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The expectations of the viewer are what you're asking about. And the expectations of the viewer are manifold. However, they are very fixed, given who I am in the world. People have certain expectations of me as an artist.

Kehinde Wiley

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Kehinde Wiley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 28
Painter
LA
California
People
Fixed
Expectations
Asking
However
Artist
Given
Manifold
Certain
Viewer
World
Viewers

More quotes by Kehinde Wiley

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Unlike the background in many of the paintings that I was inspired by or paintings that I borrowed poses from - the great European paintings of the past - the background in my work does not play a passive role.
Kehinde Wiley
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There's quite obviously the desire to open the rule sets that allow for inclusion or disclusion. I think that my hope would be that my work set up certain type of precedent, that allowed for great institutions, museums and viewers to see the possibilities of painting culture to be a bit more inclusive.
Kehinde Wiley
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I was surrounded by art by virtue of not only the educational opportunities that my mother's foresight availed me to.
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It became a question of taste. I have a certain taste in art history. And that - I had a huge library of art history books in my studio. And I would simply have the models go through those books with me, and we began a conversation about, like, what painting means, why we do it, why people care about it why or how it can mean or make sense today.
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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
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At age 20 I went to go find my father in Nigeria. And after much toil, I finally figured out exactly where he was. And there's something about seeing your father for the first time - my mother destroyed all pictures of him.
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Like commercial stuff is sort of cheap and disposable and fun and can be sort of interesting in many ways. I love being in popular culture and existing in the evolution of popular culture. But it's so different from painting, and it's so different from that sort of slow, contemplative, gradual process that painting is.
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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
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Your best as an artist is to create something that resonates for you.
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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There's nothing shocking inherently about that, given that so much of the way that artists are taught is by copying old master paintings.
Kehinde Wiley
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I think that an obsession with art history gave rise to the work.
Kehinde Wiley
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So much of the hubris that surrounded conceptual art in the 1950s through '70s was that it had this arrogant presupposition that pointing in and of itself was a creative act. It never rigorously politically and socially analyzed the fact that the luxury to point is something that so many people throughout the world don't have.
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Mel [Bochner] sets a very high standard. He expects only the best and most thoughtful and rigorous examinations, not only of the history of art but your own practice.
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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He's a great - he's a great professor. He retired recently, but.But Peter Halley as well.
Kehinde Wiley
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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
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Almost as though the painting itself becomes the embodiment of a type of struggle for visibility, and this might be considered the main subject of the painting.
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One of the weirdest things that happened to artists and art criticism was this moment when everyone got cynical and stopped believing in the ability to engage the world in all of its myriad purposes, transformations, and incarnations.
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I love being able to have a team.
Kehinde Wiley