In his expansive retrospective spanning 35 years of work, Kerry James Marshall s paintings range from urban pastorals to Renaissance-inspired portraits, subtly shifting abstractions to romanticized, domestic interiors. Yet regardless of style, substance or setting, the works converge on a single element: the undiluted blackness of their subjects flesh.

The vast majority of paintings that make up the Western art historical canon feature, of course, white subjects. Marshalls painted world doesnt only pass over these white subjects, his subjects skin features not a single splash of white paint. The artists formula for flesh features three shades of black: carbon black, mars black and ivory black. He will occasionally incorporate yellow and blue shades to round out the color, but no one figure in any painting is darker or lighter than another. Each exists outside a spectrum of shading or valuation; black is black.

Blackness is non-negotiable in those pictures , Marshall explained in an October interview with T Magazine. Its also unequivocal they are black thats the thing that I mean for people to identify immediately. They are black to demonstrate that blackness can have complexity. Depth. Richness.