Week 4 - Kehinde Wiley and inter-textuality

St. John the Baptist
2005

Kehinde Wiley Count Potocki, 2008 oil on canvas, 274.3 x 274.3cm

 

Kehinde Wiley Support Army and Look after People, 2007 oil on canvas, 258.4 x 227.3cm

1. Find a clear definition of Intertextuality and quote it accurately on your blog using the APA referencing system. Use your own words to explain the definition more thoroughly. 

"Intertextuality is, thus, a way of accounting for the role of literary and extra-literary materials without recourse to traditional notions of authorship. It subverts the concept of the text as self-sufficient, hermetic totality, foregrounding, in its stead, the fact that all literary production takes place in the presence of other texts."

Intertextuality.The Electronic Labyrinth. (n.d) Retrieved from:

http://elab.eserver.org/hfl0278.html

2. Research Wiley's work and write a paragraph that analyzes how we might make sense of his work. Identify intertextuality in Wiley's work.

I really enjoy looking at Wiley's work. He brought the present into the painting in the renaissance period. His "dramatic backdrops of Old Master portraits with a Day-Glo palette and a hip-hop sensibility, creating a radical artistic mash-up that has been praised as hip, provocative, and technically brilliant."(Visit) and the picture inside is mostly copied from the renaissance artists but with different races of people instead.Wiley blurs the boundaries between traditional and contemporary, self-consciously celebrating and subverting the propaganda of self-aggrandisement in European art,therefore,renaissance paintings. I think he is trying to provoke to his viewers that not only white people makes history that is need to be remembered but also black people too. He's painting is very strong minded as Wiley is also black himself. I see no racism in his painting but the identity of the artist. So the intertextuality in Wiley's work is how he uses renaissance art styles but painting in a different race of people in it.

 

3. Wiley's work relates to next weeks Postmodern theme "PLURALISM" . Read page 46 and discuss how the work relates to this theme.

 

Pluralism in art means to the nature of art-forms and artists as diverse. It has generally believed that during modernity, European people were privileges as high or civilized and was therefore prioritized in the art gallery or the art history book. I don't really know if his work really relates to pluralism or not. I'd rather say it as opposite to pluralism but he's ideas were based on pluralism so I guess it kind of relates to it. In the olden days where Europeans were leveled as the high class and the black people as low. I think Wiley make these paintings were trying to change history through art. He wanted to make the black people just as important as the Europeans at that time. So he couldn't change history, instead he uses his painting skills to provoke what he wants and his ideas.   

4. Comment on how Wiley's work raises questions around social/cultural hierarchies , colonisation, globalisation, stereotypes and the politics which govern a western worldview.

 

Wiley portraits African-American men against rich textile or wallpaper backgrounds whose patterns he has likened to abstractions of sperm. Some of the subjects were famous (rap and sports stars), others not. As I said before, Wiley's paintings are very strong minded and showing his identity and thoughts through his art. I think it is very good how he is showing the society with a different cultural hierarchy other than European and its people like him who can make a difference in our society. Now in the present, there are still racism living in the society and it is hard to change what everybody thinks and make all races treated equally. But with Wiley's strong mind and irony paintings just might make a difference.  

5. Add some reflective comments of your own, which may add more information that
you have read during your research.

Wiley's paintings are really inspiring about cultural and partly racism. I really like his style of painting and the richness of his paints and also the realistic styles of painting is my favorite too. The idea behind his art is very thoughtful. I don't really know the actual word for it, but he's ideas, it's like I know the problem is there and I know about it but I never know that I can try and solve the problem but painting in a inter-textuality way. And the problem being how different races are in different levels and in this case, black people.

 

 

Kehinde Wiley on His Art and Its Influences. Visit. Retrieved from:

http://www.getty.edu/visit/events/kehinde_wiley.html

Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved from:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/kehinde_wiley/

A Hot Conceptualist Finds the Secret of Skin. Retrieved from:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/arts/design/05stud.html