Obama Portrait artist - Kehinde Wiley controversy

[SaiWa]

I was responding to a poster who brought up race and how it applies to this situation. I didn't innitiate the 'triggered' response.

Why feed a troll?

But you are right u are not the one that's triggered in here... forgive me. Just had my first cup of coffe and I am still on Australian time zone...

 

[Rational Poster]

I know it's not relevant today, but John Sinclair - who was the manager of the protopunk bands MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, my dad's band the Up and a self proclaimed communist revolutionary in the late 60's - was busted with two joints, and was sentenced to 10 years.

John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, my dad's band and some others organized a concert/event called "Ten for Two", and Sinclair was eventually released due to national coverage.

(my dad's band is in the beginning, he's on drums )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sinclair_Freedom_Rally

Was he black tho?

 

[Rational Poster]

Michelle's painting doesn't look anything like her.

I like Obama's.

I also like the two in the OP.

I just like art, and a lot of my tastes in the art world would be crtiqued as amateurish. I like raw, gritty, unfinished looking pieces.

Refinement and an aesthetic that screams technical mastery is awesome, for sure. But I like raw emotion laid out on a canvas more, even in the absence of mastery of the craft.

I like Michelle's better even if it doesn't look like her much.

Obama is sitting in that chair weird even if it really looks like him.

 

[cincymma79]

Who cares

 

[Pseudo Sane]

It's stylistic, and art is often meant to jolt the senses of the viewer.
Yes the reaction would be different if the roles were reversed for the races in the painting, because American history is of Whites enslaving and oppressing Blacks, not the other way around. People expect to sweep away history under the rug and act like nothing happened.

One can also say, just imagine if Jesus and Christianity was an African religion, would White Americans embrace it? We typically never consider that god and his messenger in our society is always portrayed as White. And Blacks are expected to worship this god and accept god as White.

Christianity is Semitic in origin and universal in aspiration. Anyone who thinks that Christianity is somehow a white American religion is being deliberately obtuse.

 

[Pseudo Sane]

what an odd thing to say.

Lol. This looks like my quote rather than the artists.

I think it is a bit odd too.

 

[MicroBrew]

Christianity is Semitic in origin and universal in aspiration. Anyone who thinks that Christianity is somehow a white American religion is being deliberately obtuse.

Yes it is mostly Semitic, and Semites (by and large) are considered Caucasoid and classified as White by the US gov.

It does aim to be a universal message, but from a secular rationalist P.O.V. one can not escape the fact it was started by MiddleEastern Caucasoids and its messenger is Caucasoid.

What are the odds of White Americans being Christian if the religion was founded in Sub Saharan Africa and Jesus looked like a Bantu speaker or if the religion was started by Amerindians.

 

[Mark Cutting]

I know it's not relevant today, but John Sinclair - who was the manager of the protopunk bands MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, my dad's band the Up and a self proclaimed communist revolutionary in the late 60's - was busted with two joints, and was sentenced to 10 years.

John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, my dad's band and some others organized a concert/event called "Ten for Two", and Sinclair was eventually released due to national coverage.

(my dad's band is in the beginning, he's on drums )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sinclair_Freedom_Rally

They either plead down or there were additional charges.

 

[Mark Cutting]

I know it's not relevant today, but John Sinclair - who was the manager of the protopunk bands MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, my dad's band the Up and a self proclaimed communist revolutionary in the late 60's - was busted with two joints, and was sentenced to 10 years.

John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, my dad's band and some others organized a concert/event called "Ten for Two", and Sinclair was eventually released due to national coverage.

(my dad's band is in the beginning, he's on drums )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sinclair_Freedom_Rally

That's nest about your dad's band. Very cool.

 

[Ruprecht]

Lol. This looks like my quote rather than the artists.

I think it is a bit odd too.

It's not the artist's quote, it's the article's author. They are referring to his well known practice of obtaining his models from the streets.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

It's stylistic, and art is often meant to jolt the senses of the viewer.
Yes the reaction would be different if the roles were reversed for the races in the painting, because American history is of Whites enslaving and oppressing Blacks, not the other way around. People expect to sweep away history under the rug and act like nothing happened.

