A Quote by Kehinde Wiley
If I were making paintings of a bowl of fruit it would still be viewed through some sort of political lens, because the viewer wants to create a type of narrative around the political theme when they look at work depicting black and brown models.
Related Quotes
There were some types of sanctions that happen in the public world that made my work acceptable, where someone looks at the paintings and they don't - they may go, "okay," and then look at it in a different sort of way. Instead of just looking at it as some type of wild art, they look at it in a historical perspective or context.
I feel sometimes constrained by the expectation that the work should be solely political. I try to create a type of work that is at the service of my own set of criteria, which have to do with beauty and a type of utopia that in some ways speaks to the culture I'm located in.
Some people feel that it's controversial if I say that because my dad is known as a political artist. But I don't really believe that he was a political artist. I think some of his songs were political, and I think they were incredible because he was able to make art that was political and that wasn't pedantic. But I think he was unique in being able to do that.
Everything's viewed with a political lens in Washington, and that's just the nature of the beast, and it is what it is.
When I was younger, I used to be very impatient with anyone who wasn't doing overtly political work. I've since come to feel that some writers have an appetite or a need for the political, for political discourse, for historical political subjects.
The rise of a new kind of political science in the 1960s has been driving a wedge between political insiders and voters ever since. By turning voters into interest groups, it stopped establishment leaders from articulating a national narrative. It opened the way for Movement Conservatives to create today's political crisis.
Picasso and Matisse were the guys I wanted to get away from, and cubism is all still lifes. Their paintings are all closed drawings. And still life is a perfect form for that. By the mid-'50s, I sort of dropped the still life. The large picture was a way of getting around them, too. The abstract expressionists were also into the large form because it was a way of getting around Matisse and Picasso. Picasso can't paint big paintings. Matisse didn't bother after a certain point.
Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian regime and replace it with a democratic one is through violent means. I would like to set the precedent of political change through political settlement, not through violence.
I pay my models to work with me, so there becomes this weird sort of economic bartering thing, which made me feel really sort of uncomfortable, almost as though you were buying into a situation - which, again, is another way of looking at those paintings. The body language in those paintings is a lot more stiff.
I look at my kids, who were born under a Black president, who hop around the living room naked and joyful, mimicking Simone Biles, and just think, Damn, they got some amazing role models of Black excellence.
I have been painting models with black and brown skin only for the past years. So, I did already have this experience, this is how I have come to the paintings I do now.
Hyperrealism is more about objectifying... how an object can be portrayed when it is seen through a camera's lens... all my paintings are about an object being viewed through human eyes.
I think it's important for people to understand that dance, movement, choreography is about an experience and entertainment but it's also about perception and a lens. So when we're talking about a Black female's experience through a Black female's lens, that's going to be totally different from a Black female's perspective through a Black male's lens.
I define my work as a feminist act and a political act because I'm black and a woman. You don't necessarily have to claim that, but the act of making art itself is a political and feminist act when you're a woman.
I felt like I'd spent many years making excuses for my executives and making excuses for political candidates I was representing and their views, when some of those political views, in my mind, were very distasteful.
The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.
Related Authors
Ai Weiwei Quotes
Chinese
Artist
Andy Warhol Quotes
American
Artist
Claude Monet Quotes
French
Artist
David Hockney Quotes
English
Artist
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes
American
Artist
Gerhard Richter Quotes
German
Artist
Henri Matisse Quotes
French
Artist
Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
Italian
Artist
Marcel Duchamp Quotes
French
Artist
Marina Abramovic Quotes
Serbian
Artist
Maurice Sendak Quotes
American
Artist
Michelangelo Quotes
Italian
Artist
Paul Cezanne Quotes
French
Artist
Robert Genn Quotes
Canadian
Artist
Robert Henri Quotes
American
Artist
Yoko Ono Quotes
American
Artist