CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/20/2023

Holiday Gift Staff Pick: Kerry James Marshall: The Complete Prints

Featured spreads are from Kerry James Marshall: The Complete Prints, 1976–2022, a 2023 staff pick Holiday Gift Book for art lovers. Featured this weekend in the New York Times Book Review, this is a comprehensive, beautifully designed survey spanning from the mid-70s until now—deeply researched by the noted art historian and critic Susan Tallman. Marshall “understands that art can be magical,” Tallman writes. “He has been under its spell since kindergarten. But he recognizes the magic as a product of informed decisions about color, composition, surface textures, the qualities of particular edges. He also understands that if you know the answer to a problem before starting out, it’s not really a problem. Printmaking, which adds a variety of physical and logistical complications to the act of making pictures, has always appealed to artists who enjoy a good problem, and Marshall has a fondness for the obstacle-strewn route—employing found lumber, printing his own work, doing everything himself long past the moment in his career when most artists choose to outsource the tedious bits of execution—because all of it is ‘part of a process of figuring out what can be done, and what works best, and how it all looks. The adventure of being an artist, and making art, is to not always know how things are going to turn out.’”