Posted on 02/26/2024 7:49:43 AM PST by Angelino97
In this painting, Kehinde Wiley, an African-American artist, strategically re-creates a famous French painting from two hundred years before but with key differences. This act of appropriation reveals issues about the tradition of portraiture and all that it implies about power and privilege.
Wiley asks us to think about the biases of the art historical canon (the set of works that are regarded as “masterpieces”), representation in pop culture, and issues of race and gender.
Here, Wiley replaces the original white subject—the French general-turned-emperor Napoleon Bonaparte—with an anonymous Black man whom Wiley approached on the street as part of his “street-casting process.”...
Wiley calls attention to ideas about authority and historical representation, keeping many original elements and making significant alterations. The royal blue coat of the original makes an appearance (peeking out from the young man’s camouflage shirt), as does the gold-encased sword (held in place by a red strap). But Wiley’s subject wears an outfit that is contemporary and reflective of a culture notorious for flashy imagery and larger than life figures: hip hop culture.
This young man wears camouflage fatigues, Timberland work boots, and a bandana—conjuring up militaristic associations with the original painting and with the violence of contemporary urban America, particularly as experienced by young Black men...
[Wiley] has signed and dated the painting just as David did, painting his name and the date in Roman numerals onto the band around the horse’s chest. ... But Wiley includes the name WILLIAMS—another insistence on including ordinary people of color who are often left out of systems of representation and glorification.
Not only is Williams a common African-American surname, it hints at the imposition of Anglo names on Black people who were brought by force from Africa and stripped of their own histories.
(Excerpt) Read more at smarthistory.org ...
The Little Corporal would be flattered, probably.
Made you look! Hey, over there. Squirrel!
If all you think about is the color of your skin, then you’re the racist.
Looks like Sharpton.
He didn’t do anything remarkable here.
He did a shadow overlay and sketch, then painted by numbers
Yes, and BY OTHER BLACK MEN.
Don't forget to leave that part out, silly artist person.
This is the same person who painted the hideous Obama portrait.
The past controls the future, and the present controls the past. (with apologies to Orwell if I misquoted)
I’d call it stolen valor.
If Kehinde Wiley was so intent on showing a black man leading an army, why not do one of Toussaint Louverture, who wore Napoleonic clothes and as an added bonus massacred lots of white people.
It seems that for some blacks, even when they have some actual history, prefer to create imaginary history instead. Cleopatra, a Macedonian woman who lived in Egypt was black. The ancient Egyptians were black.
In Britain they are told that there have always been lots of black people living there going back to Roman times.
While here in the U.S. we are told that our history as a nation only really begins with 1619 and that it was blacks who really built this country.
And then there’s Wakanda, an idea from a comic book from all places.
Ahhh ... Toussaint Louverture: the man who made Haiti the sewage hole that it is today! What a hero!
"Google pauses AI-generated images of people after ethnicity criticism"
Check out the Viking.
"Finally, the Rock has come back
...to England."
BTTT
I think parody. Certainly not erasure since Wiley didn’t paint over the original.
Not to mention the Islamic style wall hanging behind the faux Napoleon, which taken together, symbolizes the Islamic take over of France by North Africans.
What is the design on the red background? It looks like a head of millet.
Instead of the naturalistic setting of David’s painting, Wiley has inserted a decorative, unrealistic backdrop reminiscent of luxurious French fabric. This background, along with the high-keyed colors, and ornate frame (complete with faux family shields and the artist’s self-portrait at the top) call attention to the artificiality and pompousness of image-making.
The background is also infused with tiny paintings of sperm—Wiley’s way of poking fun at the highly charged masculinity and propagation of gendered identity that are involved in the Western tradition of portraiture.
I’m ok with this.
I’m working right now of a similar painting showing James Brown as a white dude.
oww, i feel well... shanananana... i feel well.
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