| A brief over view of Kehinde Wiley’s short career reveal many bodies of work. There are the equestrian paintings based on theme of war, religious work, and ceiling frescoes installations created for Miami and the Brooklyn Museum, a body of works inspired by late French Rococo art, and more recently, a series of painting reflective of more global cultures. Wiley’s emphasis on narrative scenes derived from close-ups; almost cinematic retooling of the classical in the form of the black body proposes his overwhelming metaphor—the black body as the ultimate unknown in which skin and coloration (race) becomes the fundamental symbol of separation between the internal and external, between power and the disempowered. |
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Horace Brockington
Kehinde Wiley, On Top of the World. Courtesy of the artist.
A brief over view of Kehinde Wiley’s short career reveal many bodies of work. There are the equestrian paintings based on theme of war, religious work, and ceiling frescoes installations created for Miami and the Brooklyn Museum, a body of works inspired by late French Rococo art, and more recently, a series of painting reflective of more global cultures. Wiley’s emphasis on narrative scenes derived from close-ups; almost cinematic retooling of the classical in the form of the black body proposes his overwhelming metaphor—the black body as the ultimate unknown in which skin and coloration (race) becomes the fundamental symbol of separation between the internal and external, between power and the disempowered.
Wiley’s pictorial “set-ups” of anonymous young men presented in art historical contexts, in both intention and scale, aspire to the classical. They’re basically read as the underclass. Wiley has described his work as known for being about the black American experience, and taking that and translating that into a conversation around Western easel painting, the language of power, regalia, and domination.
Wiley initially became known for his image of black youth placed in restaged versions of historical art works, mostly painting, derived from European figurative painting, including Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo works. In recognition of the original source, Wiley often titled the work in some related form. In using the black male within the context of images of power, and heroism, Wiley attempts to assign power to subjects through a visual language already defined by media and art history. These easily identifiable icons of Western Arts are reconfigured depicting youth attired in identifiable markers of urban fashion—in jeans, T-shirts, sports jerseys, sweatshirts, and caps. Wiley removes the original backgrounds in order to concentrate on the central figure(s), reflecting often stylized gestures and posture. He described the purpose in his early works was to create a sense of visibility, to play off the legacy and power of “historical markers.” Compositional construction and pose are essential in his paintings, emphasizing the questioning and analysis of the dominant metaphor of Black male masculinity at the moment.
These images are meant to bring new thought to the ongoing debate into the canon of contemporary art at this historical moment when the notion of art, high versus low, has undergone radical transformations. By keeping meanings open-ended in his works, he allows for different analysis of the narrative and their components.
Wiley’s subjects are rarely individuals (with the exception of his Hip Hop Series), but rather representation of the societal “types.” By this approach, Wiley‘s art intentionally addresses the importance of appearances and social structure in the formation of identity. The Black male figure, rather than becoming a figure beyond meaning or question, becomes a far more complex figure of pictorial post-modernity. Wiley makes a clear conjunction between maleness and race. He raises notions of masculinity in his works toward the infinite and the finite, tangible, and intangible, separation and recognition, and where the classical, modern, and post-modern maleness collide. In order to grasp the total intentions of Wiley’s art we must move beyond formal surface artistic practice and embrace the social—historical depths of his works. This is when the viewer realizes that it is art that challenges ideas about hierarchy, importance, masculinity, and class. Wiley’s art works ultimately create their own internal dialectic centered upon social accommodation versus individual freedom and action, and self-definition, and co-modification—issues that are constantly influx in a contemporary society.
With narratives that form parables of gender, social, and racial criticism, Wiley seeks to push surface imagery to the point of entry. This point extends the visual into a phenomenological and psychoanalytical experience. His subjects possess an underlining context that is loaded with mixed feelings of anxiety and familiarity, longing and anger. It is underneath the surface beauty that a certain distrust and ambivalence to power remain visible.
