My name is Christine Riding, I'm Head of the Curatorial Department and also Curator of
British Paintings here at the National Gallery and I have the great pleasure to be in conversation
with Kehinde Wiley, who is obviously the author of this wonderful exhibition.
First off thank you for an opportunity to engage a nation, a history, a practice of painting that is
very dear to me, specifically because we're in a site that is very loaded, historically.
Very loaded in terms of the mastery of painting but also the content within the work.
Painting is more than just a pretty picture on the wall. It's something that we espouse;
something that points out into the world, something that, at its best, communicates our virtues
and here at the National Gallery I have a very distinct opportunity to pivot towards
the collection itself, to respond to the museum as a site, and also respond to London as a site.
So many of the portraits that you'll see in the rest of the museum are certainly people who have
very recognisable and established careers and reputations. Most of the people in my paintings are
completely unknown to me prior to the moment of impact. I call it the 'moment of impact'
because many of them are just minding their own business trying to get to work and here comes
this guy tapping them on the shoulder. Christine: I mean, you called this project a provocation. I suspect
all your projects are provocations, but what do you mean by provocation?
Kehinde: I think that art should do more than point.
Art should have an opinion, it should be something that says 'I believe in this
more than that', even if it's a bowl of fruit or flowers. The notion of paintings existing outside
of time is a beautiful thing, that's one of the reasons why we paint things that decay so quickly.
What I wanted to capture outside of time were people who happened to look like
me. What I wanted to look at was the language of discovery and voyage.
Often times when you look at these romantic paintings in the mountains
there's this sense of the lone, often white male figure, looking off into the distance
imagining his present tense, his future tense, and sort of, in a sense, finding himself.
What happens if we flesh that out? And open that envelope so that others might be able
to be included in that notion? I think that that's certainly a problematic history but
I don't want to throw away the paintings, I'm in love with the art.
So how do we find a way forward? How do we find a way through?
This work attempts to, at once, embrace the material
practice of western easel painting, but also interrupt and create these types of provocations
that allow us to see things in a slightly broader level.
Christine: Here, you've actually, you know interposed into
Friedrich's 'Chalk Cliffs on Rugen' and 'The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog'
with these Black figures, and you know, what do you think the translation is
therefore in kind of this trope of the wonder and the epic and the sublime which is so much
part of western iconography and the way that you've responded to Friedrich in particular?
Kehinde: You know one of my earliest influences was Richard Dyer, who comes out of gender studies and
certainly out of film studies and he looked at the notion of whiteness as a trope that enters film
through painting. And the imagery of whiteness in the heavens and the mountain scape, as being as
rational, and close to God as possible is one that pierces through this entire enterprise. I wanted to
be able to use that rhetorical strength towards my advantage, to imagine it almost as though it were
another colour on my palette and to weaponise it towards actualising a state of dignity and grace
for the people who populate my paintings.
Christine: In terms of the film itself the juxtaposition you've made
with the wonderful original score by Niles Luther, is actually the excerpts read out by C.C.H
Pounder which I think are from Emerson's writing, so Waldo Emerson, and he sort of moves on doesn't
he? Almost from what Wordsworth was doing as a poet of nature, to really examine the relationship
between man and nature. And I think the wonderful thing that comes out of the quotes that you've
chosen is this notion, the idea of the spiritual, of this universal being and how human
nature you know, in the landscape itself, shouldn't be surrounded by nature, but nature should come
through the human body as it where, become immersed in it. Is that also an important part, particularly
I think of the film, is that an important element?
Kehinde: I think what's really important for me,
and one of the clues into this film has to do with Wordsworth's writing about childhood and
the notion of the prelude comes from his writings in which he starts to talk about nature being as
in relationship to youth, in that sense of play, that sense of becoming, radical contingency.
'Let's make mud cakes, let's make snow cakes, let's become birds', this sense of constant
becoming is, at its core, the reptilian mind of the child and perhaps the spiritual DNA of nature.
What I wanted to do was to use this idea of absolute childhood as a remembrance point.
To remember that young Black boys in the streets of America are indeed children, regardless of their
body language or the fact that they might be wearing hoodies, or what have you. Often times
that sense of fear and that suspension of childhood, the inability to see them simply as
as baby boys and baby girls is something that's incredibly chilling. So using this incredibly
ancient language and trying to find a way through a theoretical conversation and esoteric
assumptions and really trying to arrive at something that is practical, factual,
consequential and beautiful. We don't have time to make simply beautiful paintings, painting has
to punch you in the gut and to point to something that you say yes to and
and something that you stand by. I think, by and large, museums as cultural institutions
who've constantly been at the forefront of guarding what culture means, and what culture
will be handed down to the next generation, has the fiduciary responsibility to recognise all of us
and to say that all of our stories, all of our desires for grace and resplendence
are here and recognised.
Christine: Well thank you so much Kehinde, and thank you everyone for coming.