Kehinde Wiley

Julia Lambright

The artist that sticks out as the most relevant to my work so far is Kehinde Wiley. He is known for his beautiful paintings composed of larger than life photorealistic figures accompanied by bright, eccentric backgrounds. His work is at once captivating and thought provoking; blurring the boundaries between traditional and contemporary forms of representation. By taking black men (and more recently women as well) from urban areas and placing them in poses to mimic those of famous early traditional paintings, he creates a fusion of period styles; merging the old with the new. These heroic portraits in turn address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture.  

At the beginning of his career, Wiley began to gain recognition for these paintings after basing his works off of photos of young male figures he found primarily around Harlem’s 125th street as well as his home in South Central Los Angeles. As time passed however, he expanded his range to urban areas of cities around the world. Using oil paint on various surfaces including canvas, wood panel, and linen, he renders these figures photorealistically in the poses of paintings from Renaissance masters such as Tiziano Vecellio and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. By doing this, he is essentially placing these young black men within that field of power originally bestowed upon noblemen and royalty.

My immediate draw to Kehinde Wiley came from the pure beauty of his paintings. I have always been fascinated with photorealism, and to see it so beautifully mixed with multiple modes of expression as well as the incorporation of a deeper statement and meaning was amazing. One quote I found from Wiley when researching him further was particularly interesting to me. Of his early days in art school, he said, “I just liked being able to make stuff look like other stuff. It made me feel important. ... So much of what I do now is a type of self-portraiture. As an undergrad ... I really honed in on the technical aspects of painting and being a masterful painter. And then at Yale it became much more about arguments surrounding identity, gender and sexuality, painting as a political act, questions of post-modernity, etc.” This really resonated with me because I have struggled recently with my overwhelming draw to perfect the technical aspects of my painting, and have struggled to merge that with the statement of my artwork. In other words, I have not yet discovered what I want to say with my work. There have been multiple occasions in which I have even questioned if I wanted to pursue art, as I felt as though nothing I had to say was important enough. But I think what I have realized is that you can’t force meaning on an art piece. Perhaps it is better to spend time perfecting the technical aspects of your work and let the inspiration for your statement come naturally. Because once you force a message into your work that you don’t truly advocate for, it loses any meaning it could have had.

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Robert Mapplethorpe

I first learned of Robert Mapplethorpe through watching his documentary in my Advanced Photography class. The professor played it in the background while we were doing busy work. I was honestly more focused on my work than on what was being shown most of the time, doing more listening than watching. When pictures from Project X came up, everybody stopped what they were doing and gaped at the image on the screen: a hand up a man’s ass. The male student next to me laughed nervously and said,”Oh. My. God.” I was astonished too, I have never seen photography as explicit as that in my whole life. I think I had never thought that art could be so blunt and upfront. 

From then on, I greatly admire Mapplethorpe conceptually and technically. Conceptually for setting new boundaries in art for controversial topics such as sexual desire, beauty and the private activities of homosexual men. In my opinion, his art not only intrigues a marginal audience. His photography captures the eye of any beholder, not just because of what he is depicting but how he depicts it. Which brings me to how I admire how he makes his art technically. I feel that Mapplethorpe’s photography applies to what we are learning in class because we’ve been talking about chiaroscuro and learning the whip-out method of painting. Mapplethorpe’s use of chiaroscuro in photography is similar to that of Caravaggio in painting. Both artist’s present their subjects with dramatically, a trait that Baroque art is known for. For example, in Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath, the background is completely dark and David seems to emerge from the darkness almost suspended in a dark void, alone with the head of Goliath. His subjects also, for the most part have a austare plainness to them, as if these are people Caravaggio often see in one of his dingy pubs. He also uses the lighting to accentuate and capture the disgusted expression on David’s face, creating an, in the moment, stage-like performance. In a way, this is similar in the way Mapplethorpe presents subjects as objects, a living sculpture that he could light and position in any way he likes. It gives his photos a theater-like sense too. The subjects might be considered mundane, private, or hard to look at, subjects pertaining to his own life style, but he presents them in a larger than life way. He uses chiaroscuro to accentuate his subjects’ body with a high contrast of light and dark. Especially, in his photos of the male body, he uses lighting to not only define the muscles and bones in completely white or black bodies, he would also set them against a completely dark or light background. Technically, the way he plays with black and white and lighting on the human body, and conceptually, the way he presents beauty, interests me. There is an honesty and sincerity that in Mapplethorpe's work that I also wish to achieve in my own art. 

