In two weeks, one of the most anticipated visual arts experiences will arrive in St. Louis, courtesy of the Saint Louis Art Museum. Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis will be unveiled on October 19 at SLAM. It will be displayed through February 10.
The free exhibition will run from October 19 – February 10, 2019 and feature 11 commissioned portraits Wiley painted of people he met while visiting our region. Wiley studied the Saint Louis Art Museum collection to identify works he would reference in the exhibition and invited people he encountered in neighborhoods in north St. Louis and Ferguson to pose for paintings. He is known for using large-scale oil paintings to depict his African American subjects as regal beings that exemplify power.
The artist talk that is taking place on the same day that the exhibit opens, sold out almost as quickly as it was announced.
One of the most buzzed-about names in visual arts, Wiley was the first African American artist commissioned to create an official presidential portrait – naturally of the first African American president of the United States.
He is known for creating large-scale oil paintings of contemporary African-American subjects that address the politics of race and power in art. Recalling the grand traditions of European and American portraiture, Wiley depicts his models in poses adapted from historic paintings. Wiley studied the museum’s collection to identify works he would reference in the exhibition, and – during a 2017 visit to St. Louis – he invited people he encountered in neighborhoods in north St. Louis and Ferguson to pose for the paintings.
“It’s really important to talk about the heroic in my work, because so much of the image of the black male in American society focuses on the pathetic, the downtrodden, the beleaguered. What I what I wanted to do was draw a psychological line between the pathetic and it’s opposite,” Wiley to St. Louis Public Radio during a visit to St. Louis. “The confusion between what we receive and what we want to see in art and popular culture has to be my subject matter.”
Wiley became the first African-American artist to paint an official portrait of a U.S. president for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The portrait of Barack Obama was unveiled in February.
“The style that I’m painting in refers almost directly to the center of power in aesthetic terms to Europe,” Wiley told St. Louis Public Radio. “All of the major developments and depiction of power and the depiction of majesty and grace come from Western Europe and the grand traditions of Western European easel painting. I’m a fan of painting and it makes a lot of sense for me to find a way for paintings to still matter in the 21st century.”
Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis will open October 19 and will be on display through February 10, 2019 at theSaint Louis Art Museum. One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park. For more information, call (314) 721-0072 or visit http://www.slam.org/exhibitions/kehinde-wiley.php
