User:Just elane/Kehinde Wiley

Career

Residency and Inspiration

The beginnings of Wiley's now famous portraits can be traced back to his time in Harlem, New York, during his residency at the Studio Museum. It was at this time he came upon a crumpled mugshot released by the New York Police Department. On it was a photo of an African American man in his twenties with his basic personal information in order for the man to be identified. Wiley held onto this mugshot that would inspire some of his future work like Conspicuous Fraud Series #1 (Eminence) as well as a recreation of this mugshot in Mugshot Study (2006, Plate 8). When later commenting on his fascination with the mugshot and its influence in his art, Wiley noted that when he found it on the street, it altered his view of what a portraiture could be as well as solidified his feelings about the portrayal of black men in the world. Wiley saw that there was something lacking. He then turned to his background in classical paintings and began to compare this new type of portraiture to the ones he studied from the eighteenth century. This would spark inspiration in Wiley and lead to him creating a combination of his new modern portraiture and the classic ones from history.

Imagery, Symbolism, and Themes

Reimagining the Old Masters with Black Protagonists

Wiley often references Old Masters paintings for the pose of a figure. 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.

In a number of his paintings, Wiley inserts black protagonists into Old Master paintings. In 2007 he reimagined Théodore Géricault's early-nineteenth-century The Charging Chasseur with a young black man in casual streetwear as the sword-wielding hussar in his painting Officer of the Hussars.

Similarly, his 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". While creating the work Wiley attempted to use real horses to model and found that the proportions between man and horse in the original work to be unrealistic. The purpose of art during David's time was to serve as propaganda. Although seemingly naturalistic, both Wiley's and David's portraits feature rider's who are disproportionate to their steed, because "men look a lot smaller on real horses." Wiley claims to be simultaneously drawn to the illusion used in Old Masters paintings while also wanting to expose them: "The appeal, I suppose, is that, in a world so unmasterable and so unknowable, you give the illusion or veneer of the rational, of order—these strong men, these powerful purveyors of truth. And so this thing that I do is in a strange sense being drawn toward that flame and wanting to blow it out at once."

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 Titian 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. Wiley has used a sperm motif as symbolic of masculinity and gender.

This reimagining was also seen in Wiley's VH1 commissioned piece, where he was asked to paint honorees for the 2005 Hip Hop Honours program. Wiley depicted the rapper Ice T as Napoleon and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five as a Dutch Civic guard company from the 17th century.

Sometimes Wiley changes the gender of figures portrayed in the older works. In Portrait of a Couple from 2012, he replaces the couple (man and woman) depicted in the original painting from 1610 with a pair of young men. The same year, he exhibited two variations on the Judith Beheading Holofernes Biblical story famously painted by Caravaggio,replacing the male Holofernes with female figures. New York magazine described one of these as depicting "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 this work: "It's sort of a play on the 'kill whitey' thing". A second painting entitled Judith Beheading Holofernes also features a modern-day black woman as Judith and a white woman as Holofernes, challenging the viewer's expectations of this familiar motif, inviting political readings, and "bending a violent image from art history—which is rife with them [...]—to the needs of a country that is reexamining the violent underpinnings of even its most benign-seeming traditions." Art critic Walter Robinson remarks that this reimagining of the Judith/Holofernes story "suggests, with a jovial brutality, that Judith would prefer to be done with white standards of beauty."

Masculinity and Femininity

Much of Wiley's work focuses on male figures. This is an intentional choice by Wiley to reflect on the lack of female figures in art history in portraits due to societal norms. The way in which Wiley positions his figures and how he paints them switches the feminine and masculine roles. He emphasizes features of his Black figures that eroticizes them in a way women were traditionally portrayed. He focuses on their bodies, includes motifs like sperm that reference their vitality, and poses them in vulnerable positions. The floral and decorative backgrounds put into question the idea of masculinity. The patterns of lace and flowers are often associated with femininity and by submerging his male figures in these ornate backgrounds, Wiley acknowledges the beauty and youth of his subjects.

Power

Wiley's intent when he began to create these ornate portraits was to re-image Black men's depiction in art. The way he has his models pose, in similar positions and stances as the original figures in classical paintings, is meant to act as commentary for the historical power dynamic of African American men and white men. In the recreation of these 18th century portraits, modern black men that he meets on the streets are taking the place of the original subjects, they are assuming their position or power. He paints them as people who are worthy of being noticed, rather than background elements or in subservient positions. Wiley is also creating a portrayal of African American men that is not often seen in the media today. Wiley challenges a perception that has been continually pushed onto society. Rather than depict them as angry or tough, he creates portraits where the figures are dignified, confident, and at times vulnerable. The figures are in poses in ways that do not always align with what is considered masculine for black men today.

Background Imagery

Wiley’s portrait paintings are known for their bright and colorful backgrounds. These intricate backgrounds are purposefully different from the portraits they are based on. The original backdrops of the classical portraits Wiley uses for his references are full of sweeping estates, their families, and other possessions. Wiley instead creates detailed backgrounds full of bright patterns that at times enter the foreground in front of the figures. His intent is to create a background that just like his figures is competing to be noticed and blend the two in order to elevate the figures. The background imagery is meant to add a layered complexity to the work.

Wiley draws inspiration for these designs from historical work from the Rococo and Neoclassical art period as well as elaborate wallpapers. The original portraits that Wiley recreates would have hung in lavish homes of the wealthy amongst other extremely detailed ornaments to further enhance the wealth of the homeowners. By replicating these patterns and motifs from opulent decor and other elements of interior design and encapsulating his figures within them, Wiley is recreating a similar sense of wealth with his portraits. Viewers are led to re-contextualize their view of the urban figures as they associate them with the lavish backdrops.