Eliana Willis

A spectacular site-specific installation by the Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui has been unveiled at Tate Modern in London, becoming the latest in an impressive array of solo museum shows opening across the capital in time for Frieze week. The latest Turbine Hall commission, Behind the Red Moon is the artist’s largest ever indoor artwork.
Based between Ghana and Nigeria, the 79-year-old artist has become a globally recognized star for his monumental textile-style sculptural hangings made of used bottle caps, which he began in the late 1990s. These ubiquitous objects recycled from the real world inevitably represent consumption and waste, but also provide a way for Anatsui to refer to geopolitics and how commodities are shipped to Africa via a network of age-old colonial trade routes. Like all his work, this latest installation amazes with its sheer scale while also inviting viewers to delight in its myriad details.
Divided into three parts, the visitor encounters the first piece The Red Moon as they enter the museum. Its rich red rendition of a “blood moon,” only visible during a total lunar eclipse, appears to billow like a sail in the wind. After this comes The World, in which ethereal forms intended to evoke human figures—or perhaps, spirits—swirl around each other in a sphere. Finally, is a breathtaking work called The Wall, a sheet of black metal cloth that cascades and ripples from a staggering height. The eye is guided across its vast expanse by a smattering of shimmering patterns, and viewers who venture behind will be met by a multi-colored mosaic on the reverse.
“Anatsui is one of the most distinctive artists today. His highly innovative approach to sculpture and his unique choice of materials are instantly recognizable.” said Tate Modern’s new director Karin Hindsbo at the press conference on Monday, October 9. “He has responded to [the Turbine Hall] with remarkable ambition. His three extensive abstract compositions made from countless metal bottle tops and fragments dramatically cut through this huge space and transform it anew.”
Each year, Tate’s Turbine Hall commission makes use of its vast post-industrial, hangar-like entrance to stage large-scale sculptural works, and Anatsui’s will remain on display through April 14, 2024.
Check out more photos of the installation below.
Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon installation view at Tate Modern. Photo: Lucy Green, © Tate.
Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon installation view at Tate Modern. Photo: Joe Humphreys, © Tate.
Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon installation view at Tate Modern. Photo: Joe Humphreys, © Tate.
Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon installation view at Tate Modern. Photo: Joe Humphreys, © Tate.
Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon installation view at Tate Modern. Photo: Lucy Green, © Tate.
Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon installation view at Tate Modern. Photo: Lucy Green, © Tate.

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Walking through “Spike Lee: Creative Sources” at Brooklyn Museum, what emerges most plainly about the filmmaker is his avid, omnivorous collecting appetite. The exhibition brings together more than 450 objects from his personal collection in a massive showcase of his sources of inspiration. It’s a hoard that is as wide as it is deep. 
The show is split into seven broad themes that have shaped Lee’s long career in film and defined his personality. The opening section on Black history and culture is comprised of objects as varied as posters created for Malcolm X (1992), Tim Okamura’s 1993 portrait of Toni Morrison and a Virgil Abloh-designed ensemble. There’s an entire room housing Lee’s trove of vintage movie posters—among them the French new wave film Breathless (1968) and the Steven Spielberg blockbuster Jurassic Park (1993)—and an even bigger space is dedicated to his sports memorabilia. 
Installation view of “Spike Lee: Creative Sources” at Brooklyn Museum. Photo: Paul Abreu Pita.
“Spike’s collecting is 360-degrees,” said Kimberli Gant, the exhibition’s co-curator, at the show’s preview. “We’re trying to create a narrative to make sure our visitors have a story that they can hopefully recognize as I did when I first encountered the collection. Patterns, faces, and ideas come up again and again in different sections. They’re all so connected.” 
While a portion of Lee’s collection was included in a 2022 showcase at the Academy Museum, “Creative Sources” delves further into the director’s specific obsessions. For one, his love for photography is evident throughout the show and concentrated in a gallery that includes names like Weegee, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Andy Warhol. Gant called it “a mini-education [in] photo history of the 20th century.” 
“Fruit of Islam Members” from Malcolm X (1992). Photo: © David C. Lee.
