Madame Paul-Louis Girardot De Vermenoux, Nee Anne-Germine Larrivee 2009

Kehinde Wiley, born in '77, painted this portrait. It is hard not to get sucked into the flatness of the pattern behind the figure, isn’t it? But look at the skin tone of the sitter. The way his face is lit, a kind of three-dimensional light! I can just imagine Wiley trying to fuse a graphic background with the desire to create volume, something that is a kind of challenge in painting, one that many painters have taken on. Think of Matisse’s interiors. You can feel Wiley trying to honour a past and stretch it too. The way he's taken the language of classical portraiture and updated it, placing a contemporary figure in that context. It makes you think about who gets represented in art history, doesn't it? Like a constant game of telephone where each artist riffs off what came before, and also says something totally new.