brooklynmuseum:
Going against the longstanding need to conceal...
Going against the longstanding need to conceal queer identities, these artists use portraiture to affirm the complexity of queer desire and experience in the 20th and 21st centuries.
In his lavish portraits, Kehinde Wiley places black and brown men in the context of historical Western portraiture, playing off themes of wealth, power, and status. Miss Susanna Gale is a photograph based on the 1763 painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which shows us a 14-year-old Jamaican sugar plantation heiress. Like the original Miss Gale, Wiley’s subject gently holds a pink rose. He stands against an even more intensely floral background, borrowed from interior design magazines of the 1950s. Part of the series “Black Light,” the work uses its unique combination of references to question privilege, gender, and constructs of masculinity, bringing the present into conversation with the past.
Posted by Isabella Kapur
Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977). “Miss Susanna Gale,” 2009. Photograph. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Abram Kanof and Mrs. Edwin De. T. Bechtel, by exchange, 2009.55. © artist or artist’s estate (Photo: image courtesy of Deitch Projects)
