Kehinde Wiley Quotes

I'm painting the paintings that I want to see in museums. And I'm hopefully presenting them in a way that's universal enough that they become representative of something different than just a black body on a canvas.

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

The educator and the public need to have an opportunity to discuss why certain art is important.

I remember seeing 'Snow White' and saying to my mother, 'Will there ever be a Chocolate Brown?' She said 'Probably. Why not?' I just never thought the first black princess would be me.

I learned about poise and dignity, and I learned about what it means to be an African-American in television and what that requires in terms of what kind of position you take for yourself and how you define your own reality in a world that is still finding its footing, to say the least.

I have seen Colonial churches since I was very small, Colonial painting and polychrome sculpture. And that was all I saw. There was not a single modern painting in any museum, not a Picasso, not a Braque, not a Chagall. The museums had Colombian painters from the eighteenth century and, of course, I saw Pre-Columbian art. That was my exposure.

I have always been a fan of Salvador Dali, but Amrita Sher-Gil, who was an Indian-Hungarian painter, is another favourite. She was painting Indian women, and, growing up here, I'd never seen anyone paint Indian women, so that was really incredible to see a painting of someone who looks like you. I think that has a lot of impact on you.

One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person.

I really learned that, when I got into television, I really learned the power, how deeply it affects people to see themselves on television, to see something that they can relate to, that they feel is like them in some way; people feel validated. Its not a little thing. It really means a lot to people. It actually can change people.

There's room for everyone, and everyone is wanted and needed. Whoopi showed me that. When I first saw 'The Color Purple,' it was so huge. That was the first time I had seen myself, my mother, my aunts, women that I had known my whole life on-screen. It gives us hope, and it gives us confidence.

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

I want my portraits to create a space where blackness can breathe.

Even being part of a world like 'Black Panther,' that is gonna be something that's deeply commercial, it still is about a narrative of people who are unseen, unheard, and unrepresented, you know?

My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.

Art is supposed to hold up a mirror to its audience and ask, 'What do you believe? What do you think? What do you feel?' and if you look at a painting and it makes you feel nothing, that's a feeling as well.

Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.

A lot of 'Star Wars' fans who are specifically Asian never had a character they could dress up like, or they would, and people would always call them 'Asian Rey' or 'Asian fill-in-the-blank.'

I just didn't see any toys that looked like me when I was a kid.

I'm amazed by how angry people get about new art, particularly new sculptures in their town. The people who hate new sculpture usually find their type of art on birthday cards, pictures of a vintage car going round a hairpin bend and suchlike.

Let's face it: there aren't a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you're going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.

If I go to the museum and see white bodies, black bodies, Asian bodies, Latino bodies, then I will expect to see those things every time I go. That matters a lot.

It's far too rare an experience for Asian American girls to see themselves in media.

I feel bad for my little cousins who don't see themselves being represented, or the little girls in my community who won't have a chance to see a Disney princess... who resembles them.

Nothing will ever outshine, for me, the countless children whose eyes and imaginations I've seen light up when meeting Black Santa and understanding that there's a character of pure good out there that represents them.