One can also say, just imagine if Jesus and Christianity was an African religion, would White Americans embrace it? We typically never consider that god and his messenger in our society is always portrayed as White. And Blacks are expected to worship this god and accept god as White.

Isn't Christianity technically an African religion?

 

[Pseudo Sane]

Yes it is mostly Semitic, and Semites (by and large) are considered Caucasoid and classified as White by the US gov.

It does aim to be a universal message, but from a secular rationalist P.O.V. one can not escape the fact it was started by MiddleEastern Caucasoids and its messenger is Caucasoid.

What are the odds of White Americans being Christian if the religion was founded in Sub Saharan Africa and Jesus looked like a Bantu speaker or if the religion was started by Amerindians.

Pretty good, in my opinion? Christianity has been pretty transformative and has made serious inroads in basically every culture it has encountered, so it is reasonably safe to assume that Christianity would have made those cultures look very different over the last 2000 years, and that people would still have picked it up regardless of its origin.

You don't have to agree with Christianity or understand why people find it attractive, but it spread as a religion to so many different peoples because it appealed to them, not for no reason at all.

Honestly the African church's claim to ownership of Christianity is equal to that of Europe and America.

Also lol at caucasoid.

 

[redwire]

Eh... I'm more interested in the stylistic shift.
The choice of an artist known for painting black people in contexts where you'd traditionally expect a white person... seems appropriate.

Spoiler

I agree with the bolded - I would be more concerned about the stylistic shift. This isn't just 'art', this is a presidential portrait, which I would assume is intended for the ages. Getting Picasso to officially do a cubist version of Taft might be 'great art', but it wouldn't be a 'great presidential portrait'. Realism is timeless, but stylistic renderings come and go and may eventually be considered somewhat cliche or even corny.

 

[nac386]

I am not a fan of the portraits. Barack's is definitely better than Michelle's, but neither is a style that I am really fan of. Michelle's doesn't even really look like her. I don't think I'd even be able to identify that as Michelle Obama if I saw it.

As for the "controversy," I think it's silly. The portraits of the Obamas are perfectly fine, nothing at all controversial. If the artist who completed one of the portraits has previously done art work that you do not like, then don't buy that artist's art work. Anybody who has ever been to a modern art museum should not be surprised, offended, or have their feelings hurt by paintings.

This reminds me a bit of all the phony outrage over Obama inviting Common to the White House.

 

[MicroBrew]

Pretty good, in my opinion? Christianity has been pretty transformative and has made serious inroads in basically every culture it has encountered, so it is reasonably safe to assume that Christianity would have made those cultures look very different over the last 2000 years, and that people would still have picked it up regardless of its origin.

You don't have to agree with Christianity or understand why people find it attractive, but it spread as a religion to so many different peoples because it appealed to them, not for no reason at all.

Honestly the African church's claim to ownership of Christianity is equal to that of Europe and America.

Also lol at caucasoid.

I disagree the odds are pretty good of White America accepting Christianity if it was an African religion. There is simply no way that most Whites would have ever prayed to and elevated a Sub Saharan African as god's son, considering the racial attitudes prevalent in America towards Blacks.

Yes it is appealing but it also spread in some areas by force or coersion. And it would not have been adopted by Europeans and MiddleEastern people if most of the figures were Black Africans. Both regions have historically viewed Blacks as inferior, and the MENA region still views Blacks as inferior.

Christianity in what is continental Africa is older than Europe, but we are talking about adoption of Christianity, not the foundational origin of the religion.

I mention "Caucasoid" because race matters, it has been a defining feature of MiddleEastern and European society. Even when we look at the Old Testament, we see that Semites demonized dark skinned people. From a rationalist POV, the religion was obviously not started by Asians or Africans. And if it were, it would not have caught on in Europe or the MiddleEast, especially the later.

 

[HatchetHarry]

This doesn’t surprise me. The entire Obama family are disgusting racists. Michelle is especially a racist piece of shit. Her comments when Barrack won the presidency were disgusting.

