Welcome to The Daily Show.
Thank you. Good to be here.
And, uh, congratulations on what I can only assume
must feel like a whirlwind ride.
It has been quite the ride indeed.
You-You've been an artist for a very long time,
but-but you can't deny--
getting to create the official portrait
for the first black president of the United States
was one of the highlights of your life, I'm assuming.
I'm assuming it's probably going to be on my tombstone.
(laughs)
I have to say that being the first African American artist
to paint the portrait of the first African American, uh,
-president is quite the honor as well. -(cheering, applause)
-I can imagine. -Um...
And then the question is, how do you make that something
that is vibrant?
How do you make painting alive in the 21st century?
-Right. -Those are big challenges.
There must be a lot of pressure that comes with painting
tho-those portraits as well,
because it-it's not just a portrait for Obama.
That's-that's a portrait that's supposed to live
-throughout time. -That's right. That's right.
In fact, what you have is a situation where it's like,
"No pressure or anything, but this is history."
-(laughs) -And... what we wanted was something that played
into all the rules around dignity and respect
and power but also a portrait that communicated who Obama is.
You know, he-he really wanted a portrait
that didn't have all that sort of pomp and circumstance.
If you look at the portrait closely,
he's leaning in towards the viewer.
Uh, he's dressed rather casually for a presidential portrait.
And there's a...
-there's a bunch of flowers and leaves behind him. -Right.
-There are a bunch. Yeah. -(laughs)
Which people had never seen before in a portrait.
I-I remember when it came out, there were a lot of people
making jokes, where they're like,
"We've never seen this many leaves."
And it-- Like, it felt more-- It felt less
like it was just about the subject
and more about the subject in the world they were in
-more than ever before. -Well-- Certainly, certainly.
And-and the memes were everywhere.
I remember seeing Bart Simpson coming out of the, uh...
-coming out of the leaves. -(laughs) Oh, the Homer Simpson
-in the bushes? -Right. Right. That's right.
But what-what few people don't realize
is that those flowers are telling a story about his life.
So, there are flowers from Kenya,
there are flowers from Indonesia,
-there's the state flower of Hawaii, there's the... -Oh, wow.
And so it really charts his life globally as a means of saying,
"This man is at once very American
but engaging on a global conversation."
-That's beautiful. That is really beautiful. -Yeah.
What did he say when he saw the portrait?
I think-- Jesus, I can't quite remember,
because we were all onstage.
The first time he saw the portrait was that moment,
where we were pulling down, uh...
-That's a lot of pressure. -Oh, my God.
No, I mean, like, that's-- I would, like,
show it to him beforehand and be like, "What do you..."
'Cause, I mean, like, what if you pull down the thing
-and then he's like, "Uh, uh..."? -(laughs)
Well, weren't you stressed at that moment?
I was stressed more than you could imagine,
but when-when I get stressed, I kind of
just... pretend to be very composed.
-Right. -My hands are shaking.
Everything's sort of moving in slow motion,
and I just sat there and took it all in.
And since then, you have been on a journey
that-that has really been beautiful to watch,
because, you know, people have noticed your art,
and-and your art is-is art that I feel needs to be noticed,
because you do something that's really interesting.
You know, you-you create art
-that we're familiar with in an unfamiliar way. -Hmm.
One of the... one of the more interesting pieces
that you created was Rumors of War.
Now, I hope some people saw it when it was in New York City.
-Right. -Right, and-and it... it's a...
it's a beautiful, I mean, statue that's...
I mean, it's a Confederate statue in its style,
and yet, you come up close,
and you see this young black man who's wearing Jordans,
and he's got jeans on, and he's got a hoodie.
And he's riding this horse in a way
that we associate with Confederate statues.
What-what was the symbolism,
and why did you choose to create that piece?
Right. Uh, I mean, Confederate sculptures have been haunting
and terrorizing Americans for, uh, what?
A good 50, 60 years now.
Most people think these things go back to slavery. They don't.
They actually go back to, uh, as late as the 1930s and '50s.
-Wow. -These-these sculptures were designed
to remind African-Americans of their place in society.
And they're still in major parts of the South.
