For our museum trip, we visited the Brooklyn Museum located near the prospect height in Brooklyn. This museum is classified as the third largest museum in size with more than one million art collection. The entrance of the museum has around three rolling glass doors through which we could see the ticket area and the backyard. The museum is composed of different compartments and each of them has specific art collections such as the Egyptian art collection, the American Art collection and the African art collection. I saw many artworks collection in the museum that day, however the show “Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley” by Kehinde Wiley was extremely attractive and nicely exposed on the third floor of the museum.
The artwork Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005 by Kehinde Wiley replicates the posture of the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte in Jacques-Louis David’s painting Bonaparte Crossing the Alps at Grand-Saint-Bernard. Kehinde Wiley represented an anonymous young black man dressed in contemporary clothing for the posture of Napoleon.
Kehinde Wiley is a Nigerian-American portrait painter based in New York City. Born in 1977 Kehinde Wiley is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of African American men in heroic poses. He got his bachelor’s degree of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute and earned his Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art. In all his work, he combines classical painting and pop culture. In his career, Wiley expanded his works and started depicting his subjects, young black models or music icons, in heroic defeat as well as triumph. Many of his artworks have been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
In 2008, he painted Randerson Romualdo Cordeiro, a young black boy bleach blond hair, wearing a black baseball cap backwards, and a red sleeveless tank top.
In addition, he painted the portrait of Mickalene Thomas, the coyote an African American artist. In this portrait the subject is depicted in grey pants and a white tank top, with a feathered headdress. She stands heroically, with her head held high looking down toward the viewer. He was also commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of the former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all the US presidents.
The artwork Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps is a monumental painting representing a youthful black man in fashionable street wear mounted on a rearing horse and pointing upwards. The young black man has tattoos on his right arm and is dressed in a camouflage shirt and cargo pants. In addition, he has a voluminous golden cloak and a red saber attached at his waist and wears Timberland boots, with a white and black bandana around the head. Wiley created a difference between this painting with the David’s painting by an elaborated gold colored frame that represent the frame of a powerful man around the portrait.
In Art history often comparing and contrasting is the way to represent the past in the present. Therefore, the goal of showing the works of Wiley and David face to face in the Brooklyn museum is to inspire the new generation and help them see themselves in the art of the past. Most importantly, to show the political power of art that Wiley and David have according to the time which also reveals how race, masculinity and power embellish the writing of history.
This painting meant to show that black people are also powerful and capable of accomplishing great things such as saving the world. As we can see on the painting the black male subject assumes the same pose with the same confidence in his face and similar body language as napoleon does. This is the way for Kehinde Wiley to say yes, Black people should be positively included in the history.
After this museum trip, I believe that the young generation should be visit more museums and learn about history. Art can be the best way of learning our past and representing our image in the society.
This museum trip made me understand the true power of Art and how that could influence the society. I also have learned that we can have different opinion or see things differently, but the most important is the lesson we learn after all. Wiley is trying to change the way the minorities are represented or seeing in the society despite the challenges.
