On February 12, 2018, Kehinde Wiley (artist of the president’s) and Amy Sherald (artist the first lady’s) released the National Presidential Portraits of the Obama couple. Unveiled in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., each painting has its own hidden symbols and powerful backgrounds.
In former president Barack Obama’s portrait, Wiley depicts Obama sitting in a chair, elbows on knees, leaning forward with a profound and wise expression. Notable as a classic Wiley technique, the former president is painted inside some emerging green foliage. Wiley is most popularly known for painting young black people in stylized portraits that are deliberate throwbacks icons of western civilization.
Not only are the formal elements of his paintings significant but there is also a plethora of hidden symbols and easter eggs. The radiant and lush background details symbolize different aspects of Obama’s life story. The jasmine represents his birthplace of Hawaii, the African blue lilies express his father’s Kenyan heritage, and the chrysanthemums are the official flower of Chicago. During the unveiling, Wiley said, “There is a fight between him and his plants in the foreground. Who gets to be the star of the show: the story or the man who inhabits that story?”
Amy Sherald, a fellow African American Baltimore based portraitist, had the honor of painting former first lady Michelle Obama. In this painting of the first lady, she is depicted in an elegant floor length gown, chin in her hand, staring directly at the audience with a calm and level dreamy gaze.
Sherald is known for her stylized, archetypal portrayals of African Americans.The symbolism is also strong in Mrs. Obama’s painting. The extravagant and geometric dress was chosen to depict Mrs. Obama’s eloquence and professional attitude. This is also mirrored in her skin tone. The first lady is pictured in grayscale for one reason being it is a common trait in Sherald’s paintings, and the second reason because her race was never a stifling factor in her role as first lady. It is a cultural statement about the construction of race in that, “By taking black and white and mixing them together… saying there are not black people, there are not white people, there are grey people.”
These portraits are not only a powerful declaration of black elegance and power, but are incredibly individual and unique in comparison to other presidential portraits. Each image radiates one another’s personality through detailed techniques and the artist’s statements.
Leave a Reply