Black Contemporary American Artists : Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley is a painter best known for his portrait of President Barack Obama. Wiley was born in 1977 in Los Angeles, California. As a young child his mother saw his aptitude for drawing and encouraged it by enrolling him in art classes. Wiley would later study abroad in Russia in a program for art and the Russian language. From here he would earn his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He then graduated in 2001 with an MFA from Yale University’s School of Art. Wiley's aesthetic choices can be attributed to Baroque and Rococo art movements which lend themselves to vibrant colors, dramatic poses, and floral motifs. His large-scale paintings are taken from compositions of historical European portraits and reinvented with Black and Brown subjects. For example, the famous portrait, Napoleon (Bonaparte) Crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David, in which the infamous French leader is depicted on a bucking horse, was transformed by Wiley, depicting a young Black man in contemporary dress seated upon a horse. By using this approach, Wiley has reconstructed the art historical canon of empires and colonialism, into a modern statement on beauty and empowerment.

Kambouris, D. (2018). Kehinde Wiley. Retrieved 30 January 2023 from https://news.artnet.com/art-world/kehinde-wiley-times-square-1581163

Kehinde Wiley, Barack Obama, 2018 oil on canvas, 92 1/4 × 65 13/16 × 5 3/8 in, National Portrait Gallery, Washington,D.C. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2018.16

Kehinde Wiley, The Two Sisters, 2012, oil on canvas, 96 x 72 in, Brooklyn Museum, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/kehinde_wiley_new_republic/

Kehinde Wiley, Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps, 2005, oil on canvas, 108 x 108 in, Brooklyn Museum, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/kehinde_wiley_new_republic/