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My assistants generally do all the flowers and all of the decorative work. I concentrate on the figure.

Kehinde Wiley

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Kehinde Wiley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 28
Painter
LA
California
Concentrate
Flowers
Generally
Figure
Figures
Flower
Work
Decorative
Assistants

More quotes by Kehinde Wiley

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Going to the Huntington gardens and libraries was radically important for me. They have one of the best collections of 18th- and 19th-century British portraiture that you can imagine in Southern California. One doesn't think about Southern California as being the capital of great art.
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There is something to be said about laying bare the vocabulary of the aristocratic measure, right? There's something to be said about allowing the powerless to tell their own story.
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I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend.
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It was something that came sort of matter-of-factually. Because there - it's like really - real honest engagement with the people around me and just like really honestly being a little bit confused, quite frankly, about Harlem.
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Like, the smells and the sights and the sounds. As an artist, you want to sort of be able to engage that and get that down in some way. This is - this is a type of familiarity but a type of radical difference at the same time.
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Most people say, Hell, no. I don't know who you are. This scares me. Like, I'm not interested in this.Another way of looking at these paintings is, these are the guys who said yes.
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In my work, I want to create an understanding, not about what a painting looks like but about what a painting says.
Kehinde Wiley
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All the world's a stage. P.T. Barnum: It becomes a circus. But circuses or street pageants or parades have always been useful in a society.They've always been useful as a way of critiquing power. The carnivalesque has always been useful as a way of the powerful being mocked in a public space.
Kehinde Wiley
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[My parents] met in university back in the '70s. And I didn't grow up with my father. He - they separated before I was born.
Kehinde Wiley
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I have a really strong suspicion of the romantic nature of portraiture, the idea that you're telling some essential truth about the interior lives of your subject.
Kehinde Wiley
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I went back to my mother's house recently and I saw some of my earlier works as a 15-year-old art student. And a lot of them were reiterations of classic works.
Kehinde Wiley
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Believing that navel-gazing in and of itself can transform itself into something that means something for society. I mean, we are communicative creatures. We desire to sort of understand each other's experiences and points of view. Storytelling is what painting, literature, filmmaking is all about.
Kehinde Wiley
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That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting.
Kehinde Wiley
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I think that's kind of indicative of a type of self-confidence that people develop when they recognize their own ability to create.
Kehinde Wiley
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I love being able to have a team.
Kehinde Wiley
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I believe the artist is capable of contributing to the broader evolution of culture in all of its dimensions.
Kehinde Wiley
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When you're at your best, you're analyzing yourself and becoming increasingly isolated from a broader narrative.
Kehinde Wiley
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So sometimes you have to play your hand and sort of push in a direction. And I think that masculinity is the driving point for a lot of the way that people, like, posture in the work.
Kehinde Wiley
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I've met others [people] who simply responded to me, You're Kehinde Wiley. I know your work. I saw it at the Brooklyn Museum [Brooklyn, NY] And I'd be honored to be in your work.
Kehinde Wiley
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Your best as an artist is to create something that resonates for you.
Kehinde Wiley