The personal nature of Lee’s collected objects comes to the fore in the show as well. A good number of artifacts bear autographs and inscriptions to the director, making them all the more intimate. Cases in point: a tennis racket once owned and signed by Serena Williams, a Public Enemy poster with a note from Chuck D, and quite bizarrely, a huge printed ad for American Express featuring Martin Scorsese, who signed it “in admiration.”  
“I love the images of his family too—that moment of vulnerability,” Gant said, adding that the specific section centered on Lee’s family has been painted in fuchsia in a tribute to his mother who loved the color. 
Installation view of “Spike Lee: Creative Sources” at Brooklyn Museum. Photo: Danny Perez.
Of course, fans of Lee’s films will recognize props, costumes, and photographs from his productions, as well as clips that are dotted throughout the show. The honors the director has received—a BAFTA, two Academy Awards, and entries into the Library of Congress—are also included here as a mark of his own creative achievements.  
“We only ever see a very small side of him or his persona,” said Gant. “This was an opportunity to add to visitors’ knowledge of Spike, giving them a very different view, perspective, and understanding.” 
Below are six unmissable highlights from the exhibition.

1. Michael Ray Charles,(Forever Free) Bamboozled (1997)
Michael Ray Charles, (Forever Free) Bamboozled (1997). Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Best known for his complex body of work that confronts the misrepresentation of African Americans in popular culture, Charles served as a visual consultant on Lee’s 2000 movie Bamboozled. The artist’s 1997 canvas was included in the film and in his telling, pretty much inspired the comedy on modern-day Black minstrelsy. “Spike denies it,” Charles has said, but “there was no Bamboozled before my work.” 

2. An African National Congress flaginscribed by Nelson and Winnie Mandela
Nelson Mandela’s inscription on an African National Congress flag in Spike Lee’s collection. Photo: Min Chen.
Described as one of Lee’s most prized possessions, the flag was gifted to the director during the making of 1992’s Malcolm X, which briefly featured Nelson Mandela. That period also marked the final chapter of apartheid; in a few years, Mandela would sweep the country’s first democratic elections. “Victory is in sight,” Winnie Mandela wrote on the flag. “We shall be free!”

3. Prince’s Love Symbol Guitar
Musical instruments in Spike Lee’s collection, including Verdine White’s bass guitar and Prince’s Love Symbol guitar. Photo: Min Chen.
Lee and Prince go way back. The pair first bonded in 1986 at the late musician’s Paisley Park studios and since then, Lee has directed Prince’s video for 1991’s “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” while Prince has supplied songs for the soundtrack of Lee’s Girl 6 (1996). So, yes, of course the filmmaker owns one of the songwriter’s Love Symbol guitars, in addition to a heap of other Prince memorabilia. 

4. Patrick Martinez,Fight the Power (Chuck D) (2018)
Patrick Martinez, Fight the Power (Chuck D) (2018). © Patrick Martinez. Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. Photo: Michael Underwood. Courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles.
Martinez’s stunning neon and plexiglass sculpture is part of the artist’s project to celebrate and immortalize the work of rap heroes—in this case, Chuck D of Public Enemy. The group’s track “Fight the Power” is of evident significance to Lee: it soundtracks a key scene in Do the Right Thing (1989) and is represented in the Music segment of the exhibition, in a poster printed with an evocative verse from the song.

5. Carrie Mae Weems,Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee (2018)
Carrie Mae Weems, Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee (2018). Photo: Min Chen.
While photographing Lee for Time magazine following the release of BlacKkKlansman, Weems captured this tender moment between the director and his wife of 30 years, offering a portrait of a loving marriage. “I’m a lucky man,” Lee has said of his relationship with the producer. Weems and Lee’s ties also go beyond this photo commission: the artist’s work was most recently included in the Netflix adaptation of She’s Gotta Have It. 

6. Kehinde Wiley,Investiture of Bishop Harold as the Duke of Franconia (2005)
Kehinde Wiley, Investiture of Bishop Harold as the Duke of Franconia (2005). Collection of Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee. © Kehinde Wiley. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Wiley was commissioned by Lee to paint this portrait of Jackie Robinson, which is an absolute showpiece in the Sports section of the show. In it, the baseball legend—the first Black player in the Major League Baseball—is depicted resplendent in his Dodgers 42 jersey (which Lee donned in Do the Right Thing), in a stance befitting of sports royalty. “Imagine the pressure,” Lee once wrote of Robinson. “The entirety of African American progress is on your shoulders.” 
