The Artist Kehinde Wiley
Showing Representation Matters
When I first saw this portrait of President Barack Obama, I thought it was the most powerful piece of contemporary art I had ever seen.
I am not great at describing art. But as I look at this portrait, I feel the intensity and calm assurance of President Obama. I feel his sense of determination and unwavering optimism. The lush greens of the plants growing around him accentuate his quiet strength with vibrant blooms bursting all around him.
Until I read some other art critiques of the piece, I was not even cognizant of the fact that the garden growing behind Obama is not the typical setting or backdrop for Black men. Rather than a dark, urban setting, which may be the standard in art and the evening news in which most people see Black men, Wiley paints his subjects in front of backgrounds teeming with life and possibility.
If art can be at the service of anything, it’s about letting us see a state of grace for those people who rarely get to be able to be seen that way.
Most importantly, Wiley’s portraits make me, as a White person, realize just how omnipotent White supremacy is — how it pervades every aspect of society, culture, the world — and how I was blind to the overwhelming amount of White male dominated art all around us, whether in museums or public spaces.
This portrait made me astoundingly aware of how every other portrait of this importance and stature I have ever seen was of White men. Other times, sometimes, White women. Never in this manner, Black people.
Representation Matters
“Wiley references the forms and poses of Old Master paintings and incorporates urban styles to portray contemporary black men in positions of power” — Milwaukee Art Museum
In fact, a Wiley work remains in the permanent collection at Milwaukee Art Museum. His “St. Dionysus” was donated to MAM by the African American Art Alliance in 2006 in honor of its 15th anniversary.
I actually saw this piece before the Obama portrait, which was commissioned in 2018.
I saw St. Dionysus for the first time in 2012 with my 17–21 year old Black and Brown students from the small alternative high school where I taught English and life skills. Students there might have been hard core gang members, recently released from jail, parents, in foster care, homeless, drug abusers or expelled from other schools for violent behavior. Our school was their last chance to earn a high school diploma.
Young people coming from these often traumatic experiences and trying to rise above them need far more than the worksheets and remedial studies they were being offered.
Because I have always believed in the power of art, I applied for a grant and was able to secure a bus and pay for admission to the Milwaukee Art Museum. None of the students I took with me that day had been there before.
After walking through the galleries filled with nothing but works from European artists, reflecting nothing more than European subjects, we came upon the St. Dionysus portrait.
“Look, Ms G, it’s me!” laughed David, a 19-year-old boy who had been kicked out of three schools for fighting and threatening teachers.
“It does really look like you!” I smiled at him and then up at the portrait.
The other kids gathered around and agreed. There was a true resemblance there in facial features and overall swag of the poser.
Through the vision of Wiley, David could see himself reflected there, larger than life, on a wall in an art museum. The subject was not tragedy. Rather it was triumph.
It is as if the young man in the portrait is breaking through the “classical” backdrop to claim the prize, to lift the gold trophy and his expression is unapologetic.
According to Wiley:
Painting has the ability to communicate something about the sitter that gets to his essence.
And in the case of St. Dionysus, that essence is self assurance about earning a place at the table and he’s stepping up to it, taking it, owning it, no longer waiting for the invitation.
My hope is that David and the other students walked away seeing that, too, seeing themselves, or someone they know, represented in a way more fitting for someone who is valued and held in high esteem in our society.
Because of artists like Kehinde Wiley, many more people will have the opportunity to see themselves reflected and represented as they truly are: Magnificent.
