Kehinde Wiley was born on February 28,1977 and is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings.
51 Facts About Kehinde Wiley
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Kehinde Wiley was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents.
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Kehinde Wiley was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018.
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When Kehinde Wiley was a child, his mother wanted him and his brother to stay out of the streets and so she supported their interest in art and enrolled them in after-school art classes.
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Kehinde Wiley noted that his brother was better at portraiture than he was and this created a competitive sense between them.
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Kehinde Wiley continued with other classes in the US and attended high school at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.
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Kehinde Wiley traveled to Nigeria at the age of 20 to meet his father and explore his family roots there.
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Kehinde Wiley was strongly influenced by seeing the works of Gainsborough and Constable.
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Kehinde Wiley earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and then received a scholarship to complete his MFA at Yale University School of Art in 2001.
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Kehinde Wiley has cited the artist Kerry James Marshall as being a big influence on him.
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When later commenting on his fascination with the mugshot and its influence in his art, Kehinde Wiley noted that when he found it on the street, it altered his view of what portraiture could be as well as solidified his feelings about the portrayal of black men in the world.
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Kehinde Wiley 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.
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Kehinde Wiley chooses countries that he believes are on the "conversation block" in the 21st century to be a part of The World Stage.
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Kehinde Wiley chose Brazil, Nigeria, India, and China because they are all "points of anxiety and curiosity and production" to the world.
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Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter who paints monumental works of art that captivate an audience with its bold colors and views on racial power.
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Kehinde Wiley's Rumors of War, is a bronze sculpture that commemorates African American youth lost to the social and political battles being waged throughout the nation.
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Kehinde Wiley is one of many contemporary artists throughout the world who hopes to shift racial power throughout the media using his art.
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When he was commissioned to paint the former President of the United States at that time, Barack Obama, Kehinde Wiley became even more popular, showing his art in multiple international shows and exhibiting in places like Cuba, Nigeria, and Los Angeles.
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In October 2017, it was announced that Kehinde 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 along with Amy Sherald who was chosen by Michelle Obama for the First Lady portrait on the same day.
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Kehinde Wiley recalled a moment of repose in between shots when Obama was essentially as he is depicted in the portrait, a pose the artist felt was authentic to Obama.
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Kehinde Wiley mentioned in the unveiling of Obama's portrait that he went to museums in Los Angeles and noticed that there weren't many artworks that display African Americans and he wanted to change that.
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Kehinde Wiley 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 who looks like them being displayed at the museum, especially the portrait of the first Black American president.
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Kehinde Wiley revisited this idea after visiting Richmond, Virginia, where he 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.
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Kehinde Wiley had a retrospective in 2016 at the Seattle Art Museum.
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Kehinde Wiley opened a studio in Beijing, China, in 2006 to use several helpers to do brushstrokes for his paintings.
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Critics have long wondered about the extent to which Kehinde Wiley's paintings are painted by Kehinde Wiley himself.
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Kehinde Wiley is an accomplished painter, though far less successful commercially.
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In 2021, Kehinde Wiley's work Go became a permanent for Penn Station's concourse in New York City.
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Kehinde Wiley curated a group show of African arts featuring Nigerian artist Oluwole Omofemi at the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles.
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Kehinde Wiley depicts his slightly larger than life-size figures in a heroic manner, giving them poses that connote power and spiritual awakening.
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Kehinde Wiley "investigates the perception of blackness and creates a contemporary hybrid Olympus in which tradition is invested with a new street credibility".
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Kehinde Wiley's portraits are based on photographs of young men whom Wiley sees on the street.
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Kehinde Wiley has painted men from Harlem's 125th Street, as well as the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where he was born.
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Kehinde Wiley describes his approach as "interrogating the notion of the master painter, at once critical and complicit".
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Kehinde Wiley's art has been described as having homoerotic qualities.
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Kehinde Wiley has used a sperm motif as symbolic of masculinity and gender.
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Kehinde 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.
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Kehinde Wiley said about this work: "It's sort of a play on the 'kill whitey' thing".
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Kehinde Wiley emphasizes features of his Black figures that eroticizes them in a way women were traditionally portrayed.
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Kehinde Wiley focuses on their bodies, includes motifs like sperm that reference their vitality, and poses them in vulnerable positions.
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The patterns of lace and flowers are often associated with femininity and by submerging his male figures in these ornate backgrounds, Kehinde Wiley acknowledges the beauty and youth of his subjects.
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Kehinde Wiley is creating a portrayal of African American men that is not often seen in the media today.
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The original backdrops of the classical portraits Kehinde Wiley uses for his references are full of sweeping estates, their families, and other possessions.
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Kehinde Wiley instead creates detailed backgrounds full of bright patterns that at times enter the foreground in front of the figures.
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Kehinde Wiley's 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.
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The original portraits that Kehinde Wiley recreates would have hung in lavish homes of the wealthy amongst other extremely detailed ornaments to further enhance the wealth of the homeowners.
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Two of Kehinde 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.
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Kehinde Wiley is featured in a commercial on the USA as a 2010 Character Honoree.
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Kehinde Wiley's work was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery as part of the Recognize exhibit in 2008.
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Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, was a retrospective at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in the summer of 2016.
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Kehinde Wiley has kept his personal life private but acknowledges that he identifies as a gay man.