My peers at the time: you know, young black kids from off the streets of Harlem, having these conversations with me in… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
It's sad, the enslavement of the black underclass to designer labels - we're an age that cares more about Versace than Vermeer. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Europe has been a place of refuge. Why should it stop with black and brown bodies? — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I understand blackness from the inside out. What my goal is, is to allow the world to see the humanity that I… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
That's partly the success of my work-the ability to have a young black girl walk into the Brooklyn Museum and see paintings… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
If I were making paintings of a bowl of fruit it would still be viewed through some sort of political lens, because… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
In the end, so much of what I wanted to do was to have a body of work that exhaustively looked at… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I've jokingly painted some of my favorite collectors as black men, so there's a really great portrait of David LaChapelle, the photographer… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
What's interesting about young black American artists within the twentieth century, and increasingly within the twenty-first as well, is that there's this… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
And as a young black man, a lot of my professors would really think that it was useful to see the work… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I have been painting models with black and brown skin only for the past years. So, I did already have this experience,… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, I saw my first example of Kerry James Marshall, who had a very… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I happen to be a twin. I grew up half of my life with someone who looks and sounds like me. And… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
That's the trouble with, I think, my - the contemporary read of my work. So many people just simply say, "These are… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I love the of dealing with the homoerotic versus the idea of dealing with certain tropes with regards to black masculinity in… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
For years, I've been painting black men as a way to respond to the reality of the streets. I've asked black men… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
What I wanted to do was to look at the powerlessness that I felt as - and continue to feel at times… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Much like teaching art to young art students age 10 to 15 or so on, you have to break it down into bite-sized pieces,… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
The erotic and the art historical imagination is something that gets very little play when people talk about my work, and when they rarely… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
One of the weirdest things that happened to artists and art criticism was this moment when everyone got cynical and stopped believing in the… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
At its best, what art does is, it points to who we as human beings and what we as human beings value. And if… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
My style is in the 21st century. If you look at the process, it goes from photography through Photoshop, where certain features are heightened,… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
I think the world that I grew up in was like being in this sort of magical artistic garden. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
It was something that came sort of matter-of-factually. Because there - it's like really - real honest engagement with the people around me and… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at a black… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
I remember the first time I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and saw a Kerry James Marshall painting with black… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
Just physically, if you looked at the house that I grew up in, my mother created this greenhouse. And surrounded the entire property. And… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
![“I think, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, I saw my first example of Kerry James Marshall, who had a very sort of heroic, oversized painting of black men in a barbershop. But it was painted on the same level and with the same urgency that you would see in a grand-scale [Anthony] van Dyck or…” quote by Kehinde Wiley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a08/kehinde-wiley-1194_art_i-think-at-the-l-a-county-museum-of-art_1563358.jpg)
