The Royal Academy of Arts in London is currently hosting "The Histories," a major retrospective showcasing the remarkable career of Kerry James Marshall, one of America's most influential contemporary artists. The Chicago-based figurative painter has spent over four decades creating powerful works that center Black subjects and challenge the exclusionary practices of Western art history. Running through January 18, 2026, the exhibition spans 11 themed rooms and demonstrates why Marshall has become one of the most respected artists working today.
"All of the paintings show Black subjects, and Kerry, in his own words, is unapologetic about centering Black figures and engaging with the history of art," explained Mark Godfrey, the show's curator. Marshall's approach combines sophisticated art historical references with Black cultural elements, creating large-scale works that demand multiple viewings. As the artist himself explained to Artsy, "When I started out, my goal was to figure out how to make the most sophisticated paintings I could. I want people to come back time and again, and each time to see something new they hadn't noticed before."
The exhibition features several of Marshall's most iconic works, beginning with "A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self" from 1980. This pivotal eight-inch-tall painting marks a crucial turning point in Marshall's artistic journey, representing his shift from mixed-media abstract collages to painting Black figures in everyday settings. Created when he was just 25 years old, the piece depicts Marshall himself as a jet-black figure in a black coat against a black backdrop, brought to life only by the whites of his eyes, a mischievous wide-toothed grin revealing one missing tooth and pink gums, and a white shirt underneath.
The painting's history is as compelling as its imagery. In 1984, collector Steven Lebowitz purchased it for $850 and initially hung it in a bar at his home. However, as a work reflecting on historical racist stereotypes, many guests found it offensive when viewed out of context, prompting Lebowitz to move the piece to a bathroom where it remained for over 25 years. The painting was eventually donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2019, where it now holds a place of honor.
"De Style" from 1993 represents another milestone in Marshall's career as the first of his works to be acquired by a major museum. LACMA purchased this nearly 8.5-by-10-foot canvas for approximately $12,000 in 2019, according to the artist. Set in a Los Angeles barbershop called Percy's House of Style, the painting depicts five Black men, four facing the viewer, with three waiting and one receiving a haircut. The work masterfully incorporates multiple references to Western art history, from the men's placid stares that echo Rembrandt's "De Staalmeesters" to the large mirror reminiscent of Édouard Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère."
Marshall brings contemporary relevance to "De Style" by depicting a calendar marking April 1991, just one month after Rodney King was brutally beaten by Los Angeles police. The barbershop setting holds special significance for Black communities, serving as a cultural haven. Marshall recalled in a New Yorker interview how young Black men of his generation were influenced by 1970s blaxploitation films, leading to increased attention to personal grooming and style.
"Great America" from 1994 tackles the haunting legacy of the transatlantic slave trade through metaphor and contemporary imagery. Named after a California theme park, the painting shows figures on a boat ride heading toward a haunted tunnel. The work was inspired by the 1993 film "Sankofa," directed by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima, for which Marshall served as production designer. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., acquired this powerful piece in 2011, and it became the centerpiece of Marshall's solo exhibition "In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall" two years later.
Perhaps no work better demonstrates Marshall's market impact than "Past Times" from 1997. When this painting went to auction in 2018, it sold for nearly 800 times more than the Chicago Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority originally paid. The corporation had purchased the piece directly from Marshall in 1997 for $25,000 and consigned it to Sotheby's with an estimate of $8-12 million. The painting ultimately sold for $21 million, setting a record as the highest auction price ever achieved for a work by a living Black artist at that time.
"Past Times" offers a scene of Black leisure in a Chicago park, with figures playing croquet and listening to music on a red-checkered blanket while others golf, boat, and water ski around them. The composition deliberately evokes French Impressionist Georges Seurat's portrayals of working-class leisure, but reimagines these scenes with Black subjects enjoying respite and recreation.
The 2018 work "Untitled (Underpainting)" showcases Marshall's continued innovation and technical mastery. The Washington Post praised it as "a tour de force by a painter at the top of his game" in 2020. This 10-foot-tall diptych, divided by white stripes that evoke a gallery wall, presents two nearly identical scenes of Black visitors in a museum space. The work sold for $7.3 million at Sotheby's, three times its high estimate, demonstrating Marshall's continued market strength.
Unlike Marshall's typically vibrant works, "Untitled (Underpainting)" is rendered almost entirely in shades of taupe, harking back to traditional art academy practices where students created underpaintings in gray or earth tones. "I've always been interested in unfinished underpaintings, like Leonardo's Saint Jerome in the Wilderness," Marshall told Apollo Magazine. "That's how I learned how paintings were constructed, from those sorts of works."
The exhibition concludes with Marshall's newest series, including "Haul" from 2025, which returns to his exploration of the Middle Passage. In a section titled "Africa Revisited," three paintings—"Outbound," "Haul," and "Cove"—challenge viewers to confront difficult moments in recorded African history rarely represented by artists. These works illustrate Africans taking Black captives to canoes for sale, paddling to slave ships, and returning to shore with their earnings.
"Haul" specifically depicts a woman reclining on sacks containing payments for slaves, with various items spread across the boat including a Victorian teacup, a clock, and an empty gold frame. Curator Nikita Sena Quarshie describes these new paintings as Marshall's "most conventional approach used over four decades of dismantling history painting," though the complex subject matter may have demanded this more orthodox style.
Throughout his career, Marshall has maintained his commitment to using pure black pigment for his figures' skin, not as a reductive choice but as "a statement of complexity," as he told Artsy. "I make the blacks as rich as I possibly can." This approach emphasizes that his subjects are not realistic portrayals but rhetorical figures in realist spaces, challenging viewers to reconsider representations of Black identity in art history. The London exhibition powerfully demonstrates how Marshall's four-decade career has fundamentally changed the landscape of contemporary art while opening new possibilities for future generations of artists.
