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ROBERTS & TILTON
Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Israel
Text by Ruth Eglash, Claudia J. Nahson. Interview by Dr. Shalva Weil.
The latest installment in Wiley’s series imposing the language of old master portraiture onto the ethnicities and ethnic iconography most excluded from Western art
Kehinde Wiley’s acclaimed World Stage series inserts into the language of old master portraiture the very ethnicities and ethnic iconography that western art has most excluded from it, or that western art has portrayed solely in colonial, Orientalist terms. Among the countries and continents he has previously depicted in this ambitious traveling epic are Brazil, Africa, China, India and Sri Lanka. The rhetoric of Wiley’s paintings is powerful in its compositional candor, color palette and playfulness with constructions of visual meaning; as Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) notes, “Wiley’s canvas surfaces are a mirror reflection of America’s unceasing search for new meanings from the ruins of the Old World of Europe and Africa.” This volume includes a selection of new World Stage portraits, focusing on contemporary youth from Jewish-Ethiopian-Israeli, Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Israeli communities.
Featured image, Mizrah (2011), is reproduced from Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Israel.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
FROM THE BOOK
As they arrived in the land they had pined for through song and prayer for many generations, they were greeted by a rapidly developing and modern country. Their desire to fit in and become Israeli, or be accepted as both black and Jewish, led to many of them opting to shed their African heritage in favor of a new Hebrew one. Often the new immigrants changed their names to more Israeli sounding ones and sent their children to study in yeshivas, religious educational institutions. This general trend continued through the 1990s, when the next mass group of immigrants arrived as part of Operation Solomon. This incredibly moving story started on May 24, 1991. Forty urgent nonstop flights airlifted more than 15,000 Beta Yisrael Jews to Israel in 36 hours to escape persecution.
Today, their numbers continue to grow - the Ethiopian Jews still arrive in Israel at a rate of roughly 300 per month and most are descendants of the Beta Yisrael Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity more than a century ago. The younger generation is filled with a desire to emphasize and embrace their Jewish-African roots and throughout the year they celebrate their past heritage with religious, musical, and food festivals. Community leaders hope that the younger generation’s newfound pride in its ancestry will eventually be translated into mainstream Israeli society. Efforts are already under way to create a museum of Ethiopian Jewish history and legislation has been passed to recognize the community’s unique religious holiday of Sig’d. -Ruth Eglash, excerpted from the essay, Israel: From Melting Pot to a Colorful Mosaic of Culture, Nationality and Religion, published in Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Israel.
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: 9781427613752 PUBLISHER: Roberts & Tilton AVAILABLE: 3/31/2012 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Roberts & Tilton. Text by Ruth Eglash, Claudia J. Nahson. Interview by Dr. Shalva Weil.
The latest installment in Wiley’s series imposing the language of old master portraiture onto the ethnicities and ethnic iconography most excluded from Western art
Kehinde Wiley’s acclaimed World Stage series inserts into the language of old master portraiture the very ethnicities and ethnic iconography that western art has most excluded from it, or that western art has portrayed solely in colonial, Orientalist terms. Among the countries and continents he has previously depicted in this ambitious traveling epic are Brazil, Africa, China, India and Sri Lanka. The rhetoric of Wiley’s paintings is powerful in its compositional candor, color palette and playfulness with constructions of visual meaning; as Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) notes, “Wiley’s canvas surfaces are a mirror reflection of America’s unceasing search for new meanings from the ruins of the Old World of Europe and Africa.” This volume includes a selection of new World Stage portraits, focusing on contemporary youth from Jewish-Ethiopian-Israeli, Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Israeli communities.