Last night, I attended a free lecture by artist Kerry James Marshall (featured in the current Sparks! exhibition). He was amazing. He spoke at length about his career but also about what it takes (in his opinion) to be a succesful artist. He talked a lot about why he creates the works he does. Surprisingly, it has little to do with a need for "self expression" or having a a sudden inspiration.
Marshall grew up in the 1960s in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. He remembered knowing at a very young age that he wanted to "make pictures." His first trip to a museum came in elementary school when his class visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Marshall noticed right away that there was a lack of black figures in the art works as well as an absence of black artists in the collection. He made it his goal to rectify that situation. One way of doing that is to create very large canvases that contain prominent images of black people. Small works, he said, can be easily missed. Some of his canvases are 10 feet by 10 1/2 feet or larger.
In talking about the progression of his art work, Marshall mentioned the various series and groups of objects that he has created. I was interested to hear him talk about his Memento series, of which the Museum owns Memento #5 (above). The series deals with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the importance of the time in American history. Memento #5 is the final painting in the series. Marshall said he wanted a way to close the group so he painted the angel closing the silver curtain to give closure to himself as an artist but also to put closure on that time period. He also mentioned that the setting in the painting is his mother's living room. In fact, the settings in all five of the paintings are houses of relatives or close family friends. The reason for this is that they were all adults during the 1960s and would have experienced that time in a "real way." What was happening literally determined where they would be able to live, what kind of jobs were available to them and what they could aspire to achieve in the future.
It amazed me to hear him talk about this painting that I have seen so many times. I have read the label next to it in the gallery and I've heard docents and curators speak about it on many occassions. Now that I know the personal story behind it, I don't think I'll ever look at it (or perhaps any other work of art) the same way again.