Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic

by Connie H. Choi

Filled with reproductions of Kehinde Wiley’s bold, colorful, and monumental work, this book encompasses the artist’s various series of paintings as well as his sculptural work—which boldly explore ideas about race, power, and tradition. Celebrated for his classically styled paintings that depict African American men in heroic poses, Kehinde Wiley is among the expanding ranks of prominent black artists—such as Sanford Biggers, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—who are reworking art history and questioning its depictions of people of color. Co-published with the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the major touring retrospective, this volume surveys Wiley’s career from 2001 to the present. It includes early portraits of the men Wiley observed on Harlem’s streets, and which laid the foundation for his acclaimed reworkings of Old Master paintings by Titian, van Dyke, Manet, and others, in which he replaces historical subjects with young African American men in contemporary attire: puffy jackets, sneakers, hoodies, and baseball caps. Also included is a generous selection from Wiley’s ongoing World Stage project; several of his enormous Down paintings; striking male portrait busts in bronze; and examples from the artist’s new series of stained glass windows. Accompanying the illustrations are essays that introduce readers to the arc of Wiley’s career, its critical reception, and ongoing evolution.

Hardcover | 192 pages | Penguin Random House | 2015

Eugenie Tsai (Editor) is the John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, and Managing Curator, Contemporary Art, at the Brooklyn Museum. She joined the Museum in 2007 and since then has organized such exhibitions as Lee Mingwei: “The Moving Garden” (2011); Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective (2011); the Raw/Cooked series, devoted to emerging Brooklyn artists (2011‒13), and Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond (2014). Previously she was Director of Curatorial Affairs at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York. She has also been Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Independently, she organized Robert Smithson, which received the International Association of Art Critics’ first place award for the best monographic exhibition of 2005. Dr. Tsai received a B.A. from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.