Label Text:
Label text from the exhibition "Masculine Identities: Filling in the Blanks," March 23-May 14, 2023
A New York-based artist, Kehinde Wiley empowers the black subject via his dynamic portraiture. Depicting New Yorkers, he encounters on the streets in poses that reflect the tradition of Old Master portrait painting, Wiley interrogates the role of status, power, race, and prestige in the history of Western visual culture. His work reveals that portrait representations of male subjects in art have been predominantly white. Positioning people of color in the place of the inherited white narrative, he makes a subversive statement. Here, a black youth takes over, inhabiting an elite subject position. The floral designs also subject this figure posed as masculine with imagery normally associated not only with European decorative arts traditions, but also with femininity and camp.
Tags:
portraits; African American; male; men; flowers; insects; decorations; identity; moustaches; nobility Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+2023.1 |
