Kehinde Wiley Quotes

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.

Art has to be reflective of our society.

It is difficult to make political art work.

That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for.

My work sometimes can be abstract and appear not to have a direct relationship to Afro-American concerns, but, in fact, it is based on that.

Certainly I have made comments on American society with the various pictures and have done about nine antiwar paintings. But I did them because I was incorporating my feelings into my work.

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes.

Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.

There was a manifesto in the late '60s/early '70s, and it basically laid out what 'black art' was and that it should embrace black history and black culture. There were all these rules - I was shocked, when I found it in a book, that it even existed, that it would demarcate these artists.

Art has often been and continues to be considered transcendent. I see this as misguided and, in fact, a way of subverting the powerful voice art can be in global discussions about politics, economics, society, culture, religion and international relations.

Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.

The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Art is not something to decorate a wall. Art is a political weapon.

I think that there are artists of different genres whose calling is to use their art to hope to affect and better the human condition - whether it's System of a Down, or Rage Against the Machine, or Public Enemy, or the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, or Pete Seeger. It's a group that I'm proud to be counted among.

I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities.

Street art, of course, is political, because it's illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.

I learned a lot about American history though jazz, and that's why I loved American history when I was in high school. I could hear different stories - the story that they would tell in school, and then the story that I would hear in the music.

I am an artist with very strong social and political concerns.

NWA was all-American; Wu-Tang was all-American. It was just a part of America you may not have seen at the time.

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.

Art is activism.

There's a lot of hip-hop that's oriented toward a progressive view of America because it's oriented toward a civil rights progress and a critique of the power structure.

The Carrie Mae Weems photograph 'Blue Black Boy,' I thought, was fantastic.