"Part of the reason I started was because I saw that
black kids are interested in comics and super heroes just
like everybody else are. But the market has somehow never
been able to sustain a set of black super heroes in a way
that could capture the imagination not just of the black
populations, but of the general population as a whole."
"I thought what I would do with this project would
be to take a form that is, in some ways, already undervalued
in America, take a subject that's underrepresented, and
try to develop a comic strip with a set of characters that
had cultural significance but also allowed for a kind of
imaginative play and inspiration."
"The way I see beauty is as a state of being for a
thing that has a kind of fascination about it, or as a thing
that presents a certain kind of fascination to you as a
viewer. It's certainly something that's captivating; it's
something's that's compelling. Beauty is a phenomenological
experience, and a basic component of it is intrigue."
Let's talk a bit about the things
in your studio
right now. What are these comic book drawings here?
MARSHALL:
Well, what I'm doing right now
is redoing a project I did for the Carnegie International
this year, which was to develop a comic strip in newspaper
form that I could use for a particular
installation
at the Carnegie Treasure Room. It was a place that had a set
of vitrines that I wanted to block out with newspaper, but
I wanted to block them out with a newspaper comic that I developed
myself. And so what I'm doing is kind of reverting back to
my childhood I guess. The stage I'm at right now is doing
a color separation with markers, because when I printed the
piece the first time the color and the black line were all
in the same drawing. When the image was scanned to be converted
into a plate, the fact that the various separations of color
were stacked on top of each other ended up producing a halo
around a lot of the black, which made it seem a little out
of focus. So what I'm doing now is a color separation so that
the color can be scanned by itself and then the black line
can be scanned by itself.
ART:21:
Did you set out with a goal when
you started working on this comic strip?
MARSHALL:
Part of the reason I started
was because I saw that black kids are interested in comics
and super heroes just like everybody else are. But the market
has somehow never been able to sustain a set of black super
heroes in a way that could capture the imagination not just
of the black populations, but of the general population as
a whole. Now when I was growing up, reading Marvel comics
- "The X-Men," "The Fantastic Four," "The Avengers,"
"Thor," "The Mighty Hulk," "Spiderman" - all of those characters
were amazing characters to me. But there weren't any black
characters in the pantheon of super heroes until the Black
Panther entered the scene in "Fantastic Four," Issue #52 in
1965.
Since then there have been black super heroes as parts of
teams of super heroes in Marvel comics, and in some other
comics, but there hadn't been many independent black super
heroes who had a comic of their own that could sustain itself
for a long time. And not until the last five, six, seven years
have there been a lot of attempts at trying to develop a series
of black super hero characters that could capture the imaginations
of young people. But almost all of them have failed to a degree.
And so, part of the reason I started this project was to address
that as an issue. I thought what I would do with this project
would be to take a form that is, in some ways, already undervalued
in America, take a subject that's underrepresented, and try
to develop a comic strip with a set of characters that had
cultural significance but also allowed for a kind of imaginative
play and inspiration. What I hit on as a subject was this
idea that, for black people, the set of super heroes we come
to know anything about have a lot to do with West African
religious gods in a sense.
There's a pantheon of gods in the Yoruba tradition that is
known as the seven African powers, and those African powers
are represented in Africa sculpture symbolically. And so what
I saw was that when you go to the museum, especially when
you go through the African art wing of museum, you'll see
representations
of these things and they exist historically for a lot of people.
But the tradition from which they come doesn't have the same
kind of currency that the tradition of Greek mythological
heroes has, although there are parallels between those two
traditions. So when we go to the the museum to see African
art, those heroes or those symbolic representations of the
heroes seem pretty inert. We talk about them as statues that
are from cultural practices that are either dead or obsolete.
And so I thought what I would do would be to take those African
sculptures, those African heroes, and reanimate them in a
sense and make them into the super heroes, but not conventional
super heroes that are overdeveloped with musculature. I selected
a very specific set of African sculptures that had certain
attributes that could easily be translated into super hero
powers. I'm trying to find a way to make our knowledge of
African history, our knowledge of mythology, and our love
fantasy and super heroes and things like that all come together
in a vital and exciting way by connecting it to a story that
is meaningful, historically and culturally, and that says
something about the way in which we can carry these traditions
into the future so that they don't have to dissipate and die.
