Kerry James Marshall: "Now and Forever" | Art21 "Extended Play”

(poignant music)

(awe-inspiring organ music)

(awe-inspiring organ music continues)

- I've spent my entire
life making pictures,

so I don't hold any delusions

about the transformative
power of artworks.

Not enough people ever see
them to interrupt the dynamism

and the challenges we face
living from day to day.

But what they can do, however,

is to invite us to imagine
oneself as a subject

and an author of a never-ending story

that is still yet to be told.

Now, this is what I've tried to do

and tried to accomplish
with words, images,

and colored glass

for right here and for right now.

(gentle upbeat music)
(birds chirping)

(stirrer clinking)
I came to the cathedral

to have a discussion about the project,

which was to change out the Robert E. Lee

and Stonewall Jackson windows.

I understood it was gonna
take a lot of thinking,

especially in relationship

to the transformation the
cathedral was trying to enact.

This is a big kind of
monumental undertaking,

and you have to figure out
whether you're gonna be able

to meet the moment.

(gentle haunting music)

In the founding documents
of the United States,

there's a clause that
provides for the population

to seek some redress for
the grievance that you have.

That's built into the
structure of the country,

which means that over time,
you're engaged in a process

of revision that requires
struggle that's ongoing.

It's always ongoing.

(crowd applauds and cheers)
When Harold Washington

became the first Black
mayor elected in Chicago,

he said something that
struck me at the time,

and he said...

- No one, no matter where they live

or how they live is free

from the fairness of our administration.

- This is how I came to this idea.

It's that "we want
fairness, not no foul play."

That seemed to me to be
a conceptual relationship

that I thought could do the work

that I want these windows to do.

(gentle haunting music continues)

This is where humidity is gonna
give you some fits. (laughs)

- [Fabricator] Is it running?

- No, but the red wasn't completely dry.

- [Fabricator] Oh, it wasn't?

- I'm just curious to see if it...

There's a heating element
in that ceramic coil.

- [Kerry] But there the problem
is you gotta stand there

with that.

- I can get a chair.
(Kerry and fabricator laugh)

- [Kerry] See, that's just as bad.

- It might be hard to see,

but the original concept was
done with a colored pencil.

The colors we selected from
that palette translated well

into kind of what becomes
a living piece of art

that changes every day with
the sun and the clouds.

So trying to translate all
these different variables

was the most challenging part for me

but also the most gratifying.

(gentle music)

- I chose to use a group

of anonymous individuals

because I think we tend to make
celebrities the focal point

of any kind of achievement,
when for the most part,

almost all the achievements we experience

are the work of vast numbers

of anonymous and unidentified people

who put in the work on a day-to-day basis.

(pensive music)
(traffic honking)

I was born in 1955.

I was alive to experience
the assassination

of the president of the United States,

which, for an eight-year-old,

was a shocking occurrence.

Two years after that,

we were in the middle of the Watts riots.

By 1968,

I was a witness to the shootouts

between the LA Police Department

and the Black Panther Party.
(chopper blades humming)

The Vietnam War was raging.

Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.

Malcolm X was killed.

So you talk about volatility,

I'm conditioned by that
kind of volatility,

and that's just the political volatility.

That's not to mention the kind
of neighborhood challenges

that you have to negotiate

in order to make it from
one day to the next.

All those things
contribute to a perception

of how you move through the world,

survive in the world, and
what your expectations can be.

(slow solemn music)

That's the backdrop against
which I as an artist

have to conceptualize the
imagery I'm gonna produce

and the value I think it
will have for the culture.

(slow solemn music continues)
They read beautifully.

- It is cool when you walk up
the aisle, and you watch it,

and it's a different light coming out

of this bay than all the others.

- Yeah, well, they're different.

I mean, if you...

I mean they're not
anywhere near as fragmented

as most of the other images
in all the other windows.

They present themselves with a clarity.

It does what I wanted it to do. (laughs)

Formally, the movement from the bottom

to the top is really important

because it's like down here
on the ground in the crucible

where all of these sort of needs

and desires are fought for

is where the heat is always generated.

And as we achieve more of the kinds

of ideal conditions we look for,

it requires less of that
kind of energy and agitation.

Although in the upper part,

there's a kind of oscillating
back-and-forth dynamic

between the colors and the whiteness

of some of the glass shapes

so that even in that upper part

that seems chromatically more tranquil,

there's still an
incredible amount of energy

and back and forth going on.

I wanted that too,

that achievement doesn't
necessarily mean complacency.

(gentle haunting music)
If you look at history,

the success that the United
States enjoys is accompanied

by a legacy of brutality,

not just here in the United
States, but all over the place.

Out of the crucible of
all of that violence,

all the warfare, all the
colonial impositions,

out of the crucible of all of that,

we got a chance to live.

And the chance to live that
we got makes us obligated

to do whatever we can to
guarantee that those processes

that were played out before we arrived

are not repeated in the same way

from the moment we are here on.

That's what the replacement
of those windows means.

(solemn music)

(solemn music continues)
(solemn music fading)

Hi, my name is Julie Mehretu.

And I was really blessed to be
featured by Art21 in 2009.

Susan Sollins was directing at the time,

and I was really fortunate enough to have met her.

What an incredible person to 
have started such a project.

And the archive of films of 
artists' practice in the depth of

research that has gone into the 
archive of Art21 is incredible.

It's an immense resource for any young artist

and any practicing artist who wants to look into

all these various practices and forms of making.

I grew up in the Midwest,

and I know more than,

as does anyone coming from cities
that are not either New York or Los Angeles

that are not these primal coastal art centers,

the value of the smaller museums and collections.

And when I grew up,
you didn't have the MCA in Chicago,

you didn't have MOCAD in Detroit,
you didn't have an art center in Grand Rapids.

There really was nothing outside of the
DIA and the Art Institute.

And these were encyclopedic type of museums.

And now, yes, you have many more of these
contemporary art museums all over this country,

but many students still don't have access to
the form of education and the form of practice

that this archive offers.

And that's what I think is one of the
richest aspects of this,

is the kind of depth of education and access
you can have into these various practices.

And that's only going to 
move the whole field forward.

So thank you, Art21.

Thank you Susan Sollins for an incredible vision
in having commenced this incredible project,

and I hope that you'll consider to support
this immense project.

Thank you so much.