Alijah Webb

From Haarlem to Harlem: Kehinde Wiley’s Willem van Heythuysen

Kehinde Wiley has produced a strong body of work that exists as an exploration of themes of black visibility both inside and outside of exhibition spaces. The pieces, such as Willem van Heythuysen invite the viewer to contemplate the layered complexities of his work. In order to understand Kehinde Wiley’s paintings, one must pay close attention to the visual references he is making and how these references work in tandem with conceptions of societal structure and how those societal constraints are evident in the way black Americans are exhibited and considered in the context of American culture. He very cleverly plays with different layers of conceptions of what art “should” be versus what it is and can be. Wiley makes visual references to Old Master paintings, and in doing so he brings up issues of social status, cultural markers, and colonialism. Through the exploration of messages, we can find themes of black visibility and the way that black bodies are seen inside artistic contexts as well as generally through the colonial gaze. By alluding to the cotton industry, Wiley shows that black bodies do not have to be viewed as a means of labor, they can be just as beautiful as the white bodies depicted in Old Master paintings. In doing so, he shifts cultural and beauty standards to adhere to a new narrative, a narrative that acknowledges the effects of colonialism and the colonization of black bodies while pushing beyond it, creating a visual narrative that provides for a new understanding of how black bodies and black art can be considered in historically white spaces. All contemporary black artists are hailed as the Basquiat of their time, while white painters can be Warhol, Rembrandt, Picasso, or most radically, themselves. Kehinde Wiley pushes against this narrative through his powerful works emulating the masters and creating a body of work that is decidedly black, decidedly masterful, and decidedly a product of the 21st century