New Acquisitions

African American Art

Valerie Mercer
Curator, General Motors Center for African American Art

Kehinde Wiley, American;       Officer of the Hussars,       2007; oil on canvas, frame       with gilding. Museum Purchase,       Friends of African and African       American Art

In Officer of the Hussars, Kehinde Wiley pays homage to the Western tradition of history painting while elevating the status of black males by boldly inserting them into a painting tradition that generally excluded them or presented them in subservient roles.

An ornate gilded frame, made by the artist, encloses the colorful, hyper-realistic equestrian portrait of a contemporary young African American male holding a saber while seated on a rearing horse. Dressed casually in jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, the man looks like a member of the hip-hop nation seen on the streets of many American cities. An ornamental filigree, painted metallic gold, flows in arabesque formations like wild vines throughout the painting. The dramatically posed rider and horse, which dominate the composition, are situated in a turbulent dreamscape that contains objects shattered by war in the foreground and a cannon in the background on the lower right side.

To create this painting, Wiley appropriated the heroic postures of the horse and rider in French artist Théodore Géricault's 1812 equestrian portrait of the same title, now in the collection of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Géricault's painting is executed in the grand manner of history painting and is typical of the source material Wiley uses as the basis for his art.

Wiley's impressive skills and wit have made him one of the young stars in the contemporary art world. He was born in 1977 in South Central Los Angeles. His fascination with old master portraiture goes back to his childhood, when he began visiting area art museums with his family. At the age of eleven, he began to take art classes, later receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and a Masters in Fine Arts from Yale University in 2001.

A year later, Wiley was accepted into the artist-inresidence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It was during this period that he developed his type of powerful portraiture that draws attention to young African American males by merging their contemporary images and style with art history. He was inspired by the dynamism and pomp of Harlem's pedestrian culture, watching people walk on 125th Street. He felt that the passersby displaying their beauty and style as they went about their daily activities lent a fashion-show quality to Harlem's main thoroughfare. Wiley was soon talking strangers into letting him paint their portraits.

Wiley continues to discover his models on the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn, South Central Los Angeles, Detroit, and other urban areas. Usually the model works with Wiley to choose an old master portrait from the artist's collection of books. The most favored paintings are prophets, saints, or noblemen. Wiley photographs the model imitating the pose in the original portrait. He subsequently paints his model from the photograph, embellishing the background with decorative details influenced by baroque and rococo ornamentation.

The over-the-top quality of Wiley's Officer of the Hussars, exemplified by its large scale (10 × 10 ft.), the metallic gold filigree, the gilded frame with its elaborate cartouches, and the vibrant colors, is intended to equate the appeal of "bling," a feature of hip-hop culture, with the splendor of past styles.