Kehinde Wiley Artist: A Short History

Kehinde Wiley Official Web Site

Kehinde Wiley is a contemporary American Painter who is known for his vibrant, large-scale realistic paintings of African Americans posing as famous figures from the history of Western art.  His style bleands the “old” and the “new” worlds.

Obama

• Wiley is best known for his painting of Persident Obama.
• He is the first Black artist to be commisions to paint a Presidential Portrait.
• This portrait include the flowers in the background  that represent Obama.
  • The chrysanthemums,  reference the official flower of Chicago.
    • The jasmine evokes Hawaii, where he spent the majority of his childhood
      • African blue lilies stand in for his late Kenyan father.

• While most presidential portraits are painting in a traditional style, Wiley’s 2018 portrait is uniquely contemporary

Interview

Family Background

• Born in 1977
• Wiley was one of 5 siblings and grew up in South Central Los Angeles
• Raised by a single mother in a low-income household supported by welfare and a thrift shop.

Early Art

• At 11, his mother recognized his ability to replicate any drawing 
• To keep Kehinde out of the streets and avoid local gang violence, his mother enrolled him and his twin brother in an art conservatory on the campus of USC
• Kehinde and his twin brother, Taiwo, would compete to see who could create the most realistic portraits, with Wiley admitting his brother was initially better.
  • “My twin brother was the star artist of the family as we – as we were growing up. He eventually lost interest and went more towards literature and then medicine and then business and so on.”

Early Influences

• The art conservatory would take field trips to the Huntington Art museum in Pasadena
  • They would study collection of  18th/19th century paintings.
    • Wiley “I would visit and see portraits of wealthy, powerful men with all of their possessions around them. I was looking and I wasn’t seeing people that looked like me.”

University Studies

• Wiley went to college at the San Francisco Art Institute, followed by graduate school at Yale University, where he studied painting.
• Wiley’s education took him far from South Central L.A. but he remained aware of the challenges faced by young, urban black men.
• His time growning up in LA would deeply influenced his art works.

Artwork Style 

• Wiley challenges a tradition of showcasing the rich and powerful indiviuals and  flipps the narrative.
  • He uses historical paintings and poses the people in the same manner
    • But he paints Black americans wearing everyday clothing.

He creates “a mash-up of museum treasure and the urban life outside of its gates”

2 min video How Wiley Paints his subjects

Examples 

• Wiley recreated the 1830 French painting, Napoleon Crossing the Alps.  He replaced Napoleon with an anonymous man he met “street-casting”
• Not only does Wiley change the person in the painting, he uses a distinctive dcorative background.  These backgrounds will become part his signature style.

Rap and Hip Hop

• 2005, VH1 commissioned Wiley to paint portraits of the honorees at the Hip Hop Honors event
• The portraits were part of a theme of “the golden age of hip hop“
• • Grandmaster Flash, Ice T, L.L. Cool J, Big Daddy Cane and Notorious B.I.G.  

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