The its very village voicey8/11/2023 I’ve written critically about him before, and others have written critically about this show. I mean, look, I hardly think Kehinde Wiley is beyond reproach. And then there’s the kicker: the assertion that it is a “fantasy and false hope” to suggest that young black men should aspire to, let alone might ever achieve, positions of power. Third, the connotation that all those “newspaper headlines” are being so dramatic by insisting that this country has a major problem with mass incarceration. Second, the assumption that all the subjects come “from the ghetto,” because, you know, they wear sneakers and Wiley found them on the street. It’s almost hard to know where to start unpacking a passage so brimming with barely veiled racism! First, we have the reduction of African Americans to their sexualized bodies (“a firm piece of African-American flesh”). What does it mean to put a young black man on a horse and call him Napoleon? If it isn’t dangling a fantasy and false hope, then at least it implies that young urban blacks are in desperate need of uplift. Where white power aggrandized itself in official state portraiture, now young blacks from the ghetto, the ones newspaper headlines insist are without future and en route to incarceration, straddle stallions. Where once was a powerful white man, Wiley inserts a firm piece of African-American flesh. Her writing about the central premise of Wiley’s work - to insert ordinary black people into paintings that mimic the grandeur of historical, and historically white, portraits - is just as problematic and offensive as the aspersions she casts on his process. From the vagueness of her writing and the broadness of her generalizations, it’s hard to tell if it’s the “sexualization” or the “black men” part. But he does offer them the not-insignificant power of choosing how they will be represented, and he certainly gives them glamour.Ĭlearly, there is something about the sexualization of black men that offends or frightens Dawson. Does Wiley give his models a pass to Yale? No. They’re types - to the point where the majority of his titles reflect only the identity of the original sitter his models remain anonymous.īeyond my doubts that Dawson has any real clue about what Wiley offers his subjects, I’d argue that she’s just plain wrong here. In what world is a Yale-minted artist who lures young men into his studio with the promise of power and glamour not predatory? These aren’t portraits. Is he predatory because he paints his subjects in a sexualized manner? Because he’s also a man, painting them in a sexualized manner? Because they might even have sex? How is any of this not homophobic? The same goes for the bear of a fellow in Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps, which could be subtitled “ (Through a Light Ejaculate Mist).” Saint Andrew grinds his crotch against a wooden cross, and in case we don’t quite get it, Wiley has painted free-floating spermatozoa across the canvas. What Wiley and his subjects do behind the scenes may be none of our business, but his paintings kiss and tell. So, is Wiley predatory because he invites men whom he meets on the street into his studio - a perfectly legitimate and widespread artistic practice? Straining to legitimize this method, Brooklyn Museum curator Eugenie Tsai lauds the artist in the exhibition catalog for “the subject’s active participation” in a “collaborative encounter … co-produced by the subject and the artist.” Once in the studio, Wiley presents his model with art-history books and asks him to choose which painting he’d like to be in. “I don’t ask people what their sexualities are, but there’s a sense in which male beauty is being negotiated.” “When I’m approaching these guys, there’s a presupposed engagement,” Wiley said in the 2008 Art Newspaper interview. In the early 2000s, after he graduated from Yale, Wiley did a residency at the Studio Museum and began inviting men he met on the streets into his studio to pose. It seems to have to do with the fact that the male subjects in Wiley’s paintings are sexualized - an immediate red flag given the long, ugly history in this country of gay men being labeled sexual predators.Īnd then there is Wiley’s casting-couch method. Well, as you might have guessed, it’s not entirely clear. What is Dawson’s argument for Wiley’s “predatory behavior”? Surely calling someone predatory is a serious allegation, one that should be backed up by something like proof, or at the very least a rock solid argument.
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