Art & Agency

Agency can be described as an individual’s ability to affect change. This influence can be over their own personal life or it can be over a larger community – or both. An obvious and unfortunate example of this would be a wealthy person having more agency than a poor person. Their options and ability to affect change in both their personal life and the world at large increases proportionate to their personal wealth.

An artist expresses their agency by the very nature that they are making work. They are producing something that becomes a surrogate, a vehicle for their interests, concerns, and emotions. They put their work out into the world with the potential to influence or inspire.

As an artist gains exposure, they can increase this agency by using their voice to amplify an idea or concern for something larger than themself. An example of this would be the artwork created around the Black Lives Matter movement. This work serves the dual purpose of realizing an emotional expression – and amplification – of the concerns of a much larger community.

Each artist has a unique, particular practice (practice is the term to use when speaking of an artist’s production of artwork), and each deals with ideas of agency in particular ways. When you watch each of the videos, pay particular mind to the notions of agency that you will be presented with.

Write a response to Kerry James Marshall in which you address notions of agency in the work that the artist does. Address the following, each prompt to be completed in a few sentences. Please answer the following questions.

Kerry James Marshall is a painter born in Birmingham, Alabama, who spent his childhood in South Central Los Angeles and currently resides in Chicago. His work addresses African-American life and history through a stylized realism and compositional mastery. The way that he speaks about his painting – and painting in general – addresses ideas of individual agency and how that might pertain to shaping a more diverse future of symbolism. Hear it straight from the source in the video below.

Questions

1. Based on the video that you watched, how does the artist use their individual agency?

2. How do they use their agency to affect a larger community? What community are they engaging with?

After you turn in the assignment, I will send you a response that you will need to respond to