Strange Facts About Obama’s Portrait and its Painter Kehinde Wiley
The official portrait of Barack Obama contains some strange details. The creator of the painting, Kehinde Wiley, has a bizarre story.
On February 12th, the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were unveiled at the famed Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the “nation’s only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House”. This prestigious art exhibit contains iconic paintings such as “The Lansdowne Portrait” of George Washington. It also contains some more controversial entries such as Bill Clinton’s portrait which, according to its painter, features the shadow of the infamous stained dress.
“If you look at the left-hand side of it there’s a mantel in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.
And so the Clintons hate the portrait. They want it removed from the National Portrait Gallery. They’re putting a lot of pressure on them.
– Philly News, Painter says he included Monica Lewinsky’s dress in Bill Clinton portrait
Barack Obama’s portrait, with its bright colors and lush green background, will undoubtedly stand out from the more conventional pieces on display in the president’s hall. However, a closer look at the painting and its painter’s past reveals a bizarre subtext.
Kehinde Wiley
Wiley is mostly known for his colorful depictions of young black males over classical backdrops inspired from masterworks.
Wiley describes his approach as “interrogating the notion of the master painter, at once critical and complicit.” His figurative paintings “quote historical sources and position young black men within that field of power”. In this manner, his paintings fuse history and style in a unique and contemporary manner. His art has been described as having homoerotic qualities. Wiley has used a sperm motif as symbolic of masculinity and gender.
– Wikipedia, Kehinde Wiley