Kehinde Wiley valuation
Puts young Black men into the poses of European state portraiture, against wallpaper that grows over them.
Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles in 1977 and studied at San Francisco Art Institute and Yale.
What a work by Kehinde Wiley is worth
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Bio
Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles in 1977 and studied at San Francisco Art Institute and Yale. He casts his sitters on the street, shows them Old Master portraits of monarchs, generals and saints, and paints them in the pose they choose — in their own clothes, at heroic scale, against a decorative ground drawn from textile and wallpaper design that curls forward over the figure. The World Stage series extended the method across Africa, Asia, Brazil and Israel. His official portrait of Barack Obama was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018.
The paintings are unique, large and produced with studio assistance, which is stated rather than concealed and is consistent with the historical practice the work refers to. Demand has consistently outrun supply and institutional buying is strong. The decorative grounds are painted in flat, saturated passages that show retouching readily, and the canvases are frequently presented in elaborate specified frames that form part of the work. Bronze sculpture and stained glass exist in small editions, and there is a print output in screenprint and archival pigment.
The Obama portrait, and what circulates
Wiley's portrait of Barack Obama, unveiled at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington on 12 February 2018, made him one of the best-known painters in the world: Obama seated against a wall of leaves and flowers chosen for Chicago, Hawaii and Kenya. He and Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama, were the first African American artists commissioned for the official portraits of a president and first lady.
The painting belongs to the national collection, and the reproductions of it sold since, as posters and prints, are souvenirs rather than editions. Original works by Wiley come through his galleries with invoices and documentation, and the ornate frames many of his paintings come in belong with them. Since 2019 he has also run Black Rock Senegal, an artists' residency in Dakar.
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