Further explore the exhibition’s theme of semi-visibility through a slow-looking exercise related to this work.

Transcript
Narrator: This work by Kerry James Marshall is titled "Black Painting." It was made from 2003 to 2006. The horizontally oriented acrylic-on-fiberglass painting is 6 feet tall by 9 feet wide and sits in a black beveled frame. It depicts a darkened bedroom, within which everything is painted in varied hues of black. Because of these subtleties, we slowly discover and distinguish the features that are present.

The painting depicts two walls of a rectangular room, which form an L-shape. The view into the room is at an angle, so the left wall appears slanted on the left side of the painting, and the adjoining wall is straight across the fiberglass surface. To the left is a wooden bedside table with three drawers. Sitting atop the bedside table is a lamp, a pyramidal object, a photo frame, and two stacked books. The top title reads "If They Come in the Morning" by Angela Davis.

On the double bed beside it, a figure rests under a light duvet: a woman, facing away and lying on her side. Her body is propped up on one elbow and her bare back curves upward. Her braided hair is piled high on her head. Barely visible, just past her arm, is the edge of a sleeping man’s face in profile. The dark skin of these Black figures emerges from the black painting surface.

A second bedside table sits in the corner on the other side of the bed. Above the bed is a patterned artwork. Along the adjoining wall hang two paintings or photographs, each depicting a standing or dancing figure. Paint is peeling, and plaster shows through some parts of the wall. At the right side of the bedroom, a chair sits beside a wide four-drawer dresser. A piece of clothing has been dropped on the seat of the chair.

Above the dresser hangs a flag that, while still painted in deep tones, appears highlighted in the darkened room; it is one of the lightest sections of the painting. A running, springing black panther is in the flag’s center and at the lower edge of the flag text in all capital letters reads “POWER TO THE PEOPLE.” The panther on the flag is partially obscured by a lamp sitting atop the dresser. Scanning around this lived-in home, other items are visible; two high heels sit on the bedroom floor, as if just stepped out of carefully.

This work is a meditation in seeing within darkness. It takes time to engage and to decipher; it even takes movement to distinguish the edges or boundaries between various objects, revealed by varied texture, hue, or direction of brushstroke as light hits the dark matte forms in different ways.

The work is representative and forms are precise in their distinction while appearing semi-visible across the surface of the painting. In this work, blackness is the ground from which perception begins.

How does this work use blackness as both medium and subject matter? In what ways does it question and challenge visibility?

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