Kehinde Wiley
From Provisions
About the Artist
"Following in the tradition of the great Renaissance portrait artists, Kehinde Wiley incorporates symbols from religion, mythology, and allegory into his works, creating a sense of classical beauty and timelessness. In the 2003 painting entitled Passing/Posing (Female Prophet Deborah), a young black man floats over the canvas like an ethereal being. Wiley achieved this effect by denying any illusion of depth. As in most of Wiley's paintings, the background is created with a single color, resulting in a flat surface that emphasizes the subject’s central position and monumental scale and thus accentuates his assertive stance. The title Passing/Posing refers to the tension created by the desire to attain the privilege and power traditionally associated with whiteness while preserving self-identity, invoking a sense of irony that reflects both the historical and present crises of black male identity."
--Passing/Posing: Kehinde Wiley at the Brooklyn Museum of Art
"In addition to placing black models in European paintings, Wiley often engages with these source works in a far more transformative way, undertaking both a close examination and a critique of Europe's grand tradition. 'What's most important in my work, to my own mind," the artist says,"is that the history of Western European painting is the history of Western European white men in positions of dominance.'"
--From De(i)fying the Masters, Art in America, 2005
Kehinde Wiley at Deitch Projects
More on the Commodification of Hip Hop
Studying a Hip Hop Nation, University of Texas at Austin
What accounts for the global popularity of hip hop culture products such as rap? What has the “commodification of blackness” done to the black community? How do changes in the cultural marketplace create opportunities for black youth? When something new and novel like hip hop is discovered and quickly packaged, are the socially redeeming aspects of it diluted?
Appropriation and Commodification of Hip-Hop in Games
Does selling games based on hip-hop culture increase understanding of the culture itself? The meaning of hip-hop has been lost in video games. Correction: hip-hop has never been found in video games. Or has it?
BusinessWeek - Hip Hop Gets Down with the Deals
Musicians of an earlier generation used to sneer at corporate sponsorships. For today's stars, they're both cool and lucrative.
