Kerry James Marshall
(c)image: Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY, and Koplin Del Rio, CA
Marshall's painting Garden Party portrays a group of people at a party in an American suburb garden. The monumental painting follows on from the Garden series of paintings that Marshall began in the 1990s. These works address various “urban renewal” public housing projects in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles that were developed at the government's behest, originally as part of utopian aspirations to create affordable housing for a growing population. The projects had names like Altgeld Gardens, Wentworth Gardens and Many Mansions. Originally they were successful neighborhoods, but economic crisis and civil unrest turned them into desolate ones, in stark contrast to their given names. In this series Marshall represents inhabitants of these housing schemes that cultivated false hopes for a better life.