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1006! CHAPTER 32 Contemporary Art Worldwide

Kehinde Wiley. !e paintings and photographs of Basquiat, Marshall, and Simpson, which all fea- ture African Americans as subjects, stand in vivid contrast to the near-total absence of blacks in Western painting and sculpture until the past half century. One major contemporary artist who has set out to correct that discriminatory imbalance is Los Angeles native K"#$%&" W$'"( (b. 1977). Wiley earned his BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA at Yale University and is currently based in New York City, where he was artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Har- lem in 2001–2002. Wiley has achieved renown for his large-scale portraits of young urban African American men. His trademark paintings, however, are reworkings of historically important portraits in which he substitutes )gures of young black men in contemporary dress in order to situate them in what he calls “the )eld of power.”

A characteristic example is Napoleon Lead- ing the Army over the Alps (*$+. 32-4) based on Jacques-Louis David’s painting (*$+. 27-2A) of the same subject. To evoke the era of the original, Wiley presented his portrait of an African Ameri- can Napoleon on horseback in a gilt wood frame. Although in many details an accurate reproduc- tion of David’s canvas, Wiley’s version is by no means a mechanical copy. His heroic narrative unfolds against a vibrantly colored ornate wallpa- per-like background instead of a dramatic sky—a distinctly modernist reminder to the viewer that

this is a painting and not a window onto an Alpine landscape.

Faith Ringgold. Like Bas- quiat and Wiley, M"',$% E&-./&0 (b. 1937) has examined the lives—or, more precisely, the death by lynching (*$+. 32-4A)—of African American men in his art. Similarly, Simpson

32-5 F!"#$ R"%&&'(), Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima? 1983. Acrylic on canvas with fabric borders, quilted, 79 60 * 69 80. Private collection.

In this quilt, a medium associated with women, Ringgold presented a tribute to her mother that also addresses African American culture and the struggles of women to overcome oppression.

32-4A EDWARDS, Tambo, 1993.

32-4 K+$"%)+ W"(+,, Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005. Oil on canvas, 99 * 99. Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn (Collection of Suzi and Andrew B. Cohen).

Wiley’s trademark paintings are reworkings of famous portraits (FIG. 27-2A) in which he substitutes young African American men in contemporary dress in order to situate them in “the field of power.”

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