Quote

I suppose in the end what shift occurred - is that at Yale I began to become more materially and conceptually aware of the mechanisms that gave rise to those types of patterns and paintings. And so the copying that happened in the childhood was a much more conscious type of copying in later years.

Kehinde Wiley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Kehinde Wiley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 28
Painter
LA
California
Type
Patterns
Copying
Painting
Began
Yale
Happened
Rise
Occurred
Ends
Aware
Paintings
Become
Later
Shift
Much
Childhood
Types
Conceptually
Years
Gave
Mechanism
Materially
Conscious
Suppose
Mechanisms

More quotes by Kehinde Wiley

Image
There's always a tug of war. Like, in the States, in America, there's certainly a higher quotient, I would imagine, of, like, macho, like, masculinity posturing.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
I enjoy Chicago as one of the great American cities. When I come here and take a taxi from the airport, I meet a young man from Somalia. I meet a young man from Eritrea who engages with this nation with a sense of hope and a sense of desire. But we also we know that there are other elements of this nation that are toxic.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
What's interesting about my project recently is that I'm going out into broader global spaces but then isolating at the same time - sort of pushing out but then pulling in.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
I think that an obsession with art history gave rise to the work.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
My assistants generally do all the flowers and all of the decorative work. I concentrate on the figure.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
If I have the same plan to go into the streets, find random strangers, use art-historical referent from their - from the specific location, to use decorative patterns from this location, that's a rule. That's a set of patterns that you can apply to all societies. But what gives rise or what comes out of each experiment is so radically different.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
I mean, the radical contingency that is - that exists and the fact that I'm going into the streets and finding random strangers any given day - who's in these streets that day?
Kehinde Wiley
Image
We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
What's great about it is that painting doesn't move. And so in the 21st century, when we're used to clicking and browsing and having constant choice, painting simply sits there silently and begs you to notice the smallest of detail.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
This is - it's a sociological experiment in many ways. And so you're seeing the results of what happens when you put a lot of boys in a room looking at art history.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
The work that I wanted to create wasn't being done then. I was too much concerned about fellow students, professors, institutional style [in Yale].
Kehinde Wiley
Image
I love being able to have a team.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
I would imagine that what you try to do is to - is to be as sensitive to the environment that surrounds you as possible. As you see, my work has become increasingly global. My presence in the world has become increasingly global.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
I love being a portraitist.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
When you're at your best, you're analyzing yourself and becoming increasingly isolated from a broader narrative.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
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
Image
That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
I began working within the streets of Harlem, where, after graduating from Yale [University, New Haven, CT], I became the artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem [New York, NY]. I wanted to know what that was about. I would actually pull people from off of the streets and ask them to come to my studio.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
What came out of that was an intense obsession with status anxiety. So much of these portraits are about fashioning oneself into the image of perfection that ruled the day in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's an antiquated language, but I think we've inherited that language and have forwarded it to its most useful points in the 21st century.
Kehinde Wiley
Image
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