Kerry James Marshall
(c)image: Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY, and Koplin Del Rio, CA
Lost Boy: AKA Black Johnny (1995) is from Marshall’s Lost Boys series of portraits, each constructed like religious icons. Each painting presents the head and shoulders of an adolescent figure in ordinary dress, ringed by a halo or aura as a sign of their innocence. The title refers to the children's tale Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, in which the Lost Boys are a group of children lost in “Never-Never Land” where they don't grow up.
For a lot of children who grow up in the inner-city, the question is not whether they want to grow up, but if they are given the chance to do so. In the late 1980s and early '90s, many inner-city children in America died in gang wars or indiscriminately got picked up by the police just for the colour of their skin. Marshall brings this tragedy to the fore in these works. These very stylised images refer to individuals as to young men and women usually classed by the police as "symbolic aggressors" on the basis of racial profiling techniques. The paintings commemorate the loss of innocence and lives lost through incarceration.