Kehinde Wiley Quotes

All the world’s a stage. P.T. Barnum: It becomes a circus. But circuses or street pageants or parades have always been useful in a society.They’ve always been useful as a way of critiquing power. The carnivalesque has always been useful as a way of the powerful being mocked in a public space.

Women are expected to identify gender as a starting point. Ethnicities are expected to identify that as a location. Is it ever possible for the artist to imagine a state of absolute freedom? That was my call to arms.

Is it the responsibility of the colored artist or the ethnic artist to create works that are designed to exist in opposition to a certain political structure?

There’s a team of filmmakers who follow me in the streets when I’m finding these models, to give me a sense of legitimacy to a casual stranger. This is New York City. No one’s going to follow you back to your studio.

I think didactic art is boring. I mean, I love it in terms of, like, some of the historical precedents that I’ve learned from. You needed that. We needed those building blocks in terms of – you know, when I look at a great Barbara Kruger, for example, and you’re thinking about, you know, the woman’s position in society – you know, she found a way of making it beautiful, but at the same time it’s very sort of preachy, you know what I mean?

There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe.

While it may seem a little mundane, the material realities of realizing the painting actually have a lot to do with how you should read the painting. For example, we assume that what the model is wearing is what we found him in in the streets. No; in fact, a lot of what happens is that in Photoshop certain aspects are being heightened or diminished. There is no actual material truth in these paintings.

I noticed that the work of my non – I noticed that the work of my friends who were white and male, specifically, existed in a type of freedom that was not bound by certain political questions and assumptions and locations.

In my work, I want to create an understanding, not about what a painting looks like but about what a painting says.

At the same time I really enjoy painting flesh.

I think what’s really interesting and useful about this question is that ultimately all art is a type of self-portraiture. And so in the act of identifying yourself, you’re using others to get to that point. And so you’re parsing out different aspects of different people in the world. You’re choosing not only from America but increasingly globally different aspects of what’s out there.

Mel [Bochner] sets a very high standard. He expects only the best and most thoughtful and rigorous examinations, not only of the history of art but your own practice.