 

[MicroBrew]

Isn't Christianity technically an African religion?

It's origins go back to the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. The conquering Semites adopted the Sumeria creation myth and then over time fashioned the Abrahamic religion. It may technically have a lot to owe to Egyptian religious ideas, but people don't generally associate Egypt with African culture, because the later alludes to SubSaharan Africans.

 

[Pseudo Sane]

I disagree the odds are pretty good of White America accepting Christianity if it was an African religion. There is simply no way that most Whites would have ever prayed to and elevated a Sub Saharan African as god's son, considering the racial attitudes prevalent in America towards Blacks.

Yes it is appealing but it also spread in some areas by force or coersion. And it would not have been adopted by Europeans and MiddleEastern people if most of the figures were Black Africans. Both regions have historically viewed Blacks as inferior, and the MENA region still views Blacks as inferior.

Christianity in what is continental Africa is older than Europe, but we are talking about adoption of Christianity, not the foundational origin of the religion.

I mention "Caucasoid" because race matters, it has been a defining feature of MiddleEastern and European society. Even when we look at the Old Testament, we see that Semites demonized dark skinned people. From a rationalist POV, the religion was obviously not started by Asians or Africans. And if it were, it would not have caught on in Europe or the MiddleEast, especially the later.

Why is Christianity so popular in Africa?

For example, there are more practicing Anglicans in Africa than in the UK at this point.

Are Subsaharan Africans just more open-minded?

Also, where in the old testament did semities demonize dark-skinned people? Not saying it didn't happen, just curious what you are referring to.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Okay, I am a bit choked my post way down the previous thread that got derailed has been dumped. Since I put some work into it and that makes me sad, I'm going to repost again, in the hope that this one does not go so far off topic.

This is going to be long read, so buckle up.

For those who don't know, there is a minor controversy over the Obamas having chosen Kehinde Wiley as their portrait artist for their official portraits. Wiley has previously done paintings depicting a black woman holding the severed head of a white woman. The Obamas have thus been accused of being racist themselves.

Here are the portraits in question:

A lot of people have deflected any criticism of the pieces on the grounds that it is just a new take on an old biblical theme that has been depicted in art many times; the killing of the Assyrian general Holofernes by Judith. The story goes that Judith, a Jewish widow, seduces and beheads Holofernes to save her city. The essential argument is that anyone who critiques the piece is a racist who hates it because Judith is depicted as black, and who also hates freedom of religion. This is a bit of a runaround.

The use of biblical themes to get around the censorship of the Church has been a thing in Western art since before Brunelleschi started painting using perspective. It also stopped being a thing a good long time before Serrano unveiled the Piss Christ in 1987. So if someone is still using biblical themes in our modern context, it's either because they are trying to reconnect with the rich history of religious artwork, or because they are appropriating it for their own purposes.

At a guess, Wiley likes being racially-charged and transgressive and imagines himself to be saying something very deep about power relationships, because the art community laps that shit up, and you have to play the game to get ahead.

Don't take my word for it. See the quotes from a sympathetic interview with the man himself:

http://nymag.com/arts/art/rules/kehinde-wiley-2012-4/

"In a soaring studio on the outskirts of Beijing, where Kehinde Wiley came in 2006 to set up the first of his several global production outposts, the 35-year-old painter is showing off his women. Most of them are still incomplete—their faces need touching up, their gowns (custom-designed for his models by Givenchy) lack texture. But one already stands out: a tall, elegant black woman in a long blue dress—the canvas is enormous, eight feet by ten feet—calmly staring down the viewer. In one hand, she holds a knife. In the other, a cleanly severed brunette female head. “It’s sort of a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing,” Wiley says.

[....]

His next gallery show, called “Mr. President,” will feature portraits of presidents of various African countries as they wish to be portrayed, he says, and will address “notions of taste and vulgarity.” Painting a powerful political figure is different from pulling a kid off the streets, of course. “It’s redundant, almost,” he says. But as Wiley sees it, it’s not his job to judge. “The games I’m playing have much more to do with using the language of power and the vocabulary of power to construct new sentences,” Wiley says. “It’s about pointing to empire and control and domination and misogyny and all those social ills in the work, but it’s not necessarily taking a position. Oftentimes it’s actually embodying it.”


