Kerry James Marshall Paints the World in Beautiful Black

Kerry James Marshall is a black artist who paints black people. The men and women in Marshall’s paintings are not people of a range of colors. They are not painted in differing shades of brown. They are painted in the darkest, inkiest black, consistently, exclusively, insistently and masterfully.

“Mastry,” a much-lauded retrospect of Marshall’s work, has just opened at MOCA’s Grand Avenue location in downtown L.A. This is the third and final stop for the painting show, which began its North American tour at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and landed next at the Met Breuer in Manhattan. Critics in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles have consistently called it a must-see show, but I say it's actually a must-see-at-least-twice show.

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