Art has never really appealed to my sense of amazement. It
just never really touched me in a profound way. In a day and age where digital
cameras can capture vast landscapes and detailed portraits, I found paintings
to be inferior and obsolete to cameras. Then, I was introduced to Kehinde
Wiley's Officer of the Hussars painting.
It was at that moment that I realized that I couldn't be any
more wrong.
The first thing that stood out to me was the drastic
difference between the subject and setting. It seemed very odd for a modern man
to be riding a horse in the middle of a war ground during the nineteenth
century. Intrigued by this obvious feature, I researched some more about this
painting and learned that Wiley's inspiration for this painting came from the
original painting The Charging Chasseur by Theodore Gericault and that Wiley is
known for replacing prominent white people in paintings with black ones in
order to make a statement. Then, it all made sense. Wiley's voice finally
reached me via his masterpiece. The act of replacing a white man of high rank a
black with a person shows Wiley's desire for equality among blacks and whites.
In addition, the fact that the white officer from Gericault's painting is
looking down and the black man is looking straight forward suggests that whites
constantly look down on minority races and don't give a chance for blacks to
successfully live on "the unyielding earth" (Morrison 6) that society
creates for them.
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