Untitled (Painter) 2009

Kerry James Marshall's "Untitled (Painter)" at the MCA in Chicago depicts an artist with oil on canvas. The painting is a meditation on process itself. Look at how Marshall deploys flatness, like a deliberate choice to resist conventional depth. The colors, though muted, have a visceral, grounded quality. Notice the palette in the artist's hand, it’s a burst of oranges and greens, thick with texture, sitting in contrast to the almost graphic flatness of the woman. It suggests that painting is a physical act but also a kind of code, a system of knowledge. The woman is painting a paint-by-numbers version of herself! And what is this strange, sectioned pattern that divides her image up in the style of Lichtenstein. It is a painting about the challenges, artifice, and possibilities of making art. I am reminded of the graphic style of Barkley Hendricks. Both Hendricks and Marshall are interested in how we see and represent the Black figure. Isn't art just an ongoing conversation across time?