Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley (born February 28, 1977)[1] is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people. He was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all the U.S. presidents.[2] The Columbus Museum of Art, which hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007, describes his work as follows: "Wiley has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture."[3]

Kehinde Wiley
Wiley in 2015
Born (1977-02-28) February 28, 1977
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Known forPainting

Wiley's portrait of Obama was unveiled on February 12, 2018.[4] He and Amy Sherald, whose portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama was simultaneously unveiled, are the first black artists to paint official portraits of the president or First Lady for the National Portrait Gallery.[5]

Some observers criticized the selection of Wiley for the commission because he had earlier produced two painting variations of Judith Beheading Holofernes, in which he depicts African-American women holding the severed heads of white women. Wiley said that this is a "play on the 'kill whitey' thing".[6][7][8]

Early life and education

Wiley was born in Los Angeles, California. His father is a Yoruba from Nigeria, and his mother is African American. Wiley has a twin brother.[9] When Wiley was a child, his mother supported his interest in art and enrolled him in after-school art classes. At the age of 11, he spent a short time at an art school in Russia.[10] He continued with other classes in the US.[11]

The twins were raised by their mother; their father had returned to Nigeria. Wiley traveled to Nigeria at the age of 20 to meet his father and explore his family roots there.[12] Wiley earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and his MFA from Yale University, School of Art in 2001.[1] Wiley became an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem.[13]

Career

Wiley often references Old Masters paintings for the pose of a figure.[14] Wiley's paintings often blur the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation. Rendering his figures in a realistic mode—while making references to specific Old Master paintings—Wiley creates a fusion of period styles and influences, ranging from French Rococo, Islamic architecture, and West African textile design, to urban hip hop and the "Sea Foam Green" of a Martha Stewart Interiors color swatch. Wiley depicts his slightly larger than life-size figures in a heroic manner, giving them poses that connote power and spiritual awakening. Wiley's portrayal of masculinity is filtered through these poses of power and spirituality. Wiley's Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps (2005) is based on Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800) by Jacques-Louis David, often regarded as a "masterpiece." Wiley restaged it with an African rider wearing modern army fatigues and a bandanna. Wiley "investigates the perception of blackness and creates a contemporary hybrid Olympus in which tradition is invested with a new street credibility".[15]

His portraits are based on photographs of young men whom Wiley sees on the street. He has painted men from Harlem's 125th Street, as well as the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where he was born. Dressed in street clothes, his models were asked to assume poses from the paintings of Renaissance masters, such as Tiziano Vecellio and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Wiley describes his approach as "interrogating the notion of the master painter, at once critical and complicit". His figurative paintings "quote historical sources and position young black men within that field of power". In this manner, his paintings fuse history and style in a unique and contemporary manner. His art has been described as having homoerotic qualities.[16] Wiley has used a sperm motif as symbolic of masculinity and gender.[17][18][19]

Wiley had a retrospective in 2016 at the Seattle Art Museum.[20] In May 2017, he had an exhibit, Trickster, at the Sean Kelly Gallery, New York City. The exhibit featured 11 paintings depicting contemporary black artists.[4]

Wiley opened a studio in Beijing, China, in 2006 to use several helpers to do brushstrokes for his paintings.[21] Initially, outsourcing work to China had been done to cut costs but by 2012, Wiley told New York magazine that low costs was no longer the reason.[21] Critics have long wondered about the extent to which Wiley’s paintings are painted by Wiley himself. When asked if one could visit his studio in China to watch him paint, the artist has declined. Wiley’s Beijing studio is managed by Ain Cocke, who has worked for him for close to a decade, first as a painting assistant and now as a manager. He is an accomplished painter though far less successful commercially.[22]

After visiting Richmond, Virginia, Wiley became interested in the Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue and the idea of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy existing within a modern "hipster" town. In response to the monuments, Wiley decided to create Rumors of War, a thirty foot tall statue of a young, black man modeled on Monument Avenue's statue of J. E. B. Stuart. Rumors of War was unveiled in Times Square before being moved to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a mile away from the J. E. B. Stuart statue which inspired it.[23]

