Kehinde Wiley

Meridian Fine Art, New York
Private Collection, Florida

This work is in excellent condition. The canvas is well stretched and the surface is clean. There are no apparent condition problems with this work. Framed in the artist's original gold gilt wood frame.
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Portraiture has always represented a certain social class and a formal aspect of historical painting. Early portraiture began as a means of religious fervor and slowly manifested itself as a technical and traditional format that became commodity in many people's lives. As seen in Anthony van Dyck's commissioned painting Lady Anne Carr, Countess of Bedford, 1638 portraiture was seen as a symbol of status and wealth and used as a way for people to highlight their rank and position in society. Historically, these images are used to understand and learn about cultures of the past.

In Kehinde Wiley's, Portrait of a Lady, 2006, both the sitter's theatrical pose and the objects from the seventeenth through nineteenth-century Western art, are depicted as a twenty-first-century subject that is more powerful and contemporized. The title of the painting refers to the numerous paintings of ladies through history, yet is an image of a modern day African American man. Wiley portrays young African American men that wear the latest hip-hop street fashion often in Sean Jean- as seen in his Portrait of a Lady. This work of art is a large-scale painting, like those of Wiley's predecessors. The subject stares out at the observer, carrying modern day blue gloves in one hand. His other hand gently rests below his chest as his body twists to the side so we only see him from one angle, a pose often used by the older generations. The adorned tapestry-like pattern allows the figure to explode off the canvas, yet a few spaghetti-like strands of fabric subtly envelop his lower legs. The face glistens from the light that quietly pours in from the upper left viewpoint. The face and body language are powerful while also cunning, reminiscent of Renaissance artists.

Through the canvas and the title of the work Kehinde disintegrates history and style into a unique contemporary vision of his own. He assembles modern culture with the influences of Old Masters and Renaissance painters and creates large-scale figurative paintings of young African men. These anonymous figures, which are influenced by urban fashion and hip-hop culture, fuse together past portraiture and a contemporary outlook.