The Portrait of a Lady Man

Kehinde Wiley (pictured above) is a New York-based painter who is widely known for his naturalistic paintings of people with brown skin in valiant poses. He claims his goal is to "tie the urban street and the way it's been depicted with elements that are not necessarily coded as masculine" as shown in his "Portrait of a Lady".

Portrait of a Lady

Kehinde Wiley has become famous due to his paintings of classical works mixed into contemporary images, where black males replace the former subjects such as a non black king or queen. His paintings are huge and tend to be very detailed as if trying to draw as much attention as possible to the race of the man in the painting. The largeness to his paintings compares with those from history since back then nearly all paintings were crafted at that size to be displayed. Through this Kehinde alludes to the detailed history behind race and sex through a great amount of detail within his artwork. Kehinde blurs the lines between gender, replacing images of women with men and giving these men feminine characteristics. He sends a message for equal ways not just for black men, but women too. His art is often criticized for the femininity of the men within the paintings. Art critics have claimed that the men are portrayed as gay which has caused him to receive quite a bit of hate. However, they are missing the real message to his art. It is the idea that not race, gender, or sexuality should be determining factors of someone’s value or importance and to shed light on this issue our society has struggled with for centuries.