American - Artist | October 17, 1955 -
If people keep telling you you can't do a thing, then you need to find a really good reason to continue. If someone tells you you can't do something, how will you know? If someone tells you something is impossible, how will you know?
Kerry James Marshall
GoodPeopleImpossibleSomeoneYou
Abstraction and representation are supposed to be going down two very different paths, one sociological and the other aesthetic.
AestheticPathsDownTwoGoingVery
I used to always say - and I think a lot of artists think of it this way - that when you see a black figure, the way the critical establishment operated, you can only imagine that figure having a sociological value. They never say the ways in which their aesthetics were equally worthy of consideration.
ValueBlackThinkYouSayWay
Blackness has always been stigmatised, even amongst black people who flee from the density of that blackness. Some black people recoil from black people who are that dark because it has always been stigmatised.
PeopleBlackDarkAlwaysBlackness
You don't see black people winning Nobel prizes for physics or economics or any of the industries or institutions that shape the way the world operates.
PeopleEconomicsWinningWorldBlack
I have been a stalwart advocate for the legacy of Charles White. I have said it so often, it could go without saying. I have always believed that his work should be seen wherever great pictures are collected and made available to art-loving audiences.
WorkGreatLegacySayingPictures
A close friend of mine described me as a radical pragmatist. I embrace this no-nonsense distinction wholeheartedly. It is a character trait that matches the sense of myself I've had from as far back as I can remember. I am not one who goes in much for magical thinking. I don't believe in destiny, fate, or things like divine guidance, either.
FriendCharacterMyselfI AmMe
Working from live models is too much trouble; it takes too much time.
LiveTimeToo MuchTroubleWorking
I see life and the world simply as an arena for competition. That's just what people do, and there are always going to be winners and losers.
LifeCompetitionPeopleWorldSee
People don't really want to hear me say this, but a black person who will give a million dollars to the Museum of Modern Art but won't give a million to the Studio Museum in Harlem is simply mistaken.
ArtPeopleMeBlackMuseumPerson
You can't be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central near the Black Panthers headquarters and not feel like you've got some kind of social responsibility.
ResponsibilityBlackGrowFeelYou
I gave up on the idea of making art a long time ago, because I wanted to know how to make paintings; but once I came to know that, reconsidering the question of what art is returned as a critical issue.
TimeArtLongKnowLong TimeUp
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