Kehinde Wiley is best known for his monumental portraits that feature African American sitters in the settings of European paintings from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In 2017, he was commissioned to paint the portrait of former president Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, a work that received wide critical acclaim. As a gay Black man, Wiley has deliberately repositioned Black male bodies, challenging societal stereotypes of violence or aggression with images emphasizing his sitters’ vulnerability and sensuality.
Icons are demure. They’re small—you have to paint them in your lap. And they’re
loud—they’re gold and they’re blinging all out of nowhere. […] I’m in love with that
vocabulary. I wanted to create a body of work that had that same sense of
preciousness, that same sense of scale, that same sense of quiet, but also fused the
sacred and the profane. This notion of the sacred, pure, untouchable space where
divinity rests sort of muddied and sullied by this perceived notion of the Black
body.
Kehinde Wiley (Los Angeles, 1977), The Fiery Ascent of the Prophet Elijah, 2014. 22-karat gold leaf and oil on wood panel; signed by the artist, verso. Collection of Pamela K. and William A. Royall, Jr.
The prophet Elijah points toward Heaven with his right hand, recalling a gesture of John the Baptist, the saint he was said to prefigure. According to Christian tradition, Elijah ascended to Heaven in a whirlwind. Kehinde Wiley adopts the visual rhetoric— the arch, inscription, and gold ground—of a Gothic altarpiece. His compositional choices invest his portrait of Chris Norvell with the historical authority of Renaissance devotional images. Inscribing a young Black man into the history of Western art reminds us of who is included in the canon and who has been left out.
Object Description
This oil painting on a wood panel is a portrait of a well toned young Black man from his head to his waist. It is approximately 3 ft tall and 2 feet wide. The painting is shaped into an upside down U and is surrounded by an elaborate, gilded, altar-like frame. The gold wooden frame has a steeply pointed upper “roof”-like element decorated with a painted, central, red, eight pointed compass rose. There are classical column-like elements on each side. The painting rests on a horizontal, multi-layered, gold plinth. CHRIS NORVELL is spelled in a highly decorative, red, Gothic font decorated with an iron cross between his given and sir names. The muscular young man’s pose is frontal with his right arm akimbo. His fingers are loosely splayed, just touching his right hip. His index finger is covered in a pale bandaid. His left arm is bent at the elbow with his forearm positioned at a steep angle across his body with his fingers almost touching his right armpit. On his wrist is a black watch. He is wearing a simple black tank top that reveals his impressive muscles. Strong light from the viewer’s left creates white highlights on the contours of his reddish brown skin. His face is partially turned to the viewer’s right but his eyes engage the viewer directly. His expression is neutral; his gaze level. His brown locs are drawn up off his neck and away from his forehead into a neat “up-do” reminiscent of an 18th Century aristocratic woman’s pompadour. There are red, jewled decorations in his hair. The background of the painting is burnished gold. Sparse red. blue, purple, and orange flowers on sinuous green leafy vines creep into the painting in both the foreground and background.
Kehinde Wiley (Los Angeles, 1977), Prince Alexander Nevskii, 2014. 22- karat gold leaf and oil on wood panel; signed by the artist, verso. Lester Marks/LCM Partners.
Canonized as a saint in the Orthodox Church, Alexander Nevsky was celebrated as the Prince of Novogorod and a mighty defender of the Christian faith. Kehinde Wiley transforms Macho Brunier into an image of devotion, encircling his body with flowers against a gold ground and framed within a gilded Gothic arch. The honorific treatment extends to the inscription, which locates Brunier’s name in the space typically reserved for the saint’s.
OBJECT DESCRIPTION
This oil painting on panel is approximately 3 feet by 2 feet. At the center is an image of a Black young man’s torso and head painted in vivid colors against a plain gold background. This muscular young man stands facing the viewer with his head turned slightly to our left as he looks directly at the viewer with a serious expression on his face. He has short-cropped dark hair. He wears a white close-fitting sleeveless tank top that highlights his muscular arms and chest. His arm to our left is bent upward with his hand resting on his chest. His thumb, index and middle finger are extended while his ring and pinky finger are curled. His arm to our right is bent with his fist resting on his hip. A bright light from our left reflects on his forehead and casts a shadow on his torso to our left creating striking highlights and shadows on his dark brown skin.. A leafy vine with red, yellow and blue flowers trails along each side of him and across the lower part of his body. This painting is displayed in an arched aperture within a larger gilded altar-like frame. This gold wooden frame has a steeply sloped top element that has an eight-pointed red rose compass decoration at the center. There are plain rectangular columns on each side and a multi-layered gold plinth. “Macho Brunier” is written below in red Gothic font with an iron cross between these words.
Kehinde Wiley (Los Angeles, 1977), The Archangel Gabriel, 2014. 22-karat gold leaf and oil on wood panel; signed by the artist, verso. Wassim Rasamny Collection.
Kehinde Wiley models his portrait of Toks Adewetan, a Brooklyn resident of Nigerian descent, on Christian devotional images of the archangel Gabriel. As in those works, the radiant background and frame of this painting honor Adewetan with gold, a material associated with divinity throughout Western European history. Wiley’s portrait brings together actual gilding and its painted imitation, including the heavy gold band of the young man’s watch. Like the works of Simone Martini in the previous room, this combination of real and fictive gold draws attention to the artist’s ability to simulate the appearance of a naturally occurring material. The simulation solicits a comparison with the real gold background, enhancing the honorific potential of the gilded surface by calling attention to its unique properties, including its reflectivity and scarcity.
OBJECT DESCRIPTION
This oil and 22 karat gold leaf painting on wood panel measures approximately 40 x 24 inches. At the center is an image of a Black young man’s torso and head painted in vivid colors against a plain shiny gold background. This man has a muscular and toned body and he stands facing the viewer, turned slightly toward our left. He has deep reddish brown skin and his dark dreadlocks flow behind him. He looks confidently at the viewer with a direct gaze. He is dressed in a short-sleeved t-shirt that has white, grey, blue and yellow horizontal stripes. His arm to our left is bent upward, grasping a slender baton, and his other arm bent at waist height. That hand is held open with his palm facing upward and he has a tan bracelet on that wrist. A bright light emanating from our left reflects on his face and arms creating high contrast and bright highlights on his skin. A leafy vine with pink, yellow and blue flowers grows up the sides and the lower part of this image. This painting is displayed in an arch-shaped aperture within a larger gilded altar-like frame that has a steeply sloped top element. An eight-pointed red rose compass decoration is painted at the center top. Plain, rectangular columns flank each side with a multilayered gold plinth beneath. “Toks Adewetan” is written across the bottom in red Gothic font with an iron cross between these words.
Metal of Honor: Gold from Simone Martini to Contemporary Art is supported by the Abrams Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Wagner Foundation, the Robert Lehman Foundation, Fredericka and Howard Stevenson, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Additional support is provided by an endowment grant from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Media Partner: The Boston Globe
The Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
