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| Kehinde Wiley |
1. Find a clear definition of Intertextuality and quote it accurately on your blog using the APA referencing system. Use your own words to explain the definition more thoroughly.
"The concept of intertextuality reminds us that each text exists in relation to others. In fact, texts owe more to other texts than to their own makers."
- Daniel Chandler
Chandler, D (2003) Semiotics for Beginners: Intertextuality. (Retrieved 9 Oct, 2003)
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html
Intertextuality comes up around art quite a bit. It describes how nobody's art is truly original, no matter how skilled the artist. We experience it when viewing a work, knowing the inspiration and recognizing the references and influences behind it.
2. Research Wiley's work and write a paragraph that analyzes how we might make sense of his work. Identify intertextuality in Wiley's work.
Wiley is known for his amazing highly realistic and colorful paintings of African-American men clad in urban and hip hop-ish clothing. A lot of their poses are connotative of power and also class, but contrast strongly with the delicate flocked walls, rococo patterning and attention to detail.
The people depicted in each work are mainly people he sees out in the streets. Wiley raises them to a new level, surrounding them with luxurious furs, placing them on top of magnificent horses or clothing them in what we could call, rad gangster clothing. And even if not all his works include them doing all those things, their placement in the bold Renaissance style works gives them status/power enough.
There is certainly a lot of intertextuality visible in his works, "Wiley creates a fusion of period styles, ranging from French Rococo, Islamic architecture and West African textile design to urban hip hop."
3. Wiley's work relates to next week’s postmodern theme "PLURALISM". Read page 46 and discuss how the work relates to this theme.
I think Wiley's works relate to pluralism through mainly the replacement of Europeans by African Americans in the paintings, strongly supporting the idea of pluralism (through a postmodern perspective) and confronts the viewer with the age old social issues of discrimination against non- Caucasians, the belief from hundreds of years ago that any other culture could never make it to a higher class. With his paintings, there is a strong sense of want for racial equality. There seems to be a mixture of identities with the synthesis of different cultures, we see Renaissance and Baroque, styles from Europe yet the occupants of each work are different to what viewers may be usually used to seeing - this is basically the main core of what connects Wiley's works to pluralism.
4. Comment on how Wiley's work raises questions around social/cultural hierarchies , colonisation, globalisation, stereotypes and the politics which govern a western worldview.
One of the main questions his works raised for me was, how come there is such a huge contrast between races? If race was never an issue, then the African-American men in these paintings wouldn't appear so out of place to viewers. What if before the Renaissance, there was no such thing as discrimination against skin color and black people were allowed to have their portraits painted too? I think what he is implying is that, the only type of contrast there should be is between time and style rather than ethnicity.
Wiley's paintings question the role of the African-American in what has usually been a politics of aesthetics.
His paintings are basically a beautiful way of exposing the truth. The way that viewers think about race and masculinity are changed through them, the paintings which suggest that another world is possible.
5. Add some reflective comments of your own, which may add more information that you have read during your research.
Wiley's paintings are truly amazing. I really like them!There is something very hearty about his works, they have a much warmer feel than that of the Renaissance paintings which appear a bit less vibrant,bleak. (perhaps the use of colors or due to the paint fading? I'm not sure.)
I also like how Wiley does not really choose his models, they simply come into view,
"He enjoyed watching people walk on 125th Street and felt that this main Harlem thoroughfare had a runway quality to it, with people displaying their beauty and style as they went about their daily activities." - D.I.A. (Detroit Institute of Arts)
He is a really talented and intelligent artist.
Wow, just wow.
> Artist: Kehinde Wileyhttp://artcreationstation.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/artist-kehinde-wiley/
>Kehinde Wiley Artist Profile
>What is Pluralism?http://pluralism.org/pages/pluralism/what_is_pluralism
>Kehinde Wileywww.artnet.com/awc/kehinde-wiley.html
1 comments:
I can also sense the "strong sense of want for racial equality" in Wiley's paintings, it's like he's getting too sick of racists in this world, he's speaking out in a kind of subtle way of protesting against it.
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