UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology SPRING 2024 - Flipbook - Page 8
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
KEHINDE WILEY
"...if someone is alive in the world, they already have something quite grand going for them"
W
hen I began studying painting and drawing
at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)
in 2005, Kehinde Wiley was 28 years old
and already a rising star in the art world, quickly gaining
international attention. A 1999 graduate of SFAI, Wiley
stood out from the long list of famous alums because
he was young, Black, and making paintings that were
said by art critics to bridge Hip-hop culture with Old
Masters’ prowess and command. In fact, Wiley’s trips
to the Huntington Library’s galleries during his youth
were instructive; he was fascinated by the British Grand
Manner painters’ elevation of portraiture, the idealization
and opalescence both in what was portrayed within
paintings as well as the boldness of color and models’
poses, manner, and attire. This included The Blue
Boy, a painting by Thomas Gainsborough that is in the
Huntington’s collection, and that Wiley’s connection with
would very recently be solidi昀椀ed in current art history.
and more, it is important to note that this is a continually
relevant and intentional point of entry on Wiley’s part for
three reasons: his desire for Black people to be able to
see themselves on the walls during visits to museums and
galleries, his knowledge that museums and other cultural
institutions would die if they were unable to continue to
entice new generations to join as members and engage
as visitors/viewers and performers/artists, and, perhaps
most importantly, his desire for the root causes for harm
of Black lives to be addressed.
For Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence, the major
exhibition San Francisco’s de Young Museum mounted
last year, Abram Jackson, the inaugural Director of
Interpretation for Fine Art Museums of San Francisco,
collaborated with a team he curated of “local community
interpretation partners” for building the narrative and
public-facing materials to present and accompany Wiley’s
exhibition. André Bloodstone Singleton, an educator,
By the time his o昀케cial Presidential painting of former
human rights activist, multi-disciplinary artist, and death
President Barack Obama was unveiled in 2018, Wiley’s
doula, was one of these collaborators. In the Fall 2023
work had already exhibited widely, including at the
issue of Fine Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s
membership journal, Singleton wrote an article titled
Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington,
D.C. Now, 25 years since his time at SFAI, you will never “Interpreting Kehinde Wiley” about the interpretation
work’s importance in “using the word ‘Black’ as a main
hear Wiley’s work referred to as “Hip-hop,” but you will
identi昀椀er and the word ‘people’ in lieu of ‘bodies,’” and
hear his work referenced often in complex conversations
how much the language we use to discuss Wiley’s work
about race, identity, and how we use language when
discoursing on the concerns, cultures, and identity of, and matters. He went on to compare the models’ positions
in repose to his own experience with cancer: “Wiley’s
continued systemic roadblocks and violence upon Black
and brown people. While it is true that Wiley has painted subjects lying down are no di昀昀erent than I was when I
was lying down getting chemotherapy. The opportunity
Black models in the poses of paintings by Old Masters
to shift words about the meaning of art is the sacred
such as Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Artemisia Gentileschi,
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