Jeff Koonssssssss

When I think Jeff Koons, I automatically attribute him to the large sculptures and the pop art he is so famous for. However, I recently looked at his painting and they are mind-blowing. Usually photo realism with painting, especially with figures, bothers me. It is almost frustrating with how perfect and smooth the pieces are. Just TAKE A PICTURE! On the other hand, I am dealing with the same frustration with these paintings by Koons because of their photo-realistic characteristics. Yet, with this realism, there is a certain freedom with the color and forms he chooses to create. The colors are so bright that he pieces themselves feel cartoonish and childlike but real all at the same time.

In my own work, I am trying to play with bright colors because in my previous classes I was leaning more towards dark paintings with darker colors. This time around, with oil I want to see that glow from the paint but also the pigment. I not only want the image to draw you in, but the color choices themselves. I am also toying with set boundaries on my paintings. I like smooth edges and defined sections of painting. In the 25 drawings we did for class, I realized I like to work in black and white but also with lines and geometric shapes and patterns. I like the chaos of free-handing lots of lines. With that, I also like the organizations of the patterns I make with the lines. Koons toys with the same characteristics but also plays with a lot of blending. To illustrate the shine, Koons, or his hired studio painters, have made such a huge variety of each color, spanning from dark to light, that the shading literally comes to life. I have become obsessed with monochromatic works finding that there is such a flexibility with working with one color. It almost calms me because there is only one color to worry about, but at the same time I feel like I can really concentrate on the depth of the color and how it can literally portray all lighting situations no matter what the painting.

I also feel like Koons takes advantage of blending. I have become and huge fan of blending on the actual canvas because for some reason the variations of color become more stimulating for me. Like I can see the color differences way clearer when I am applying the paint to convey a part of the piece, but on my pallet I seem to not see the variations and stunt myself on options. With the shading and highlights of the background, there is clear blending going on that I am assuming is done on the canvas, individual colors are mixed out and put next to each other, but the dry brush blending is what creates even more depth between the two colors further making a distinction between the background and foreground.

In my work, I hope to perfect this technique and further explore lighting and the portrayal with one color and eventually two opposing colors on one object. 

Kehinde Wiley

In most of the art classes that I have taken, we have learned about Kehinde Wiley’s work. I must admit that I used to overlook these lessons, often forgetting who and what was shown, gaining only a slight familiarity of certain names. However, learning to paint with oils has been a humbling experience that has led me to the conclusion that there is so much to learn, and that the artists we hear about in class, are people who can provide us with the insight that we need to improve. There are so many possibilities to explore the different properties of paint, different means to get a desired color, and the possibility for vibrancy that can only be achieved with oils.

            Kehinde Wiley is known for his unique take on portraiture, in which he draws inspiration from various historical sources such as paintings, textures, and figures. Many of his works present a contemporary take on old master paintings, with the subject being replaced by black men. For example, Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005 is based on the painting by Jacques-Louis David, with Napoleon having been replaced by a man in modern clothing: camouflage pants, work boots, and a bandana. Wiley remakes the portrait, making it unique to his style, while still maintaining a strong reference to the original. 

Wiley works on large-scale canvases and uses a photorealistic approach with the portraits of the models, standing them in front of intricate, brightly colored backgrounds that are reminiscent of historical textiles, including African and Islamic designs. In his ongoing work the World Stage, Wiley goes out into the streets, wherever he is, and he talks to people who he thinks are interesting. These people become the models for his paintings. He then matches them up with backgrounds. His subject matter and models raise sociopolitical issues of authority. 

