Like commercial stuff is sort of cheap and disposable and fun and can be sort of interesting in many ways. I love being in popular culture and existing in the evolution of popular culture. But it's so different from painting, and it's so different from that sort of slow, contemplative, gradual process that painting is.

You know, the process, I think, is the story. And it goes back, again, to what I said about chance and about radical contingency, the idea that all of this is this well-oiled machine that's been reared up and, like, really articulated and thought about.

Status and class and social anxiety and perhaps social code are all released when you look at paintings of powerful individuals from the past.

My peers at the time: you know, young black kids from off the streets of Harlem, having these conversations with me in my small, dirty little studio up in Harlem.

The expectations of the viewer are what you're asking about. And the expectations of the viewer are manifold. However, they are very fixed, given who I am in the world. People have certain expectations of me as an artist.

I like to play with the conventions around what we expect of paintings historically. But I also like to play with the conventions that you expect from a Kehinde Wiley painting, too.

I think it's possible to allow an artist to go beyond his borders and play.