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There's something really cool about being able to fly to South Africa and watch one of the most talented African footballers wearing a shoe on the field.

Kehinde Wiley

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Kehinde Wiley
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: February 28
Painter
LA
California
Really
Shoes
Footballers
Cool
Footballer
South
Shoe
Fields
Talented
Watches
African
Watch
Africa
Able
Wearing
Something
Field

More quotes by Kehinde Wiley

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You know, one of my - one of my best and, I think, most enlightening moments was when I was contacted by Michael Jackson. And he requested that I paint his portrait.
Kehinde Wiley
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I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.
Kehinde Wiley
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The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what people have any interest in thinking about, talking about or even looking at.
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You'll find that street casting in America is a lot different than street casting in different nations.
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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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I feel sometimes constrained by the expectation that the work should be solely political. I try to create a type of work that is at the service of my own set of criteria, which have to do with beauty and a type of utopia that in some ways speaks to the culture I'm located in.
Kehinde Wiley
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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.
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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I was 11 when I was first introduced to live drawing classes and going to art school.
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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I think there's something important in going against the grain, and perhaps finding value in things that aren't necessarily institutionally recognized.
Kehinde Wiley
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I think it was a matter of, like, I'm not going to have my kids in these wild streets. Both my twin brother and I were in art school together.
Kehinde Wiley
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I love the of dealing with the homoerotic versus the idea of dealing with certain tropes with regards to black masculinity in the world, propensity towards sports, antisocial behavior, hypersexuality - all of these sort of non-truths that I don't exist in but that I see as being fixed in the world's imagination.
Kehinde Wiley
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I think that at its best, painting can be an act of juggling perceptions, a hall of mirrors. And it can be a bit confusing and scattering. But as the artist, as the man behind the velvet rope who controls the smoke and the mirrors and the way that things move in the painted space, what I want to do is to try my best to be a good witness.
Kehinde Wiley
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I love the idea of engaging religious sentiment and how that vocabulary has evolved over time.
Kehinde Wiley
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We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.
Kehinde Wiley
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I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend.
Kehinde Wiley
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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.
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I create something that means something to me, to the world, and try to do my best. I can't fix everything.
Kehinde Wiley
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I'm fully capable of multitasking certain conceptual concerns within the work.
Kehinde Wiley