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ROBERTS & TILTON
Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Haiti
Text by M. Cynthia Oliver, Mike Rogge.
The latest in the World Stage series of portraits by Kehinde Wiley (born 1977), this volume presents 13 new paintings, the result of the artist's trip to Haiti—a nation that is often presented as a place of chronic poverty, corruption and deprivation. In Haiti Wiley actively went looking for beauty, staging pageants to cast his portrait subjects and advertising with open calls on the radio and posters put up in the streets of Jacmel, Jalouise and Port-au-Prince. Wiley worked within the tradition of pageant culture native to the Caribbean but also subverted it, choosing his winners at random. The paintings draw on the artistic traditions of France and Spain (the colonial rulers of Haiti before the Haitian Revolution), as well as Haiti's varied religious traditions and local crafts, creating a composite portrait of contemporary Haiti through its people, history and culture.
"Portrait of Anne Cynthia Petit Vil" (2014) is reproduced from Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Haiti.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
"There is a regalness to their stance. The chins raised in quiet defiance, in unassuming pride, offering a knowing regard that their self-possession carries its own currency. There is a history to these stances, yes the colonial history Kehinde Wiley used as foundations upon which to usurp and reconfigure Europeanist notions of power. Like the camouflage of Catholicism under which Vodou was surreptitiously practiced in this country so too are these stances of the classic island woman—the busker, market woman with head-tie and ruffle skirt, and the turned back, offering both a 'chups' (sucked teeth) and moment of voyeuristic eyes to regard as might be expected. These are queenly statures, inherited, put on, assumed by a culture whose embrace of womanhood in this arena is not unfamiliar." Excerpt from M. Cynthia Oliver's text and featured image, "Venus Anadyomene" (2014) are reproduced from World Stage: Haiti, which reproduces many of the most talked-about paintings in Wiley's current show at the Brooklyn Museum, closing Sunday. Read more about our forthcoming title in the series, Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: France 1880-1960. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 11.5 in. / 64 pgs / 40 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $40.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $54 GBP £35.00 ISBN: 9780991488926 PUBLISHER: Roberts & Tilton AVAILABLE: 5/26/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Roberts & Tilton. Text by M. Cynthia Oliver, Mike Rogge.
The latest in the World Stage series of portraits by Kehinde Wiley (born 1977), this volume presents 13 new paintings, the result of the artist's trip to Haiti—a nation that is often presented as a place of chronic poverty, corruption and deprivation. In Haiti Wiley actively went looking for beauty, staging pageants to cast his portrait subjects and advertising with open calls on the radio and posters put up in the streets of Jacmel, Jalouise and Port-au-Prince. Wiley worked within the tradition of pageant culture native to the Caribbean but also subverted it, choosing his winners at random. The paintings draw on the artistic traditions of France and Spain (the colonial rulers of Haiti before the Haitian Revolution), as well as Haiti's varied religious traditions and local crafts, creating a composite portrait of contemporary Haiti through its people, history and culture.
