The Rise And Rise Of Kerry James Marshall

“In 1997, African American artist Kerry James Marshall painted Past Times, an artwork depicting a black family in high-class leisure – playing golf, playing cricket, as well as water skiing and driving a motorboat across a lake. It’s a take on a pastoral scene typically filled with European aristocratic types yet instead filled with black figures. Last week at Sotheby’s, it sold for $21.1m, breaking a new world record, making Marshall, according to reports, the highest-paid African American artist.” Says Marshall, “My ambition was never to make a lot of money. I was really just struggling to make the best pictures I could make.”