"Kill whitey" paintings

In 2012, Wiley, who is known for painting men, exhibited work in Beijing including multiple paintings of women. New York magazine described his variation of Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes, which Wiley titled Judith and Holofernes,[24] as standing out among the others. It described the painting as showing "a tall, elegant black woman in a long blue dress. In one hand, she holds a knife. In the other, a cleanly severed brunette female head". Wiley said about his work: "It's sort of a play on the 'kill whitey' thing".[21][6] Wiley exhibited a second similar painting, also in 2012, entitled Judith Beheading Holofernes,[25] featuring a black woman in a yellow dress, holding a knife in one hand and a white female severed head in the other. The paintings are based on the Biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes, a story of a Jewish woman beheading a male enemy general. Wiley portrayed Judith as a modern-day black woman and the beheading victim as a white woman.[7][6]

Barack Obama presidential portrait
Main article: President Barack Obama (painting)

In October 2017, it was announced that Wiley had been chosen by Barack Obama to paint an official portrait of the former president to appear in Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery "America's Presidents" exhibition[26] along with Amy Sherald who has been chosen Michelle Obama for the First Lady portrait on the same day, both will be the first black artist to paint an American President portrait and the First Lady portrait. Wiley painted the portrait of President Barack Obama which took him over two years from the first conversation about the commission to the unveiling which took place on February 12, 2018 at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery where past president portraits have been displayed outside the White House. [27]The painting was executed in the artists' studio in China. [28] Wiley has represented Barack Obama's president portrait in a unique way compared to past president portraits who are shown to have a more realistic representation of an office as a background to show their authority[27] but Wiley has depicted Obama seated casually on an antique chair seemingly floating among foliage. Each flower points to a location which represents an event that happened in Obama's life like Chrysanthemum flower which represents Chicago where he was elected as senator and is also Chicago's state flower, African lilies which represents Kenya to show respect to Obama's father who have passed away when he was a child, and Jasmine flower from Hawaii where Obama spends most of his childhood with his grandparents.[29] During the unveiling of Obama's portrait, Wiley has mentioned that Obama and the foreground of the plants are having a battle of, "Who gets to be the star of the show, the story or the man who inhabits that story? "which Wiley wants to show that Obama is the one who claims the spotlight of the portrait and not just his story and experiences that helped contour his life.[30][31] The experiences that Obama faced is what makes him Obama, but is it up to him to use those experiences to shape what the future will look like. President Obama saw in Wiley's work that he is able to elevate an ordinary person to look like a royalty and to lift then up so that they belong as a part of American Life since he believed that politics should be about the country unfolding from the bottom up and not the other way around.[32] Wiley also mentioned in the unveiling of Obama's portrait that he went to museums in LA and noticed that there weren't many artwork that display African American and he wanted to changed that.[30] He hoped that one day the artworks that he creates can inspire future African American generations who look up at the museum wall and see someone that looks like them being displayed at the museum, especially the portrait of the first black American president.[30] After the unveiling of Wiley's President Obama's portrait and Amy Sherald's portrait of the First Lady, the Smithsonian National museum saw an increase in the number of visitors from 1.1 to 2.1 million people.[27]

Rumors of War
Main article: Rumors of War

In September 2019, in Times Square in New York City, Wiley unveiled his Rumors of War, a monumental equestrian statue of an anonymous young African-American man created in response to similar statues of high-ranking Confederate Army brass which still stand in the United States despite persistent calls for their removal. After the work's installation in Times Square it traveled to its permanent home at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, the art institution which commissioned the statue.[33][34] At 27 feet high and 16 feet wide, it is his largest work to date.[35]

Recognition and honors

In October 2011, Wiley received the Artist of the Year Award from the New York City Art Teachers Association/United Federation of Teachers. He also received Canteen Magazine's Artist of the Year Award. Two of Wiley's paintings were featured on the top of 500 New York City taxi cabs in early 2011 as a collaboration with the Art Production Fund.

