THE WOMEN AT THE BEAUTY SCHOOL / CULTURE SCHOOL; WITH THEIR VIBRANT, CHARISMATIC AND ASSERTIVE APPEARANCES, STRIVE TO BRING THE ESTABLISHED MISE-EN-SCÈNE TO LIFE, THEIR BODIES APPEARING TO BE IN A LIVELY AND ALLURING POSTURE. HERE, WITH AN INTERPRETATION THAT RETURNS TO THE AESTHETICS OF THE BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT, THE SPIRIT OF THE SHARED SPACE AND ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT ARE REFLECTED ALONGSIDE THE COLOURFUL INNER WORLDS OF THE FIGURES. ULTIMATELY, THIS PAINTING IS A LAVISH PRODUCTION, FILLED WITH EXPLICIT REFERENCES TO GREAT COMPOSITIONS IN ART HISTORY, PRESENTED THROUGH A FIGURATIVE MEDIATION SYMBOLICALLY PROCESSED IN AN ENVIRONMENT WOVEN WITH SPECIALLY DESIGNED GARMENTS AND ACCESSORIES.

school of beauty / school of culture: an effective interior arrangement

Kerry James Marshall frequently notes that the figures in his paintings are shaped not in the traditional naturalistic sense but according to a fiction living in a realistic field. He assigns them a discursive function, stating that he uses them to fill the void sensed in an aesthetic and epistemological context, just like characters performing in a drama. For example, the 2012 arrangement titled School of Beauty, School of Culture, which offers a glimpse of the distinctive everyday life of Black Americans, can be shown as an apt example of this context. This composition, which addresses the beauty obsession of Black women constrained by popular culture’s beauty perception and which appears to be the product of a practical staging, animates a crowded and complex beauty salon mise-en-scène.(1)

The painting’s main character, a woman in a yellow dress, is depicted as a star shining under the lights. In the lower section are two children innocently examining the surrealist abnormality of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty’s anamorphic head, reminiscent of Hans Holbein. The poster positioned in the center is a plastic element placed to resist the white beauty standards represented by Sleeping Beauty’s disturbing face.(2) In the background, a hairdresser positioned attends to a client reclining in her chair. On the other side of the room, another beauty specialist silently and powerfully makes eye contact with Marshall’s gaze in her salon’s heart-shaped mirror.(3) 

If one notices, the women in School of Beauty, School of Culture attempt to animate the established mise-en-scène with their vibrant, charismatic, and assertive appearances, while their bodies seem to possess a lively and attractive posture. Here, with an interpretation returning to the aesthetic of the Black is Beautiful movement, the spirit and cultural context of the shared space and the colorful inner worlds of the figures are reflected.(4) Ultimately, this painting is a spectacular production filled with explicit references to art history’s grand compositions, through a figurative mediation symbolically processed in an environment woven with garments and accessories.