Untitled (Frankenstein)

Kerry James Marshall

2010

An etching and aquatint in which Kerry James Marshall conjures a standing Black male figure out of a velvety black field to question how Black bodies are seen and represented in art.

From a distance the composition reads as an almost entirely black rectangle, but up close the body is revealed by thousands of pale, stippled marks that make it shimmer and seem to emerge from the dark.

Part of Marshall’s project to correct art-historical absences, this piece reclaims pictorial space for Black subjects and, with its Frankenstein allusion, reflects on creation, otherness, and the constructed nature of identity.

Palette

Art Terms

Aquatint Etching Print Figurative Figure/ground relationship Investigating identity African diaspora

Exhibitions

Committed to Print

1988

American Prints, 1960–1985

1987

American Prints from the International Program

1971

Master Prints from the Collection

1989