Wiley is featured in a commercial on the USA as a 2010 Character Honoree.[36]

Puma AG commissioned Wiley to paint four portraits of prominent African soccer players. Patterns from his paintings were incorporated into Puma athletic gear.[12] The complete series, Legends of Unity: World Cup 2010, was exhibited in early 2010 at Deitch Projects in New York City.[37]

His work was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Recognize exhibit in 2008.[38] Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, was a retrospective at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA), in the summer of 2016 (June 11 – September 5). It displayed nearly 60 of his paintings and sculptures.

Personal life

Wiley has kept his personal life private but acknowledges that he identifies as a gay man.[39][40] Between 2014 and 2018, he created Black Rock Senegal in Yoff, an artist residence designed by Senegalese architect Abib Djenne.[41]

Selected solo exhibitions
  • 2006: Kehinde Wiley: Columbus at the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
  • 2006: Willem van Heythuysen at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
  • 2007: Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage—China at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
  • 2008: Three Wise Men Greeting Entry Into Lagos at (PAFA) Pennsylvania Academy Of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2009: The World Stage: Africa at ArtSpace, San Antonio, TX
  • 2009: Black Light at Deitch Projects, New York City
  • 2010: Legends of Unity | World Cup 2010 | PUMA, several locations worldwide
  • 2011: Kehinde Wiley: Selected Works at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art, Savannah, GA
  • 2012: Kehinde Wiley/ The World Stage: Israel at The Jewish Museum, New York City[42]
  • 2011–13: The World Stage: Israel at Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA; traveled to Jewish Museum (New York) (2012); the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (2013); Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID (2013)
  • 2013: Kehinde Wiley: Memling at Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
  • 2015–17: Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic[43] at the Brooklyn Museum (2015), Brooklyn, NY; traveled to Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX (2016); Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (2016); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (2016); Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ (2016); Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (2017), Oklahoma City Museum of Art (2017)[44]
  • 2018 October 19 - February 10, 2019: Kehinde Wiley at St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis, MO.[45]