“Spike Lee: Creative Sources” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York, October 7, 2023—February 4, 2024.
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The busiest week of London’s art world calendar is almost upon us. As everyone gears up to take on Frieze’s big white tents and a buffet of blockbuster museum shows, they may wonder when they’ll ever be able to have a break. The insider tip is to visit All Saints Chapel, an oasis of calm just off Oxford Street that boasts magnificent decorative features, including a sweeping crucifixon fresco and stained glass windows by the Victorian artist John Richard Clayton.
This unique 19th-century space is being used to stage the intimate exhibition, “Living Memory,” which presents sculptures by Louise Bourgeois and paintings by Israeli artist Gideon Rubin against a soothing soundscape by French musician Nicolas Godin. The show explores how each artist has been informed by memory, and foregrounds their ability to morph materials into strangely familiar, human forms.
Installation view of “Living Memory” at All Saints Chapel in London. Photo: Richard Ivey.
Adapted for all-women convent, Clayton’s crucifixion scene is unusual for only depicting women attendants. These dutiful figures are explicitly echoed in new paintings by Rubin, which were modeled on stills from the German film Mächen in Uniform (1931) by female director Leontine Sagan. Almost life-size, they have a commanding presence, but without faces and dressed in plain white dresses they never overwhelm their ornate surroundings.
“Gideon has always used found photographs from flea markets that are completely anonymous to him, and he’d reimagine their lives,” said the show’s curator Beth Greenacre. “Its very much about time passing and the loss of detail.”
Stealing the show, inevitably, are the three sculptures by Bourgeois, two of which belong to her “Personages” series from the 1940s. These tall abstracted forms are a masterclass in how little detail is needed for a composition to be richly suggestive. Brother & Sister (1949), which takes centre-stage in place of an altar, consists of two curved slabs of woods that merely brush against each other but instantly communicate familial affection.
“She had just left Paris and was an emigré in New York,” said Greenacre. “She talked about these as memories of the families and friends she’d left behind. They’re totems of characters and they become what we want them to be as well.”
Installation view of “Living Memory” at All Saints Chapel in London. Photo: Richard Ivey.
As in Rubin’s work, much can be read into a single gesture, post or tilt of the head. “In that space between abstraction and figuration, what is possible?” said Greenacre. “Its interesting to think of Bourgeois’ history of psychoanalysis and how she uses her art as a way of releasing challenging moments from her past.”
Leaping forward many decades to Bourgeois’ later life, Arch of Hysteria (2000) is a splayed naked body, somehow simultaneously limp and taut, and roughly stitched together with scraps of unnaturally pink fabric. Suspended from the ceiling, the small doll slowly spins on its see-through string. The work is inspired by the idea of the “hysterical” (presumed female) patient confined and studied by the male neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, about whom Bourgeois felt both critical and curious.
Though in some sense, references like these might feel out of place in a chapel, the space’s unique capacity for peaceful contemplation feels entirely appropriate for artworks that, much like the religious art that came before them, speak to universal themes of remembrance, loss, spirituality, and transformation.
“Living Memory” is open Monday to Saturday until 6pm at 82-83 Margaret Street in Fitzrovia through October 27. There will be a special late opening on October 12 for Frieze. It is supported by Galerie Karsten Greve.
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You may not know the name María Magdalena Campos-Pons yet, but the Cuban-born artist—who draws on the global legacy of colonialism and her own family history—has long built up significant art-world credentials outside of New York.
In addition to appearing in prestigious international exhibitions such as Documenta 14 and the Sharjah Biennial, she has also had her work acquired by institutions including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Just this week, she was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, an honor that comes with a $800,000 grant.
Now, those pieces are all on loan to the Brooklyn Museum—which added Campos-Pons to its own collection earlier this year—for the 64-year-old artist’s first museum survey show since 2007 (at the Indianapolis Museum of Art), and her first major New York exhibition.
“María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold” at the Brooklyn Museum with her sculptural installation Spoken Softly With Mama (1998). Photo by Paula Abreu Pita.