It's hard for me to get upset about it, because this is the kind of thinking that dominates art theory. I wouldn't even say Wiley himself is actually racist, since he was depicting his own assistant as Holofernes, and presumably he doesn't actually want her beheaded.

But aside from the fact that the artist himself viewed it as a 'kill whitey' thing, the obvious point when comparing it to other works on the topic on Judith and Holofernes is that Holofernes is a man, and they are typically depicted as being of the same race (although a number of depictions have Holofernes as fairly Semitic, and Judith as pretty white; read into that whatever you like).

See for example this depiction by Caravaggio, for a classic depiction of the same scene. I tend to prefer Caravaggio's depiction, which is hardly a knock on Wiley, because it's hard to be compared to one of the great works of one of the greatest artists ever:

So obviously Wiley sees himself saying something about race, probably race in the United States, but he is appropriating the piece on a purely surface level.

Many of the most interesting depictions of Judith and Holofernes, historically, are about sex and power relationships between men and women; about the danger or the power of female sexuality.

Wiley is turning that on its head by using a black woman as Judith, and depicting Holofernes as a young white woman, but in my opinion this depiction doesn't track very well, because it doesn't draw on the story itself for any greater depth of meaning. A young white woman is not, in any respect, in a similar position to a young black woman as Holofernes was to Judith. So as a message it falls flat, aside from any visceral reaction one feels one way of the other at the violence depicted therein, and the race of the victim and the killer.

I will say I like some of Wiley's compositions from a technical perspective, but aside from his impressive gift for self-promotion, he isn't much of a thinker. But I can't really blame him for that. These particular works are the sort of tired, derivative, intellectually-bankrupt shit that the academy gulps down like chum.

Three final thoughts:

First, the Judith portraits themselves are obviously racial in tone, arguably racist, and certainly political, by the artist's own admission. I don't think they should be taken seriously, however, because I don't think Wiley takes them seriously. Wiley is a pop artist doing what pop artists do to sell art; being trendy and controversial. Race and violence is trendy and sure to attract attention. Moreover, the majority of his art isn't in a similarly racially-charged vein, so it would be a stretch to refer to his art as racist, unless copying the old masters and replacing their works with black people and flowers is cultural appropriation.

Second, artists should probably spend less time being deliberately edgy for edginess sake. I think most artists are incredibly caviler and forget that most people don't realize they are just playing a game; some people actually take this sort of thing to heart, which leads to a serious loss of context. For someone like the TS from the original thread on this topic, I genuinely don't think it would occur to him that someone might create a painting like that out of anything but deep racial hatred. For someone who has some knowledge of art history (and I have only a little), they are more likely to read Wiley as being serious, but only in the same way that anyone playing a game is serious, within the bounds of the game.

Third, I don't want to speculate what Obama was doing when he made this pick for his portrait. I tend to assume that any current or former president is smarter than me, so I would think he or his advisers would be aware that people might make this connection, but without asking the man himself, there is simply no way to know. It might be as simple as Obama liking Wiley's style, which is hardly impossible; Wiley has real talent. He might like to support a famous black artist, which is legitimate. Maybe it was done out of some cultural or racial animus; its not impossible either, given that Obama appears sympathetic to charmers like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. The point is we don't know, and this whole thing has been overblown.

All that art in this post looks like shit. Your post is good though. Props.

 

[MicroBrew]

This doesn’t surprise me. The entire Obama family are disgusting racists. Michelle is especially a racist piece of shit. Her comments when Barrack won the presidency were disgusting.

Michelle was just being blunt. To the right that makers her uppity, and the right hates uppity or outspoken Blacks. The right only wants passive docile Blacks who will accept and be content with White dominance. They hate the Obamas, like they hate any liberal or Democrat Black politician, because they (the right) perceives the Obamas as not accepting America as a country where White rule should not be questioned.