"It’s not a person, it’s not a portrait; it’s a painting, and everything that goes on within it qualifies the other elements. It is all linked in with the stuff of how they are actually composed and how they come about: the colour that comes from underneath, the layer that builds up, the way the colours work together, the way a mark sits."
I ntimate and beguiling, Obelisk exhibits Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s phenomenal ability to employ painting as an act of discursive interrogation of the history of portraiture through her sublime painting style. Sitting in an impressive and authoritative pose upon an upholstered ottoman, the sitter's perfect posture invokes the architectural stone grandeur of the present work’s nomenclature. Directly engaging the viewer with her deep brown eyes, the sitter offers a glimpse into her intimate and mysterious world and brings forth thoughts of identity, difference, and history. Presenting a subject that is at once unknowable yet deeply familiar, Obelisk endlessly engages the imagination, acting as a generative source for narrative association and speculation.
Emerging from a foggy air of rich bronze and amber hues, Yiadom-Boakye’s subject emits a phosphorescent glow originating from her crisp white blouse. Vibrating through the space around her as she sits in a commanding position, the present work captivates the viewers immediate attention. Formally trained to paint from live models, Yiadom-Boakye’s subjects are sourced from her imagination, each a conflation of experiences, memories, and art history. Painted with sturdy yet loosened brushstrokes that recall the works of Manet and Cezanne, Obelisk invokes nostalgia through its art historical references. Although formal comparisons with nineteenth-century painters are appropriate, Obelisk is far from its European influences. Quite aside from the fictive nature of the “sitters”, the work is a renegotiation of race and pictorial representation. By nature of centuring her Black subjects, Yiadom-Boakye inserts her figures into a primarily white, hegemonic tradition of painting.
RIGHT: Paul Cézanne, Portrait of Madame Cézanne, circa 1890-1892, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
In completing Obelisk, the artist first laid down a sienna underpainting, delineating the form of her figure, before applying lashings of mossy greens, subdued reds, and tonal variegation of a quiet and cool brown for her skin. Often painted in spontaneous and instinctive bursts, her figures seem to exist outside of a specific time or place. Exemplifying Yiadom-Boakye’s focus upon universal notions of interiority and nuances of the cerebral, the subject of Obelisk is clearly meditative, wrapped within his own train of thought. Filling her imaginary subject with a sense of identity, Yiadom-Boakye successfully offers an unknown character a clear sensibility.
