Kehinde Wiley

TOWARDS A NEW WORLD PORTRAIT

“American black culture,” notes the artist Kehinde Wiley, “has become globalized -- and is crazily popular.” Wiley should know, since his painting has taken him to Africa, Brazil, China, India and now Israel (among other places). His new solo exhibition at the Jewish Museum, “The World Stage: Israel,” presents more than a dozen of the artist’s meticulous, heroically scaled portraits of individual young men posed against exquisitely detailed, brightly colored decorative backgrounds. The brashly optimistic scope of Wiley’s project is particularly clear in the context of Israel, and the Jewish Museum.

Today, Israel’s dark-skinned population includes Arab Israelis as well as Jewish Ethiopian immigrants, who first arrived in Israel in the 1970s and continue to come at a rate of around 300 people every month. Wiley’s models, who he turned up in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in 2010, include the hip-hop artist Kalkidan Mashasha as well as casually dressed urbanites who might be found at a disco or shopping mall almost anywhere. 

The exhibition is given a special Jewish Museum spin by juxtaposing Wiley’s paintings with a selection of ancient Jewish and Arabic ritual fabrics from the museum collection. Among the items, chosen by the artist, is a 17th-century Venetian Torah ark cover in purple silk as well as several elaborate cut-paper Mizrahs, examples of the traditional wall ornament that indicates east, the direction of prayer. It’s worth noting as well that Wiley’s custom-made wooden frames for his paintings include carvings of the Lion of Judah and the blessing hands of the Kohen, or high priest.

The exhibition began to come together after the museum acquired Wiley’s Alios Itzhak, a nine-foot-tall painting from the series purchased with the help of the Tanabaum Family Foundation. Exhibition organizer Karen Levitov, associate curator at the museum, explained. “We saw the painting for sale and recognized the background was based on a papercut from our collection. We were amazed and surprised, since we had no idea Kehinde had done this. We pooled together all our resources, and almost immediately upon buying it, we decided to do an entire exhibition about the artist’s ‘World Stage’ series.”

“We proposed the idea to show the historical materials,” Levitov went on, “and Wiley jumped right on it, even though he has never shown source material before.”

Alios Itzhak -- a slim young man in a bright blue t-shirt, who looks cockily out at the viewer with his hand on his hip -- is making an appearance off site, as well. The museum’s ad agency, Our Man In Havana, has done a 20 x 35 ft. mural version of the picture on a wall at Mott Street and Houston in lower Manhattan.

Wiley’s inspiration for the gilded background of Alios Itzhak was a Mizrah from the Jewish Museum collection that dates to Podkamen in the Ukraine in 1877. A delicate concoction done in paper and ink on paper cut like a stencil, in it real and mythical creatures mingle with sinuous plant tendrils to form a symmetrical, color-saturated pattern. “The scale can seduce you,” Wiley said. “They’re like little poems, small little moments, acts of devotion that can be religious or marital. They address a matter of portability -- they are art for a contingent life.”

Several of the intricately embellished textiles that Wiley chose for the show are the work of women, one magnificent example being the embroidered silk Torah ark cover by Venetian artist Simhah Meshullami, dated 1680-81. In a short film that accompanies the exhibition, Wiley says “I want to broaden the conversation. . . decoration demands to be in the present tense.”  

While in Israel, Kehinde did not spend his time immersed in the contemporary art scene. “I spent most of my time looking for models, dealing with shady characters in bars and clubs,” he says. What he witnessed was a world very different from that painted by the news headlines. “I saw young people trying to have a good night, dancing, partying, falling in love. The state of Israel reminds me what America is about -- a mixture of cultures.”

“This exhibition marks a moment when the Jewish Museum opens its doors to an idea that goes far beyond Judaism,” he concluded. “This is a chance to see black brown and beige people. It’s the Arab spring. It’s a desire to be visible.”

“Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel,” Mar. 9-July 29, 2012, at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10128.

ILKA SCOBIE is a poet.