The first work on view, an ambitious installation titled Spoken Softly With Mama, “is just art history canon, period,” Carmen Hermo, associate curator at the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, told me during a recent tour of the exhibition.
First shown at MoMA in 1998 and now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, the piece combines video projection, sound, cast glass sculpture, and hand embroidery in a moving tribute not only to the artist’s female relatives, but the broader history of Black women’s domestic work, both for their own families, and in the employ of white ones.
“In the videos, you see Magda kind of performing these poetic surrealist type of evocations of that labor,” Hermo said.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Secrets of the Magnolia Tree (2021). Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo ©María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
Hermo organized the show with Mazie Harris, a curator at the Getty, where the show will conclude a tour that includes stops at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, North Carolina, and the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, bringing together a selection of more than 50 works that engage with complex subjects such as motherhood, racial identity, the legacy of slavery, police brutality, and the migrant crisis. (A tribute to Breonna Taylor is on loan to the Brooklyn Museum from the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.)
A photographer, painter, sculptor, and performance artist, Campos-Pons was born in 1959, the year Fidel Castro came to power. In defiance of the official state atheism of her youth, the artist taps into her spirituality in her work, often referencing Santería, an African diasporic religion with roots in West Africa’s Yoruba faith that has influences from a wide range of cultures, including Catholicism.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Red Composition (1997), from the series “Los Caminos (The Path).” Collection of Wendi Norris. Photo ©María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
Campos-Pons’s grandmother was a Santería priestess; her father, an herbalist. Key to many pieces are Santería’s pantheon of Orishas, seven deities said to have traveled to the Americas during the slave trade to safeguard their people.
One self-portrait depicts Campos-Pons as Yemaja, the mother of all Orishas, naked from the waist up save for blue body paint of the ocean waves. The artist is posing with two baby bottles of her own breast milk and a hand-carved wooden boat, symbolizing the goddess’s nourishing of her people even as they are forced to leave behind their homes.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Untitled (Breast and Bottle Feeding) (1994), from the series “When I Am Not Here/Estoy Alla.” Collection of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth. Photo ©María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
A significant portion of the exhibition is dedicated to the artist’s large-scale Polaroids, 20-by 24-inch prints she began creating as part of a multi-year residency with the photography company in the 1990s. Campos-Pons uses the individual images to create unique multi-panel photographs that are monumental in scale and look like performances frozen in time.
“That idea of the combination of the fragments coming together as one is so crucial to the work. She also describes it as the topography of diaspora,” Hermo said. “This idea that you’re taking multiple experiences and dislocations and geographies and connections and sort of combining them all together.”
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, When I Am Not Here/Estoy Allá, Tríptico I, (1996). Photo ©María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
Forced to leave an increasingly unstable Cuba following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Campos-Pons moved first to Canada before settling in Boston. (She’s called Nashville home since 2017.) Unable to visit her family for years, the artist imbued her work with a sense of homesickness and loss, but also a rootedness in her identity and family history, as well as her physical body.
The 1990 mixed-media wall-relief sculpture Soy una Fuente (I Am a Fountain), just acquired by the Detroit Institute of Arts at Christie’s in March—where it sold for four times the high estimate—illustrates many of those themes and Campos-Pon’s strong feminist underpinnings.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Soy una Fuente (I Am a Fountain), 1990. Collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo ©María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
“It has these elements of the body fragmented again, but effusive, leaking,” Hermo said. “There’s menstrual blood, there’s shit, there’s tears, there’s breast milk, there’s a little fetus floating there in the center, and then what Magda describes as the most potent output of a woman—which is her words, coming from the mouth. It’s this idea of the artist defining herself, as a body, as a creator of life, but then also specifically as a Black woman.”
“María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, September 15, 2023–January 14, 2024.

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For her third New York solo show, British artist Lucy Sparrow wanted to do something special. So, to follow up 2017’s blockbuster felt bodega and the upscale stuffed grocery store of 2019, she’s back with her most interactive work to date, a cross between Jewish appetizing store and delicatessen where she’ll be sewing bagel sandwiches to order, $250 a pop.
