Kehinde Wiley Essay

Kehinde Wiley is a New York portrait painter known for his highly naturalistic paintings of urban African and African-American men in heroic poses. Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles, California in 1977. Kehinde Mother is African-American and father is from Nigeria. As a young boy Kehinde Wiley mother enrolled him in after school art classes and by the age of 12 which helped and started his love for art creating him into the artist he is today. Kehinde attended an art school in Russia for a short period of time. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1999 from the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated from Yale University School of Art two years later with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. As years went past Kehinde did not have

his father around when growing up.

At the age of 20 Kehinde travelled to Nigeria looking to meet his father and also to explore his roots while there.

After meeting his father, Wiley began to painting portraits of his father. Wiley's passion and creativity for art re-write history with the importance on focusing on African American men and women he also brings a different style of art that not a lot of people are aware of. Many thought Wiley was re-writing history because of European artists such as Pablo Picasso in the 1900s he was impacted by African statues and the style of these statues with post-impression styles pretty much how Kehinde Wiley is doing things and also how he connects the African culture with his style of art when expressing himself through art.

Wiley’s art gives a different perspective with race “African American” and inner city citizens through his paintings. Kenhinde Wiley also express

that black lives do matter which is a social phenomenon in today’s society. Kehinde Wiley is an artist that’s known for his elements of his homage on social and historical racial matters and flamboyant paintings of African American males and females in the inner streets of Harlem as well as the inner streets of South Central neighborhoods in Los Anglos where he was born at. Wiley address applicable social issues in up and coming period, however his artistic creations reconsider the place of African Americans inside the 1700s once they were seen as slaves and mediocre belonging that didn't should be painted by the forces of society. The young African American men Kehinde would use for his flashy paintings would be dressed in street clothing’s to recast as the kings, dandies and prophets he would choose in his paintings. Wiley's incite activation by painting dark men and dark women in power to see their lives and deaths from an alternate perspective. He negates, creates, and reconsiders our history, and thusly, he is giving distinctive views of perceptions that have been solid, incorrect, and uncertain in the American culture and on the planet. Wiley models assumed poses from the paintings of Titian and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. As his practice grew, his love for art and travelling led him toward an international view, and he began to look for the perfect models from cities all over the world such as Brazil, Beijing, and Senegal and many more places resulting to vast body of work he would call The “World Stage”.

Wiley’s paintings are usually illustrated or poses are taken away from ancient and up to date modes of illustration. They fuse a range of designs, starting from French Rococo , Muslim design and West African textile style to urban hip hop. Wiley's slightly larger-than-life-size figures area unit represented in a very heroic manner, and their poses counsel power and religious waking up. Wiley models his works on the styles of a long line of portraitists, including Reynolds and Gainsborough. The Columbus Museum of Art, that hosted an associate exhibition of his work and described his flashy work as the one that has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and position of young inner city African American men in our up to date culture. The cliché portrayal of black men in American culture has affected Kehinde Wiley influencing one of his objectives as a African Male artist to establish contact with the youth of the inner city and african american males out there who are seeing the works in museums
Wiley’s design provides a much-needed correlation between black individuals and general quality.

As he replaces white faces with those of brown individuals, Wiley additionally replaces the stigmatizing negativity painted over black individuals with lustrous chance. Wiley’s items like Portrait of the three Graces redefine the stereotypes that’s been concentrated on black men. Wiley’s paints them with a softness rather than the stereotype thuggish and malevolent depictions. With these reinterpretations, Kehinde Wiley selected to color black men into positions antecedently control by white men and ladies. Wiley presents a series of pictures that depict black girls in situations of the white subjects of notable paintings. not like his male models of UN agency that would wear urban garments, Wiley’s female models seem in elegant robes designed by Givenchy. For the majority of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, at some stage in America, African American people have been enslaved and thought of as inferior by means of their oppressors they tirelessly labored in plantations in terrible situations and had been denied primary human rights like freedom and schooling. As indicated by the article, “Are Black Women Invisible?”, Melissa Burkley, Ph.D., claims that African-American women “have to overcome the disadvantage of being a member of two underrepresented groups,” being black and being a woman. African-American women have been subject to a constant and tedious struggle with Western

beauty standards: having straight hair and lighter skin; these standards have engraved themselves through generations of women. And to this day there are African-American women who bleach their skin and obsessively use creams intended lighten skin complexions. Malcolm X once said that the day he got his first perm was his “first really big step toward self-degradation”. Recently, the natural Hair movement among African-American ladies has been vital to the development of the identity of the black lady, an identification cut loose beauty standards which have confined their belief of beauty for generations; African Americans are capable of falling in love with themselves, their hair texture, and culture. therefore, the social troubles, stress and downsides imposed upon African-American ladies is made clear in Wiley’s painting.
Wiley’s art gives a different perspective with race “African American” and inner city citizens through his paintings. Kenhinde Wiley also express that black lives do matter which is a social phenomenon in today’s society. Kehinde Wiley is an artist that’s known for his elements of his homage on social and historical racial matters and flamboyant paintings of African American males and females in the inner streets of Harlem as well as the inner streets of South Central neighborhoods in Los Anglos where he was born at. Wiley address applicable social issues in up and coming period, however his artistic creations reconsider the place of African Americans inside the 1700s once they were seen as slaves and mediocre belonging that didn't should be painted by the forces of society.