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133 Young Tarentine II (Ndeye Fatou Mbaye), 2022, painting
ABRAM JACKSON: A 19th century French sculpture of a young woman from mythology, her long hair spreading across the waves that drowned her as she sailed to meet her future husband. That’s the melancholy origin point of this painting. Wiley posed his model in the same way and gave the painting the same title – “Young Tarentine”.
But instead of waves, he surrounds this figure with a setting that’s solid, earthly, and incredibly beautiful. Here’s Hodari Davis, Oakland-based Chief Innovation Officer of Edutainment for Equity:
HODARI DAVIS: You're seeing a body that's at rest, but you're seeing this bright life all around this body. it's somewhat of a paradox. You can't tell the difference between a body that's dead or a body that's at rest. And either way you're looking at it, it's uncomfortable, right? But why would a body at rest be uncomfortable?
KEHINDE WILEY: What I'm trying to do is to unearth a full picture of what it means to be laid bare, to be laid prone. The paintings are of people who aren't standing erect, who aren't domineering in monumental space, but there's a kind of elegy surrounding them, there's a sadness that surrounds them. But strangely, there's also kind of growth that's going on in the picture plane. There’s a desire for me to create paintings and sculptures that cradle the subject, that recognize that they’re vulnerable.
They are designed to take up space in the world, to demand presence, but they're also begging that you take them seriously as individuals. I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to stick so heavily onto the small details of each subject in my work, to be able to look at their nails, their hairstyles, the brands that they wear, sort of really filling the lungs of the individual rather than just painting a two-dimensional picture of a moment or a political crisis.
ABRAM JACKSON: Our next audio stop is the oval painting of a man clasping his hands to his chest.
Image: Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), “Young Tarentine II (Ndeye Fatou Mbaye),” 2022. Oil on canvas, 131 7/8 x 300 in. (335 x 762 cm), Framed: 143 5/16 x 311 x 3 15/16 in. (364 x 790 x 10 cm). © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of Galerie Templon, Paris. Photo: Ugo Carmeni.
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By Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
5
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ABRAM JACKSON: A 19th century French sculpture of a young woman from mythology, her long hair spreading across the waves that drowned her as she sailed to meet her future husband. That’s the melancholy origin point of this painting. Wiley posed his model in the same way and gave the painting the same title – “Young Tarentine”.
But instead of waves, he surrounds this figure with a setting that’s solid, earthly, and incredibly beautiful. Here’s Hodari Davis, Oakland-based Chief Innovation Officer of Edutainment for Equity:
HODARI DAVIS: You're seeing a body that's at rest, but you're seeing this bright life all around this body. it's somewhat of a paradox. You can't tell the difference between a body that's dead or a body that's at rest. And either way you're looking at it, it's uncomfortable, right? But why would a body at rest be uncomfortable?
KEHINDE WILEY: What I'm trying to do is to unearth a full picture of what it means to be laid bare, to be laid prone. The paintings are of people who aren't standing erect, who aren't domineering in monumental space, but there's a kind of elegy surrounding them, there's a sadness that surrounds them. But strangely, there's also kind of growth that's going on in the picture plane. There’s a desire for me to create paintings and sculptures that cradle the subject, that recognize that they’re vulnerable.
They are designed to take up space in the world, to demand presence, but they're also begging that you take them seriously as individuals. I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to stick so heavily onto the small details of each subject in my work, to be able to look at their nails, their hairstyles, the brands that they wear, sort of really filling the lungs of the individual rather than just painting a two-dimensional picture of a moment or a political crisis.
ABRAM JACKSON: Our next audio stop is the oval painting of a man clasping his hands to his chest.
Image: Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), “Young Tarentine II (Ndeye Fatou Mbaye),” 2022. Oil on canvas, 131 7/8 x 300 in. (335 x 762 cm), Framed: 143 5/16 x 311 x 3 15/16 in. (364 x 790 x 10 cm). © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of Galerie Templon, Paris. Photo: Ugo Carmeni.