Considering the price of lox at Russ and Daughters on the Lower East Side—nearly $60 a pound—it’s not a bad deal. Each and every component is lovely hand stitched by the artist, who has spent about nine months in preparation for the show, and you can choose up to eight toppings from the counter.
Some are traditional, like slices of smoked salmon, hand-painted rounds of tomatoes, glittering pickle spears, and strings of shiny black beads for the caviar. There’s also satiny fried eggs or fluffy scrambled ones if you want a bacon egg and cheese, and sweet options such as Nutella and berries, as well as less conventional offerings including mozzarella, jalapeños, and hummus.
The bagels also come in 13 flavors, including the Instagram-famous rainbow variety, and cost $50 sans filling.
Lucy Sparrow’s felted bagels at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
The pop-up exhibition is called, naturally, “Feltz Bagels”—a Jewish surname that doubles as a nod to Sparrow’s preferred material. (She loves using the relatively inexpensive fabric because it comes in such a wide variety of colors, allowing her to recreate almost anything in her cute and cuddly style.)
Because Sparrow doesn’t have any Jewish heritage, she did lots of research to make sure she got the details for Feltz Bagels right, including visiting Russ and Daughters and Katz’s Deli, both of which were in full support of her handmade creations. (The former even provided babka for the exhibition press preview, served alongside Sparrow’s stuffed slices, naturally.)
Lucy Sparrow’s felted babka alongside the real deal from Jewish appetizing store Russ and Daughters at the press preview for “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“My work is always focused on community experiences and the amazing everyday products that bring us all together. There really is no greater example of this than the traditional bagel bakeries of the Lower East Side of New York that have been nourishing much more than the stomachs of the city’s residents since the late 19th century,” Sparrow said in a statement.
Organized by Montauk gallery TW Fine Art, this is the second iteration of Feltz Bagels, after a run in Montauk this summer. (Sparrow has also created her own McDonald’s, a British corner shop, and a Los Angeles supermarket, among other projects.) To meet expected demand—her first NYC show, “8 ‘Till Late” had to close early when everything sold out—Sparrow created 30,000 individual works for the occasion.
Lucy Sparrow’s felted caviar tins at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
The shop’s offerings go beyond bagels to include other foodstuffs popular with the Jewish community, including yarn-covered latkes, shiny tins of caviar, and Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup.
There’s even a special tribute to the Jewish religion, with a shelf featuring a fabric Hanukkah menorah and Passover Seder plate made by Sparrow, with chocolate gelt, matzos crackers, and Manischewitz kosher wine. (On the other hand, there’s a secret back room selling pork products, hard liquor, and tiny baggies of marijuana, among other illicit substances, with thick stacks of felt money.)
Lucy Sparrow at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo courtesy of the artist.
There’s also a wide range of baked goods for sale at Feltz’s, including the iconic black and white cookies, croissants, and diminutive rugelach for just $10 a piece, as well as various types of junk food. (The bags of Cheetos Puffs, with their delightful depiction of Chester Cheetah, deserve a special mention.)
It’s a true New York moment, with all the best of Jewish food culture in one place (traditionally, meat and cheese products are sold at separate stores in keeping with kosher dietary law, but I think it’s fair to let things slide in the name of art).
And, as a reminder of just what a culinary melting pot is, you can also order a $50 cup of coffee in the traditional blue and white Greek to-go cup, reading “we are happy to serve you”—a fitting tagline for Sparrow’s feel-good art.
See more photos from the exhibition below.
Lucy Sparrow’s felted cash register and coffee at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Custom bagel toppings at Lucy Sparrow’s “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Lucy Sparrow’s “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Lucy Sparrow’s felted latkes at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Lucy Sparrow’s felted black and white cookies at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Lucy Sparrow’s felted menorah and seder plate at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
The illicit back room at Lucy Sparrow’s “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Lucy Sparrow’s felted food at “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
The illicit back room at Lucy Sparrow’s “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Lucy Sparrow’s “Feltz Bagels,” her new New York City bagel shop art show. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
“Lucy Sparrow: Feltz Bagels” is on view at 209 East 3rd Street, New York, October 3–31, 2023. 
