Beyond the Paint

Transcript

KEHINDE WILEY: The birth of the show starts as the world shuts down. As we see George Floyd slain in the streets of America, I get to work, I start thinking not only about this explosive moment that triggers the whole world into thinking about Black bodies in a different way, but I start thinking about imaging of bodies slain, historically. I start digging into religious pictures of the fallen Christ.

ABRAM JACKSON: The form of this sculpture was inspired by a sixteenth century painting by Hans Holbein, that Wiley first saw around fifteen years ago. The painting shows a claustrophobic view of the dead Christ – as if we’re looking into his tomb from the side. Christ’s body is both utterly ordinary, and, because we know who it is, sacred, at the same time. Wiley was blown away by that image, and gives this bronze figure a similar sense both of the everyday, and the heroic.

KEHINDE WILEY: There's a tradition around the celebration of a life that happens in religious painting, that needs to be retold. There's so many opportunities now to talk about lost potential as a means to create a scaffolding for a better future.

ABRAM JACKSON: When you’re ready to move on from this gallery, go through the doorway to your left. Our next audio stop will be the bronze sculpture of a man, in the center of the room.

Image: Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), “The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (Babacar Mané),” 2021. Bronze and wooden frame with gold letters, 17 11/16 x 38 3/16 x 103 1/8 in., 623.9 lb. (45 x 97 x 262 cm, 283 kg). © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of Galerie Templon, Paris. Photo: Ugo Carmeni

Transcript

ABRAM JACKSON: The scale of this painting is almost overwhelming. Billboard-like. And purposely so. Enormous paintings traditionally featured rulers, battles – images that articulate power. And enormous billboards are where you often find the commercialization of Black culture. Here’s Wiley:

KEHINDE WILEY: At the leading edge of American cultural output is Hip Hop, is Black culture. Hip Hop is the idiom through which so many young people throughout the world define themselves,s or discover themselves, or try on different ways of being. Black American culture has a kind of flavor, kind of sass, a kind of groove that we know to be Hip Hop, and it's something that's found its way into my painting.

Hip Hop also has left a trace that's defined by a kind of perversion of the truth. It's a rubric through which people have sort of deposited their ideas about what it means to be Black, what it means to be male, what it means to be powerful.

ABRAM JACKSON: Wiley based this figure’s pose on a 19th century French sculpture of a woman bitten by a snake.

CLAUDIA SCHMUCKLI: He changes the gender of the figure to be the portrait of this beautiful Black man. And it goes back to his concern with the image of Black masculinity in Western culture, where he really challenges a notion of masculinity that doesn't allow any room for vulnerability. When the models are rendered on the scale of billboards, and we look at them hovering above us, really towering over us, then the idea of their suffering or their pain, or their grief, or their death is automatically catapulted into a much broader context.

ABRAM JACKSON: By the way, you may notice that many of the artworks’ titles start with the title of the piece – here, it’s “Woman bitten by a serpent”, in French – then there is another name in parentheses afterwards. That’s the name of Wiley’s model for that particular painting or sculpture. Here, it is Mamadou Gueye, who posed for this artwork, and several others. Wiley spends a lot of time in West Africa, and many of his models for the works in this show, like Gueye, are Senegalese.

When you’re done in this space, go through the doorway to your left. Our next stop will be at the largest painting in the gallery – showing a young woman lying on green grass and leaves.

Image: Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), “Femme Piquée par un Serpent (Mamadou Gueye),” 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). Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of Galerie Templon, Paris. Photo: Ugo Carmeni.

Transcript

ABRAM JACKSON: The powerful use of light here draws our attention to this man’s lowered eyelids and clasped hands, making us feel we’re in the presence of intense suffering, or prayer.

CLAUDIA SCHMUCKLI: Wiley employs a piercing brightness that bathes the body in aura of sacredness, and it echoes the treatment of the divine in European painting, which has its origins in the veneration of the body of Christ.

KEHINDE WILEY: There's an important part of religious depictions of ecstasy in relationship to human suffering. So much of this is pictured through light, in a way that almost feels erotic - the sense in which the body is prone and flooded fully with this kind of divinity, this rapturous presence.

ABRAM JACKSON: Wiley looked to another kind of Christian imagery for this figure’s pose – a sculpture of a Roman boy named Tarcisius, who was killed for his faith. Both the original sculpture and this painting work to create emotion and reverence in the viewer. The parallels with the oppression of young Black men in this country are inescapable.

KEHINDE WILEY: I think that is, at its core, the central metaphor of this work: this conflict between the humanity of this subject and the brutal fact of human nature. This desire to be seen as present and fully formed, but also having been stricken down and now depicted as lost potential, as evidence of the sacred, as evidence of something beautiful that could have been.

ABRAM JACKSON: Our next audio stop is the bronze sculpture to your left – of a man lying in a wooden case.

Image: Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), “Christian Martyr Tarcisius (El Hadji Malick Gueye),” 2022. Oil on canvas, 72 5/8 x 107 3/4 in. (184.5 x 273.7 cm), Framed: 83 11/16 x 118 3/4 x 3 15/16 in. (212.5 x 301.7 x 10 cm). © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of Galerie Templon, Paris. Photo: Ugo Carmeni

Niña De Los Peines (Sevilla, 1890–1969) - primary

Victor Talking Machine Company (active Camden, New Jersey, 1901–1929) - publisher

Flamenco Record: "Buleria No. 2", "Farruca", 1901–1916

Gift from the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, about 1916. U11s7.4

Courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Niña De Los Peines (Sevilla, 1890–1969) - primary

Victor Talking Machine Company (active Camden, New Jersey, 1901–1929) - publisher

Flamenco Record: "Buleria No. 2", "Farruca", 1901–1916

Gift from the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, about 1916. U11s7.4

Courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Niña De Los Peines (Sevilla, 1890–1969) - primary

Victor Talking Machine Company (active Camden, New Jersey, 1901–1929) - publisher

Flamenco Record: "Farruca", "Tarantas", 1901–1916

Gift from the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, about 1916. U11s7.12

Courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Niña De Los Peines (Sevilla, 1890–1969) - primary

Victor Talking Machine Company (active Camden, New Jersey, 1901–1929) - publisher

Flamenco Record: "Farruca", "Tarantas", 1901–1916

Courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Gift from the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, about 1916. U11s7.12

Niña de los Peines (Sevilla, 1890–1969)

Flamenco Record: "Seguidillas Gitanas", "Sevillanas No. 3", 1901–1916

Gift from the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, about 1916. U11s7.6

Courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Juan Breva (Málaga, 1844–1918) - primary

Victor Talking Machine Company (active Camden, New Jersey, 1901–1929) - publisher

Flamenco Record: "Fandanguillos", "Verdiales", 1901–1916

Gift from the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, about 1916. U11s7.3

Courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Juan Breva (Málaga, 1844–1918) - primary

Victor Talking Machine Company (active Camden, New Jersey, 1901–1929) - publisher

Flamenco Record: "Fandanguillos", "Verdiales", 1901–1916

Gift from the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, about 1916. U11s7.3

Courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.