That's partly the success of my work-the ability to have a young black girl walk into the Brooklyn Museum and see paintings she recognizes not because of their art or historical influence but because of their inflection, in terms of colors, their specificity and presence.
Kehinde WileyThe work that I wanted to create wasn't being done then. I was too much concerned about fellow students, professors, institutional style [in Yale].
Kehinde WileyI think that just the nature of art education in schools, it's about packs, you know? Like, we're young wolves running together, creating a consensus. And consensus is antithetical to the art process.
Kehinde WileyI have a really strong suspicion of the romantic nature of portraiture, the idea that you're telling some essential truth about the interior lives of your subject.
Kehinde WileyIn high school I went to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. And this is like Fame. It's like that sort of prototypical, dancers in the hallway, theater students, musical students, art geeks. And it was a kindergarten in the truest sense of the world: a children's garden where I was able to sort of really come into myself as an artist, as a person, sexuality issues - like, all of this became something where there was a firming-up and a knowing that went on.
Kehinde Wiley