Meditation on Kerry James Marshall's Untitled, 2008
Kerry James Marshall, Unititled, 2008, Acrylic on fiberglass, 79 x 115.25 in. Collection Neda Young
Painting is a language. Besides being seen, it is meant to be read and to be felt.
As a painter, I have to believe that everything that I put into a work will be transmitted to people who experience the painting in the flesh, so to speak.
Great art captures and binds emotions with metaphor, eloquently expressed through details of observation.
The grace of a great work of art is that it doesn’t feel forced or labored.
Kerry James Marshall is clearly a master. His large, untitled work from 2008 is on display April 15 – May 15 at The Church as part of a conversation between a photographer, a poet and a painter. The show is called In Dialogue: At the Edge of the Sea.
I am going to focus on the Marshall painting. Because the work is untitled, there affords me more freedom for my interpretation. Because of how beautifully and confidently he has painted it, I am seduced by its unfolding.
The painting depicts a scene taking place at the edge of the sea. A couple, silhouetted against a sunset (or sunrise… or both?) look off to the distant horizon. They lean into each other, shoulder to shoulder, head against head, body to body in an intimate and comfortable embrace. His hand gently caresses her bottom. In the darkness of their silhouette there is no space between them. They are indivisible. They are a union.
A ship sails to the horizon. A tiny lighthouse shines its beacon towards the immensity of the sun’s heavenly light. The ship-bow shape of land on which the couple stand reinforces the painting’s theme of journeys: arrivals, departures, returns. This painting invites reflection on the significance and impact different journeys have upon us: coming from, escaping to, longing for return, or with the history of slavery, taken from. This painting asks us to recall or imagine how the experience of any and all of those conditions would shape our souls.
There is an old broken down barbed wire fence, the remains of which run up and over one side of this spit of land. It denotes borders, boundaries, edges or separation. The barbs explicitly warn us to keep out. There is dune grass and daisies? sparsely dotting this hardscrabble plot of soil. They feel tough, resilient, willful and as far as the daisies are concerned, out of place. These daisies appear in shadow on the lower right and move in single file, sneaking under the fence, until, in the warmth and encouragement of the sunlight, they spread out and flourish.
It should be noted that the daisy has historically and mythologically been used as a symbol of innocence, childbirth, motherhood and perhaps most importantly, new beginnings.
Seagulls flap and flit above the couple’s heads. One of the gulls transects the sun, splitting a beam of light into two halos. This image suggests that this painting is meant to be understood as a sacred allegory of reassignment and redefinition. The seagull’s totemic significance is cunning, perseverance and survival.
The time of day is fixed at a point of eloquent ambiguity. Frozen at the precise moment when a sunrise and a sunset can share the same tone of light and the same position of the sun to the horizon but not share the same significance. This gives the scene a wide range of interpretive direction. Depending on how one reads this moment of time, the painting will be understood as a hope-filled moment or a scene of longing and loss.
I seek out art looking for meaning beyond appearance. I want to leave it feeling as if I’ve seen an apparition, knowing I’ve seen something remarkable. This Kerry James Marshall painting more than satisfies those criteria.
– Eric Fischl
