W. Graham Robertson 2013

Kehinde Wiley made this portrait, W. Graham Robertson, employing a colorful, busy and bold aesthetic. I wonder, how did this painting come into being? What does it mean? Wiley inserts Black figures into the visual rhetoric of European portraiture. I see him there in his letterman jacket, holding a staff of some sort. It's very classical and very now at the same time. The pattern feels kinda William Morris meets hip-hop, and it gets me thinking about how artists are always in conversation, pulling and sampling and remixing. This painting definitely offers a way of seeing and experiencing the world through Kehinde Wiley’s eyes. Wiley’s work makes me think of Kerry James Marshall, too, in the way that he’s taking on the project of Black representation and what it means to paint now. Both artists are unafraid to be both figurative and conceptual, navigating all the complex stuff that painting is heir to!