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American artist Kerry James Marshall has produced his first-ever formal portrait, choosing to depict the renowned African American scholar and historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., often known as Skip. The work has been donated to Gates’s alma mater, the University of Cambridge, and is now on public view at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum.
The gift is a major coup for the regional museum—becoming only the second painting by Marshall to enter one of the U.K.’s public collections. Celebrated for his typically lively scenes in which Black people enjoy everyday pleasures like a backyard barbecue, a trip to the hair salon, or a day spent by the river, Marshall recently became the most expensive living Black artist.
Gates, a Harvard professor of African American studies and a prolific writer, met up with Marshall at the Fitzwilliam earlier this week to unveil the work. The pair, whose long-time admiration of each other has formed the basis for a fond friendship, were in a jocular mood as they recalled the circumstances that led up to the portrait.
Shortly after majoring in History summa cum laude at Yale in 1973, Gates was the first African American to receive a fellowship to study abroad from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Though he had been “raised to be a doctor,” he enrolled in English Literature at Clare College, Cambridge, eventually finding a passion for African and African American literature thanks to the mentorship of Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. “I owe this place quite a lot,” he said, reflecting on the encouragement he received to pursue academia. “I feel indebted.”
Kerry James Marshall, Henry Louis Gates Jr (2020). Photo courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Nearly 50 years later, in 2020, the university offered Gates an honorary degree. The scholar offered to commission his own portrait for the college’s graduate common room, calling up his friend Marshall for a favor. Despite never having worked on a formal portrait, he “agreed right away,” and the painting was swiftly allocated to the Fitzwilliam instead. “Once they realized this was a Kerry James Marshall work of art, it could not be in a common room with a bunch of students spilling beer all over it,” joked Gates.
“It was a no brainer. This was not something you could say no to,” said Marshall. “Skip Gates is the W.E.B. DuBois of my generation. These are the people who made being a public intellectual something achievable.”
The sensitive portrayal of Gates shows him seated in an office, turning away from a pile of his own books to face the viewer. “I was interested in painting a picture that had a certain presence that gave Skip the authority he deserved for the stature he has achieved,” said Marshall.
And what of Marshall’s precedent for avoiding portraiture? “Of course, it’s not because I can’t,” he said. “I’ve been invested in making art that is based on ideas, art as a philosophical pursuit. And I make images of people who have a presence in history of which there are no images.”
“The reason I paint figures black is because the Black figure operates as a rhetorical figure,” said Marshall, referring to the unmixed, unadulterated shades of black that he uses for skin tones. “It’s always been stated that black is not a color and you should never use the black that comes out of a tube, but those blacks have a chromatic reality too,” he explained. “My mission was to make those black figures become as chromatic as every other color in the painting. Black is being treated as if it’s a complex color too.”
The shift to portraiture required a slightly different approach. “When it comes to making a painting of Skip, he did ask me, ‘what color am I gonna be?’” recalled Marshall with a laugh, to which Gates exclaimed, “I wanted to be black!”
“I didn’t do that, because to change people… to misrepresent somebody as a color they are not, is akin to blackface,” said Marshall, adding that he decided to make the portrait more true-to-life with naturalistic skin tones.
The pair also used the painting as a starting point to talk more generally about how race relations have changed in the U.S. over the course of their lifetimes. Gates spoke out against the Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 vote to reverse affirmative action, which was introduced in the 1960s. “I wouldn’t have gotten in to Yale without affirmative action,” he said. “The class of 1966 had six Black men graduating, the class that entered Yale with me in 1969 had 96 Black students, and we went on to integrate the power elite. Since 1970, the Black middle class has doubled.”
“The right is trying to end all that,” Gates added. “They’re saying, I don’t know how Kerry James Marshall is in the Met, and now the Fitzwilliam, but that’s over. They are in panic because they saw too much power, too quickly for Black people and they’re trying to roll back the clock.”
“All these things are possible,” said Marshall. “They were possible for [Gates], they’ve been possible for me. I don’t see how they are not possible for anybody who doesn’t take the opportunity and do the work that’s required. That’s how I see the world,” he added. “And in terms of progress that needs to be made, because of the position I have now, I’ve been able to dramatically change the lives of a lot of people. That’s all I can do so that’s where I focus my attention.”

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