Kirillos Samuel Self Portrait Project #3

Kiro Samuel 

    For this project, I was inspired by the artwork of Kehinde Wiley and Andy Warhol. These two artists’ work is unique in their own way and is very identifiable through the style in which the artist presented most of their work. My project takes the soul of these two artists and presents them in one collage. Using the pattern from the Marilyn diptych by Andy Warhol with the flowery colorful background that is infamous with Kehinde Wiley and combining the two to create a project that paid respect to both these great artists. Advertising and fashion play a role in our society because it is meant to be appealing to the viewer and make the viewer want to become whatever the fashion in the advertising is. It is a way to display what is popular and what is currently trending. Back then Andy Warhol used this to sense by displaying famous celebrities in the artwork he portrayed. It could have been to use their image for what we call now as “clout” but this style of putting famous people and items in his artwork created an audience for him rather quickly. Alongside his famous vibrant colors and repeated patterns, Andy Warhol became synonymous with the artwork he produced. Kehinde Wiley created his own sense of fashion to advertise his artwork and that consisted of beautifully thought out backgrounds and flowery prints. This made his artwork pop in a sense that was unique to him and created a style of portraits that even caught the attention of President Obama when he had finished his term in office and gave Wiley the honor of being the first African American artist to paint the presidential portrait in honor of the leaving President. My project consists of 3 images, with portraits of myself in different poses and colors to imitate that of Andy Warhol and flowery vibrant backgrounds to imitate the work of Kehinde Wiley. This project speaks to the different times in my life, times when I had to stop and think. Times when things turned black and dark and then times when these times made me smile and look at life in different colors. 

Quotes:

1.) “When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings-figments that provide the direct motivations for a hypnotic behavior.”

2.) "The proliferation of images and desires alienates us, not only from ourselves but from each other. 

3.)  "This achievement of advertising brings into focus the question of how influential the visual landscape is in describing every day."

4.) "The Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images."

Kehinde Wiley, President Obama Portrait (2018)

                                  Andy Warhol, The Marilyn Diptych (1962)

Kiro Samuel (2020)