Collections
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References
  1. "Kehinde Wiley", Artnet. Retrieved October 13, 2010.
  2. Smith, Roberta (October 16, 2017). "Why the Obamas' Portrait Choices Matter". New York Times. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
  3. Villarreal, Ignacio. "Kehinde Wiley: Columbus To Open". Art Daily.
  4. Frank, Priscilla (May 26, 2017). "Kehinde Wiley Paints The Formative Black Artists Of Our Time". Huffington Post. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
  5. "Michelle Obama portrait by Baltimore artist Amy Sherald makes national splash". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved February 12, 2018.
  6. "Obama portrait artist's past work depicted black women decapitating white women". The Telegraph. February 13, 2018. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  7. Levine, Jon (February 12, 2018). "Obama Portrait Artist Kehinde Wiley Once Painted Black Women Decapitating White Women". Yahoo Entertainment. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  8. "FACT CHECK: Did Obama's Portraitist Paint an Image of a Black Woman Holding the Severed Head of a White Person?". Snopes.com. February 13, 2018. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  9. "Artist Talk: Kehinde Wiley". October 26, 2018. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
  10. Wiley, Kehinde, "On studying art in the forests of St. Petersburg at age 12, his hyperdecorative style, and combining grandeur with chance", Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2012.
  11. Cunningham, Vinson (October 22, 2018). "Kehinde Wiley on Painting Masculinity and Blackness, from President Obama to the People of Ferguson". Newyorker. The Newyorker. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
  12. "PUMA commissions Contemporary Artist Kehinde Wiley to create portraits of African Football Players to Celebrate World Cup 2010 Campaign" Archived 2010-08-02 at the Wayback Machine, PUMA Creative, January 2010. Retrieved October 13, 2010.
  13. Tsai, Eugenie; Choi, Connie H. (2015). Kehinde Wiley : a new republic. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum. ISBN 9783791354309. OCLC 890462668.
  14. Hurst, Roy. "Young, Gifted, and Black: Painter Kehinde Wiley", NPR, June 1, 2005.
  15. Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed. (2008). Art Now, Vol. 3: A cutting-edge selection of today's most exciting artists. Taschen. p. 512. ISBN 9783836505116.
  16. Kennicott, Philip (February 12, 2018). "The Obamas' portraits are not what you'd expect and that's why they're great". The Washington Post.
  17. Clemans, Gayle. "Kehinde Wiley, Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps". smarthistory.org. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  18. Quito, Anne. "The painter who remixes classical European art with black urban youth". Quartz. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  19. Smith, Roberta (September 4, 2008). "A Hot Conceptualist Finds the Secret of Skin". The New York Times. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  20. Romano, Tricia (February 4, 2016). "A new republic: Kehinde Wiley comes to Seattle Art Museum". Seattle Times. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  21. Beam, Christopher (April 22, 2012). "Outsource to China - While riffing on the Western canon. Kehinde Wiley's global reach". New York Magazine. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  22. Mason, Wyatt (April 10, 2013). "How Kehinde Wiley Makes A Masterpiece". GQ.
  23. Curran, Colleen. "VMFA acquires massive sculpture by artist Kehinde Wiley, created in response to Confederate monuments". Richmond-Times Dispatch. Retrieved June 25, 2019.
  24. "Judith and Holofernes". North Carolina Museum of Art. June 7, 2018. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
  25. Solomon, Deborah (January 28, 2015). "Kehinde Wiley Puts a Classical Spin on His Contemporary Subjects". New York Times. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
  26. Smith, Roberta (October 16, 2017). "Why the Obamas' Portrait Choices Matter". New York Times. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
  27. Caragol, Taína; Moss, Dorothy; Powell, Richard; Sajet, Kim (2020). "The Obama Portraits". ProQuest Ebook Central. Princeton University Press.
  28. Kennicott, Philip (February 12, 2018). "The Obamas' portraits are not what you'd expect and that's why they're great". The Washington Post.
  29. Vankin, Deborah (January 24, 2020). "Obama Portraits to Tour in Summer '21; the Smithsonian Says the Portraits of Barack and Michelle Will Visit Five Cities, Including Los Angeles' LACMA". ProQuest. Los Angeles Times.
  30. Barack and Michelle Obama portraits unveiled at Smithsonian, retrieved June 4, 2020
  31. Says, Simon (February 13, 2018). "President Obama's speech at the portrait unveiling at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery…". Medium. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  32. Pogrebin, Robin (February 12, 2018). "Obama Portrait Artists Merged the Everyday and the Extraordinary". ProQuest.
  33. Ugwu, Reggie (September 27, 2019). "Kehinde Wiley's Times Square Monument: That's No Robert E. Lee". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 1, 2019.
  34. "Rumors of War statue unveiled in Richmond, Virginia", bbc.com/news, December 11, 2019.
  35. Moynihan, Ellen, and Larry McShane, "'Rumors of War' statue makes Times Square debut, provides a response to Confederate monuments in its future home of Richmond, Va.", New York Daily News, September 27, 2019.
  36. "Art: Kehinde Wiley" Archived 2010-03-15 at the Wayback Machine, USA Network. Retrieved October 13, 2010.
  37. "Equestrian Portrait of the Count-Duke Olivares (captioned image)". Harper's. 320 (1, 919): 17. April 2010. Retrieved August 15, 2011. (subscription required)
  38. "Painting: Kehinde Wiley", National Portrait Gallery: Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture. Retrieved October 13, 2010.
  39. Solomon, Deborah (January 28, 2015). "Kehinde Wiley Puts a Classical Spin on His Contemporary Subjects". The New York Times.
  40. Butterworth, Benjamin (October 20, 2017). "Barack Obama picks gay artist Kehinde Wiley to do his official portrait". PinkNews. Retrieved February 12, 2018.
  41. Jackson, Brian Keith (April 2019), Kehinde Wiley’s Art Annex New York.
  42. "Kehinde Wiley / The World Stage: Israel". The Jewish Museum.
  43. "Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic February 20–May 24, 2015". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
  44. Cocoves, Athena. "Kehinde Wiley's twin desires: Clearing space and building a new republic at the Toledo Museum of Art". Toledo City Paper. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
  45. "Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis". Retrieved December 26, 2018.
  46. "Kehinde Wiley". thejewishmuseum.org.

[1]

  1. Cunningham, Vinson. "and Blackness, from President Obama to the People of Ferguson". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
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