One thing that I find interesting is his method, how so much work goes into the preparation of each painting: research, recruiting, matching, and painting. Especially when compared to old paintings, which people had to pay absurd amounts of money to be in, his subjects are people who are minding their own business when they get approached.  

Among the things that stand out in his portraits, is the intensity of the colors he uses, the clothing and posture of the models, and their eye contact with the viewer. The portraits have a personality, unique to each person. The model decides how they want to be seen, so what we get as viewers is how the people want to be seen in a formal setting. What is perhaps the most compelling part of his work, is the interaction between subject and background. The patterns seem to come to life, weaving their way into the foreground, engulfing the figure in a composition that is as much push, as it is pull. The bright colors he uses are reflected on the faces making them glow with unexpected moments of color. 

Coop -

One artist I have discovered by suggestion of Lia is named Peter Doig. Peter Doig is a landscape painter which is largely why I am attracted to his work. I love painting landscapes but sometimes struggle to make them important. It was very intriguing to learn about Peter Doig because I found I had some things in common with him. His work is influenced by past memories, cinema and photographs that he takes or stumbles upon. I do a lot of work from my own personal photos and so I was interested to learn about his approach to using photos. One response Doig made to how he treats source photos that I found compelling was “sometimes paint gets spilled or sprayed on them, and it adds an unexpected layer that you can refer too. The reality of the original feels less constricting, and this provides an opening. It takes the reality away from the photograph and turns it into a more abstract image.” A reason why I admire Doig’s work is I want to create abstract landscapes in my practice and his work is inspiring to me. I am inspired by the colorful palette and the saturated application of paint. Doig started making paintings that were really thick like impasto and then decided to switch to using thin liquified paints which give an atmospheric and layered effect. I am also inspired by the wide variety of brush strokes which creates dimensionality and makes the negative space interesting. I like the way he creates his compositions, finding the organic shapes in nature and contrasting them with something more rigid like a house or building. The paintings are moody and intricate and evoke emotion. I think they are successful in evoking emotion because the colors he uses are not typically colors associated with the subject matter however they are extremely effective. I think his approach to color is unique and something I would like to incorporate into my own works. Lastly, one thing I enjoyed from Doig was an interview in which he says “I hope that I don't have too much control, because mistakes are an essential part of everything I make. Many of the paintings are essentially mistake upon mistake. That's how they evolve.” I had a teacher in the first grade who always made us work with our mistakes when we made art and that is something that will stay with me forever and so I resonated personally with Doig’s comment. I think mistakes in your artwork are important to growth and help the process evolve.

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is an absolute inspiration for my painting practice. I have known about her as an artist for years, I feel as though she is discussed in almost all of my art classes because she is such a force and a badass in the art world. The contemporary British painter is known for her work involving the female body, body dysmorphia, and large-scale paintings of the human form. A lot of my work, or the work I am hoping to produce in the near future, involves similar ideas. The female nude is a subject in painting that we have seen dating back thousands of years. From figurines of Venus dating back to the Stone Age, to reclining female nudes of the renaissance. I could discuss for pages about how women, and the female body, have been displayed in art throughout the ages, all resulting back to the male gaze and sexualizing the body as the main subject, but we all know all about that. What has made Saville stand apart in that is the undeniable presence of her paintings, making them bigger than lifelike - forcing the viewer to stare at the massive female nude. However - they are nothing like the nudes of classical renaissance paintings. These paintings merge the natural with the grotesque, featuring women at “unflattering” angles, displaying body mutilation and plastic surgery, and massive and intense brush strokes and painterly qualities making them look so unbelievably bodily. The scale and the painterly qualities of Saville’s paintings make them impossible to ignore, a quality I would really like to take to my own paintings. As I am still working to figure out what painting style works best for me, I would like to work with both her style of massive brush strokes and her color palette of creams and muted reds and browns in my next few pieces.