Kerry James Marshall PAST TIMES

A masterpiece of unparalleled formal rigor and graphic grandeur, Past Times is the definitive embodiment of Kerry James Marshall’s revolutionary painterly practice. Executed in 1997, the magnificent panorama of Past Times thunderously declares the arrival of Marshall’s mature artistic project: the utter and indisputable mastery of traditional art historical modes to counter the glaring absence of the black figure within the canon of Western painting. Emphatically testifying to Marshall’s virtuosic painterly abilities, Past Times marks the decisive moment at which the artist confronts the canon upon its own rigorous terms, boldly usurping the grand artistic gesture of past movements to assert the primacy and presence of an African American narrative within the larger legacy of contemporary American painting. Following the creation of Past Times, Marshall would go on to produce an extraordinary body of work which, in its celebratory and unapologetic depiction of black subjects within a wide range of pictorial traditions, presents a radical and long-awaited counter-narrative to the canon. Further illustrating the significance of this painting within Marshall’s oeuvre, Past Times was amongst the most critically and publically lauded works featured in the artist’s celebrated exhibition Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, the major mid-career survey co-organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2016–2017. Hung beside other pivotal masterworks from the artist’s oeuvre, the panoramic vista of Past Times testifies to Marshall’s status, both as virtuosic renegade of canonical reform, and as one of the greatest history painters of our time <a href="https://medium.com/dipchain/kerry-james-marshall-past-times-aaee56485458">Click Here</a>