The Seattle Art Museum presents: Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

“Kehinde Wiley is one of the leading American artists to emerge in the last decade and he has been ingeniously reworking the grand portraiture traditions. Since ancient times the portrait has been tied to the representation of power, and in European courts and churches, artists and their patrons developed a complex repository of postures and poses and refined a symbolic language… Wiley’s portraits are highly stylized and staged, and draw attention to the dialectic between a history of aristocratic representation and the portrait as a statement of power and the individual’s sense of empowerment.”

Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic

Seattle Art Museum – Until May 8 2016

(Image: Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (detail), 2013, Kehinde Wiley)

 

***