Mountains, quilts and a wedding ring: why the Obama portraits matter
With black audience underrepresented in museum audiences, the Obamas' portraits could start a vital conversation about who gets to enjoy and critique art
Publisher: Prospect Magazine
18 February 2018
Text Bee Tajudeen
Read more: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/mountains-quilts-and-a-wedding-ring-why-the-obama-portraits-matter
Barack Obama is effortlessly cool. His post-presidency photographs showed him jet skiing on Richard Branson’s private island. Every year, he gives us a Spotify playlist featuring hip-hop, soul and jazz. His mic drop moment will forever be in our meme library.
So it was of little surprised that the coolest president ever chose Kehinde Wiley to immortalise him in the Smithsonian public presidential collection. Wiley—who is also a popular and cool contemporary painter—is known for creating grandiose masters of African American subjects, re-imagined as noble figures.
The portrait of Barack Obama was slightly different from his usual style, apparently as per his request. It may have been this that compelled Wiley to portray the president without a tie, capturing his self-assured, free personality without any props to bolster his authority.
Obama floats against a background of flowers and foliage, with his wedding band one of the only items visibly on show—thus signifying to future generations that not only was Obama the most powerful man in the world, he should be remembered as a loving husband, rather than embroiled in insecure hypermasculinity like his successor.
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