Many Mansions is the first in Kerry James Marshall’s series of five large-scale paintings depicting public housing projects in Chicago and Los Angeles such as Rockwell Gardens, Wentworth Gardens, or, as in Many Mansions, Stateway Gardens. Struck by the absurdity of the term “garden” to describe these failed solutions to low-income housing, Marshall was inspired to represent the profound contradictions of living in such an environment. Many Mansions is filled with ironic and startling juxtapositions of the real and artificial—from the unnaturally cheerful landscape to the three haunting, ebony-skinned figures dressed in nostalgic Sunday best. The title of the painting, visible on the red ribbon above, is a variation on Christ’s oft-quoted remark found in John [14:2]: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.”
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Madeleine Grynsztejn and Dave Hickey, About Place: Recent Art of the Americas, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1995), 31, 101, pl. 35 (color ill.), 125, pl. 39 (by error).
Andrea D. Barnwell, “Portfolio,” in Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, no. 2 (1999), 81, 82, no. 28 (color ill.).
James Cuno, Art Institute of Chicago: The Essential Guide (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), 148 (color ill.).
James Cuno, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), 165 (color ill.).
Jessie L. Whitehead, “Invisibility of Blackness: Visual Responses of Kerry James Marshall” Art Education 62, no. 2 (March 2009): 36, fig. 2 (ill.).
Jeff Wall and Kathleen S Bartels, Kerry James Marshall, exh. cat. (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 2010), 24-25 (color ill.), 49.
Helen Molesworth, Ian Alteveer, Dieter Roelstraete, Lanka Tattersall, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, exh. cat. (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications, 2016), 35, (color ill.), 50, fig. 19 (color ill., detail), 134-35, cat. 29 (color ill.), 262.
Charles Gaines, Greg Tate, and Laurence Rassel, Kerry James Marshall (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 2017), 56 (color ill.), 158.
James Rondeau, Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2017), 169 (color ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, American Painting and Sculpture 76th Annual: About Place: Recent Art from the Americas, Mar. 11–May 21, 1995, no cat. no.
Kassel, Germany, Museum Fridericianum, Documenta X, June 21–Sept. 28, 1997, no cat. no.
Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Kerry James Marshall, May 8, 2010–Jan. 10, 2011, no cat. no.
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, Apr. 23–Sept. 25, 2016, cat. 29; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 25, 2016–Jan. 29, 2017, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Mar. 12–July 3, 2017.
The artist; sold through Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, to the Art Institute of Chicago, July 10, 1995.
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