Monumental Man

Kerry James Marshall always walks a tightrope between inspiration and provocation. So does the art he's contributed to this section of The Post (see pages M6-7). Marshall's conceptual comic proposes a "Monument to Nat Turner, Freedom Fighter" for the Mall, and conceives it as a kind of black-granite growth on the body of Washington's great, white-marble obelisk.

Some of Marshall's viewers may read his project as celebrating a bloodthirsty terrorist -- and be appalled at the idea that Marshall wants to pollute the sacred monument to our first president. Others may see the project as Marshall's fitting celebration of a man, oppressed as anyone could be, who took his fate into his hands -- and as a long-awaited reminder that the founder of our nation, however heroic, was also guilty of the clear sin of owning other humans.

All, in a sense, would be wrong. Marshall isn't proposing such a monument; he's making art. And like a lot of art, his comic asks, "What if?" What if someone were to propose a monument to Turner on the Mall? It forces us to run a thought experiment, as a community, and to watch ourselves as we react to it in all our different ways. He himself depicts the reaction of the disadvantaged, disempowered blacks he meets every day in the South Chicago neighborhood where he lives and makes his art.

In the strip that Marshall calls "P-Van," he wonders whether the street sages who, for years, sat all day, every day, chewing over life in a parked van by Marshall's studio, might be moved enough to actually visit the monument.

In another strip, "On the Stroll," streetwalkers talk about the tithing that they've done to get the project built. Their marginal "profession" does not, to Marshall's thinking, have to deprive them of a role in public life.

-- Blake Gopnik