axiom,” “SUBJECT/female/blk..age.30,” and a diagram of the human nervous system. With her body laid out like a landscape (further reinforced by the floral imagery and building which also surrounds her), this woman and the harm being done to her illustrates the inextricable ties between the abuse of the land, the abuse of marginalized people, and the abuse of “science” to justify these atrocities. Through this understanding, slavery and scientific racism exist not just as an atrocity on humankind, but an ecological atrocity that continues into the modern day. Label by Maxwell Cloe

The Land That Time Forgot

Kerry James Marshall, American, born 1955

The Land That Time Forgot, 1962

From the works that I have observed thus far, I noticed that the bold use of color and scale are techniques that can invigorate an artwork’s meaning, surfacing strong emotions of intimidation, fear, and pain and making the question of systematic oppression unavoidable. For example, Marshall’s The Land that Time Forgot zeroes in on emphatic themes of imperialism, industry, and ecological devastation. I find that Marshall’s work is able to tug on both ends of the ecological spectrum, as he shows both biological and psychological environmental torment in his painting. A South African springbok (country’s national symbol) in the center is pierced with arrows, and lies dying surrounded by unmistakable emblems of European occupation: Christian crucifixes, the portrait of the Dutch founder of Cape Town, and allusions to the mining ventures that fueled Apartheid (Braddock & Kusserow 371). The emblems seem haphazardly thrown up on the canvas, as if to suggest that it was graffitied by the European oppressors themselves. Label by Tara Vasanth