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Who Is Kehinde Wiley?

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In America, there was a painter named Kehinde Wiley, who was born in Los Angeles, California in 1977. As a little boy, his parents knew that he wanted to become an artist. His family supported him to achieve his dream, and he went to an art school in Russia at the age of 12. He went to both San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University to pursue art. Wiley has received numerous awards such as the “Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant Recipient”, "Americans for the Arts, Young Artist Award for Artistic Excellence", "USA Network, Character Approved Award", "Canteen Magazine, Artist of the Year Award; New York City Art Teachers Association/United Federation of Teachers, Artist of the Year Award" and the “Pratt Legend Award”. His arts and studies …show more content…

He is an artist who focuses mostly on portrait art. Most of his paintings are created from oil painting on canvas, and some of his other works are paintings that are on stained glass. Many of his paintings focus on the recreation of old historical paintings in between seventeenth through the nineteenth century art. However, instead of including the historical people in the paintings, he replaces people from history with people in the black community. He wants to break the stereotype of the identity of black people and show that he is not just a black American living in America, but something more than that. In many of his paintings, he decides to use many different types of textiles and patterns from different times to bring out his artistic technique. New York Times explains that his “subjects wear hip-hop fashion or designer gowns, and in addition to posing as kings and saints, they mimic aristocratic ladies in well-known paintings from the Louvre or masterworks of African sculpture.” (New York Times 1). He also uses the bold and colorful colors to bring the painting to life. In many of his paintings, he also brings out some of the hip-hop cultures in each of his paintings, using the different looks from the hip-hop era. One of his most famous paintings was the Napoléon Leading the Army Over the Alps, which he replaces Napoléon Bonaparte with a black …show more content…

I feel like in some of his work, people may be very offended by his work because of the message that it showing to people. Take Jillian Steinhauer’s critique for example, when she says “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. You call that empowerment?” (Steinhauer 1). Steinhauer is explaining that many different people question and criticize Wiley’s work because they do not understand the message that Wiley is trying to show. Steinhauer wants to question the audience of what is the point of doing these kind of paintings. His paintings should not be based on just colored people, but more of the other races as well. I also think that he can do some black and white paintings as well as dark colored paintings for a change because most of his paintings are made with bold and bright colors. His paintings can also be expressed in different colors instead of just relying on bold colors to make his painting stand out. Another negative critique I have about him is that in most of his paintings uses either a floral and regal background, and it gets too repetitive and boring sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t matches the aura of what the original painting. I feel like his

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