Prince Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, And His Brother, Prince Rupert Of The Palatinate 2012

Kehinde Wiley made Prince Charles Louis and His Brother, Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, and, wow, the colour just pops right out at you! It’s like the whole canvas is buzzing. Wiley’s got this thing where he smashes together portraiture with super vibrant pattern. The men are painted so realistically, but then they're set against a backdrop that’s almost too much to take in, like they’re emerging from a textile. Look at the way the jacket of the figure on the right falls. It's very still, but also has an incredible sense of movement and life. The surface is so smooth, it’s hard to see how he did it, which makes me wonder about all the layers of underpainting and glazing that must be involved. It reminds me a bit of David Hockney’s portraits in the way it captures the character of the sitter so directly. But it’s also doing something completely different by talking about identity and representation in a way that’s totally of our time. Art’s always having a conversation with itself, right?