There's something really cool about taking oily coloured paste and pushing it around with these hairy sticks and making something that looks like you. That's the magic of painting.
Kehinde WileyRead
I remember the first time I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and saw a Kerry James Marshall painting with black bodies in it on a museum wall... It strengthened me on a cellular level.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the profound impact of visual representation in art, particularly for marginalized communities.
Kehinde Wiley's quote reflects the deep emotional and spiritual connection that individuals can feel when they see their own identities and experiences represented in art. The mention of being 'strengthened on a cellular level' suggests that such representations have the power to affirm one’s existence and heritage, promoting a sense of belonging and empowerment through cultural visibility.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at an art exhibit showcasing works by artists of color.
There's something really cool about taking oily coloured paste and pushing it around with these hairy sticks and making something that looks like you. That's the magic of painting.
This idea that my work is about hip-hop is a little reductive. What I'm interested in is the performance of masculinity, the performance of ethnicity, and how they intermingle across cultures.
What is portraiture? It's choice. It's the ability to position your body in the world for the world to celebrate you on your own terms.
The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It doesn't get any better than that.
Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.
What I try to do is defy expectations in terms of boundaries, whether it is high or low art, pop culture, or fine-art culture. My work is about reconciling myriad cultural influences and bringing them into one picture.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
Use anger to emotionalize whatever thing you intend to do in life - being a painter, a poet or a photographer
As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.
One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.
As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.
Look, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting, it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars.
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