I went to Richmond on a trip,
and I saw one of these sculptures, and I said,
"You know what? This is a language that's powerful."
-Right. "And it's one that I want to be able to use
to sort of inhabit it, to haunt it."
And so I found several African-American men,
merged all of their features,
created this kind of everyman on a horse,
and recreated those monuments for the twenty-first century.
-Right. -To create sort of a new way of saying "yes"
to people who happen to look like me.
It is... it is really beautiful in how it does that,
because I remember going to Times Square when it was here,
-because it's now moved to Virginia. -Right.
But-but I remember standing there, and I was shocked
at how many people were coming up and just pointing.
Little kids were going like, "Look, look-- that hair.
-Like, you know, it's got dreadlocks like me." -Right.
"And, you know, he's got this."
And it-it really was a touching moment
that people take for granted
where people saw art that represented themselves,
-which some haven't seen for a very long time. -Right.
Yeah. I mean, that's the power of art.
We all go to museums, and we all feel inspired
by these images of dignity and grace.
And it means something
when young African-Americans, kids, uh, can go into a museum
and see someone who looks like themselves.
It gives a sense of, "I belong
-to the conversation around power." -Right.
Who has it, who's allowed to inherit that-that dignity.
You have a piece that is now going to be, um, on display.
And this is really interesting.
It's called Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps.
-Yeah. -And that-that piece is really gorgeous,
because it-it was designed
to mimic the original Napoleon piece.
-Right. -Right? But-but again, you've changed it to be
something different, something, and it's going to be hanging up
right next to the... the Napoleon piece in Brooklyn.
WILEY: It is a bizarre situation where we're actually
dealing with a historical conversation.
-I'm borrowing the same pose from... -Right.
a painting that was made by David
during the time of Napoleon.
And now I've got a young black man in...
uh, in jeans... Uh, excuse me.
-He's wearing, uh, uh... camouflage... -Right.
and Timbs and he's embodying that sense
of Brooklyn bravado, but within the language
-of, uh, great European paintings. -Mm-hmm.
What I wanted to do was to be able to have
the original historical object and my object
in the same room, and the Brooklyn Museum said yes.
So, now we have an opportunity for the first time
-to have this temporal shift, this rift. -Right, right, right.
This ability to look at not just
some guy who's playing with history,
but the object from the past in the same room.
It's, it's a, it's a great honor.
One thing you've been commended for and-and it really is
special to see, is how you portray
women in your art, as well.
You have beautiful portraits
of women-- black women who have natural hair,
but they also, they-they're in regal positions
that we associate with, you know, like, the British Empire.
-Sure. -Monarchies wearing armor, you have, you have
women who-- you know, it's pictures that we associate
-with-with-with masters... -Right.
as opposed to those they've... that have been enslaved.
And-and these women are-are grand in a,
-in a very different way than we're used to seeing. -Right.
Why do you choose to do that?
What, like, what is the purpose behind that?
Well, artists paint what they're familiar with.
I paint what I've known, and what I've known are
powerful black women who've given me a sense of...
self-worth, a sense of dignity.
And that is what you see mirrored in my work.
And sure, there's a little bit of play that goes on.
There's a play with, like, how silly the,
the clothing looked back in, you know,
-500 years ago in paintings. -Right, right, right.
The same thing's gonna happen now. I mean, this-this, the,
the contemporary clothes that the women wear in my paintings
is gonna start looking really silly,
just like those silly, uh, neck things that are,
in, you know, all those old Dutch paintings.
-Oh, yes, yes, those things. -Right, right?
I think they were to catch breadcrumbs or something.
Yeah, I remember those, yeah.
Well, you know, you can imagine that in 300 years,
this stuff decays.
It's just gonna become a blend in time, I feel like.
Well, we all, uh, decay.
We all leave this earth.
But these paintings will be here for centuries.
And what I want to be able to do is to say yes
to people who look like me.
Yes to moments of grace in small things
that we often times ignore.
And to make us all feel as though
we were there for something that mattered.
(applause, cheering)
I think you do an amazing job of that.
-Thank you very much. -Thank you so much for being on the show.
Kehinde's exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum
opens January 24 and his show in London opens February 21.
Kehinde Wiley, everybody.