ART:21:
Is beauty important to you?
MARSHALL:
I wouldn't say that I never think
about beauty as an aesthetic
issue. But I certainly think it's a much more complicated
issue then it's imagined to be. I think sometimes when people
think of beauty they think of prettiness as a sign of beauty,
but it's a lot more complicated and a lot deeper than that.
The way I see beauty is as a state of being for a thing that
has a kind of fascination about it, or as a thing that presents
a certain kind of fascination to you as a viewer. It's certainly
something that's captivating; it's something's that's compelling.
Beauty is a phenomenological experience, and a basic component
of it is intrigue. I don't think that simply because I am
an artist, or because anybody is an artist, that people ought
to give their attention to the things that we've made. In
some ways we have to earn our audience's attention, and one
of the ways we earn our audience's attention is to make things
that are phenomenologically fascinating.
ART:21:
Explain the term "phenomenological."
MARSHALL:
When I say "phenomenological,"
I mean a thing has a certain existential authority. What I
think is that a thing is what it is. And it is interesting
simply because it is, first, meaning that it has a certain
presence; we accept its existence as a fact and it is interesting
just because it is. Not because it has a particular meaning:
that it's significant to us in any particular way, but simply
that it is. It's like a rock in a sense. Rocks just are. Some
rocks are more interesting to look at than other rocks. They
all can tell a story, but we don't examine the stories that
all rocks tell; only certain rocks hold a kind of fascination
that compels us to want to investigate further what it is
about their nature that's so interesting. And it's that compelling
component, that fascinating component, this other thing that
we are engaged by that I acquaint with something being beautiful.
It's not that a smooth rock is more beautiful than a jagged
rock. The jagged rock might be much more complicated, maybe
more complex. That complexity I think is what makes that rock
somehow more attractive to us to investigate. And that's what
I mean by phenomenology in a sense.
I mean when the moon comes up in the evening and it's full,
it's an amazing thing. And that's a phenomena that we don't
have to explain; we just recognize it for what it is. It has
a certain authority and a certain presence, just because it
is. When there's a tornado, we may be terrified by it, but
its fascinating nonetheless because it is what it is, not
because we know anything about it per se, but because we respond
to what it is. That's what I mean by a phenomenological existence.
So when artists make things, I think we attempt to make things
that have the same kind of authority, or the same kind of
presence, as things like the moon, like the sun, like a tornado,
like a rock - where you see it and you know it. There's interesting
things about it. And the more you penetrate it and probe into
it, the more things it reveals to you or allows you to understand
or allows you to make connections to other things. So that's
what I think we try to do as artists. These are the means,
the kinds of devices or ways the artist has of gaining an
audience's attention.
I was going to say two things, two quotes from people that
have been really meaningful to me. One is from Ray Bradbury's
novel "Fahrenheit 451" and another is a statement from Roland
Barthes about inviting people to take the semiotic challenge
- meaning to find out what a thing is about, or what a thing
really means. Ray Bradbury's book has a phrase that says "stuff
your eyes with wonder." The whole quote is, "I hate a Roman
named status quo, stuff your eyes with wonder, and live each
day as if it is your last day..." And Barthes says, that in
embarking on the semiotic challenge, the first moment in a
semiotic challenge is the moment of amazement - that moment
when you encounter a thing that is simply dazzling and fascinating
to you, and that fascinating component compels you to want
to know more about it. So when I make work as an artist, I
am essentially trying to make work that affects people that
way.
This goes back to what we were talking about with that scrapbook
in kindergarten. I was simply amazed by all the things I saw
in that book. Partly amazed that they could have been made
by somebody, but partly amazed simply because they were there.
You know,you see a picture of a giraffe next to a picture
of a locomotive - that's an amazing juxtaposition of things.
And so what I try to do with my work is create that same sense
of amazement, that same sense of wonder, that same sense of
authority, that same kind of presence - so that things seem
at once familiar and indecipherable at the same time. And
that familiarity and indecipherability can be called beauty.
