After Kehinde
Wiley’s portrait of Barack Obama was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C. in 2017, the already-successful artist received unprecedented
attention. And, in a roundabout way, Kehinde Wiley’s success is also bringing
more attention to the designs and general aesthetic of William Morris. This
fall, in the first Wiley exhibition since the unveiling of the Obama portrait
last year, eleven portraits of Saint Louis citizens are already drawing
commentary in the news that the background designs of the portraits
evoke the wallpapers designed and manufactured by William Morris. This new
show, Kehinde Wiley: Saint
Louis, will be held at the Saint Louis Art Museum from October
19, 2018 until February 19, 2019.
Some of the references to William Morris
wallpapers are more overt than others. The portrait "Robert
Hay Drummond, D.D. Archbishop of York and Chancellor of the Order of the
Garter" (2018) clearly uses motifs
of the ogee tree and pomegranate that distinctly appear in the Granada
wallpaper design (1884). Other references
are more oblique: the painting “Tired
Mercury” evokes the general dynamism
of William Morris design and the distinctive whorls of flowers seem reminiscent
of the Pimpernel
wallpaper (1876).
These Saint Louis paintings
are not the first time that Kehinde Wiley has looked to William Morris for
inspiration. A few years ago, the exhibition Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic appeared at the Brooklyn Museum of
Art (in 2015) and Seattle Art Museum (in 2016) which included paintings with
references to Morris and his manufacturing group Morris & Co. For example,
the background design in Saint
John the Baptist in the Wilderness is inspired by the “Iris”
wallpaper
(c. 1887) designed by J. H Dearle for Morris & Co. Another painting from
the show, “Mrs. Siddons from the series ‘The Economy of Grace,’” (2012)
includes a background that copies the design of the Blackthorn
block-printed wallpaper that
Morris designed in 1882.
 |
| "Mrs. Siddons from the series 'The Economy of Grace'" and detail image of Blackthorn-inspired wallpaper Photographs by author |
Unfortunately, the
exhibition panels of Kehinde Wiley: A New
Republic didn’t explore these connections with Morris very well, and the labels of the current show at the Saint Louis Art
Museum also don’t mention Morris specifically, but connect the background
prints to “international markets of textile production.”[1]
I find this disappointing, and my sentiments are echoed in a published review of Brooklyn Museum of Art show which suggested
that mentioning the origins of the backgrounds in Wiley’s paintings would
strengthen the show.
It seems like
there are several reasons for why Kehinde Wiley chooses to reference
William Morris’s designs in some of his paintings. On one hand, Wiley’s
compositions and designs are trying to draw awareness to the realm of history
and art history, not only with the decorative motifs but the way the figure is
represented (the female figure’s position in “Mrs. Siddons” turns looks away
from the viewer in a way which reminds me of depictions of the penitent Magdalene by George de la Tour).
In past
centuries, fine art was typically associated with white Europeans and
refinement. Wiley wants to challenge the idea that fine art and statements of
cultural refinement are limited to a specific race; he does this by
referencing European artistic traditions in his portraits of black people.
To help emphasize his point, Wiley draws inspiration from Morris’s
wallpaper designs, since they are associated with taste and the high-quality
production surrounding the Arts & Crafts movement. In the exhibition
catalog for Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,
Annie Paul explains that Wiley creates “decorative backgrounds [which are]
inspired by the English designer William Morris, who wove images from botany
and zoology into intricate patterns signifying taste and discrimination.”[2] It seems like Wiley
occasionally uses Morris’s designs to reference English history and colonialism,
too. For example, the inclusion of a Morris print in St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness references the past colonial presence of the English in Jamaica.
So, Kehinde
Wiley’s portraits of black figures, which contain visual references to European
history and European art, call for attention and help to create a new
vision of contemporary black identity and presence. Holland Cotter, in
reviewing a 2005 exhibition of Wiley’s work, asserted as much by saying that
Wiley “is a history painter. . . . By this I mean that he creates history as
much as tells it.”[3] And what would William
Morris think about his imagery being utilized in this way? I think that he
would be quite pleased: Morris was a socialist who wanted to bring about a
change in the art world and society. William Morris felt like the arts,
particularly the decorative arts, “were ‘sick’ as a consequence of the split
between intellectual and mechanical work that occurred during the Renaissance.”[4] Perhaps in a similar vein, Kehinde
Wiley seeks to bind together racial divides and “heal” stereotypical
assumptions about what constitutes art and portraiture.
So when
Wiley’s paintings are considered in terms of social unity, Morris’s designs are
very appropriate. Art historian Caroline Arscott has analyzed Morris’s designs
in relation to the social climate of his day, finding that the designs “imagine
an overcoming of social contradictions in an allegory performed ‘through the
twists and turns of plants.’ In this way his aesthetic stands as a powerful
equivalent for the recovered wholeness of men and women, of their relations to
their fellows and to nature.”[5] In
many ways, Wiley is also suggesting similar themes of “wholeness” by
binding different cultures together within his paintings. It isn’t surprising,
then, that Wiley is inspired by designs of plants which repeatedly
interconnect, wind, and bind themselves to each other. And it is even more
appropriate, then, that the Saint Louis Art Museum is not charging
admission for entrance to the current Wiley exhibition, so that the
accessible venue can serve as a way to bring the community together.
- Monica
Bowen, Seattle University
An earlier
version of this post was written in 2016: http://albertis-window.com/2016/02/kehinde-wiley-and-william-morris/
[4] Steve
Edwards, “Victorian Britain: From Images of Modernity to the Modernity of
Images,” in Art and Visual Culture 1850-2010 by Steve Edwards
and Paul Wood, eds. (London: Tate Publishing 2012), p. 81.
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