A NEW BRAND OF PORTRAITURE
Known for his larger-than-life, hyperrealistic and richly detailed portraits that substitute depictions of aristocratic Europeans bearing symbols of power and status in paintings by artists between the Renaissance and 1800, with good-looking African-American men and women in modern-day clothes – T-shirts, sweatpants, jeans, sneakers and bandanas – striking confident, heroic poses, Kehinde Wiley has been subverting the power relations embedded in certain art traditions. The Los Angeles-born, Yale-educated portraitist confronts and critiques historical traditions that do not acknowledge the black cultural experience, thereby bringing Old Master paintings by the likes of Velazquez, Rubens, Titian, Van Dyck or Holbein face to face with contemporary popular culture.
Portraying dark-skinned people from all walks of life, Kehinde – the first African-American artist to paint an official portrait of an American president (Barack Obama) for the
