Kehinde Wiley has carved a place in the canon of American portraiture for his paintings of contemporary Black sitters in compositions drawn from the traditions of Western portraiture. Inserting Black figures into a visual tradition that has been historically exclusionary, Wiley subverts these narratives while drawing attention to the relationship of painting to representation, power and status. With Big Daddy Kane, Wiley celebrates a key figure in the golden age of hip hop with a monumental portrait.
"My job as an artist is simply to ask: who deserves to be on the great museum walls?"
—Kehinde WileyWiley's portrait Big Daddy Kane is part of a 2005 series for VH1’s Hip-Hop Honors in which he was commissioned to paint each of the recognized artists, including LL Cool J, Ice T, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The iconography of hip-hop is a prevailing interest in Wiley’s practice, though it is rarer that he has painted these famous hip-hop artists themselves. Big Daddy Kane (aka Antonio Hardy) is an American rapper who launched his career in 1986 with the Queens-based collective Juice Crew and further gained fame with hits including “Ain’t No Half-Steppin'" and “Smooth Operator.” As a lyricist, MC and entertainer, he revolutionized hip-hop fashion and introduced theatrics, choreography and costumes into performances, becoming hugely influential to a generation of MCs. Wiley’s VH1 commission later coalesced at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in the exhibition RECOGNIZE! Hip-Hop and Contemporary Portraiture in 2008 and set the tone for some of his later work painting music giants, such as his 2009 portrait of Michael Jackson.
John Singer Sargent, Earl of Dalhousie, 1899. Painters / Alamy Stock Photo In this eight-foot-tall, larger-than-life portrait, Wiley pays tribute to Big Daddy Kane by depicting the musician with lavish accoutrement typical of portraits of nobles and aristocrats by modern masters, such as John Singer Sargent’s Earl of Dalhousie, 1899. Holding a commanding pose while exuding grace and nonchalance, Kane is surrounded with floral motifs, signature for the artist, rendered in opulent gold leaf. Big Daddy Kane merges hip-hop and classical iconographies by pairing Kane’s 2005 fashion with traditional white columns and by setting a microphone and contemporary figures within a formal coat of arms. As Connie H. Choi describes, “by conflating the consumerism of hip-hop with the opulence of Old Master painting, Wiley brings the high-art world into the realm of popular culture at the same time that he deliberately moves away from the overt identity politics of the previous generation of African American artists.”i Big Daddy Kane celebrates the triumph of success within a nuanced and distinctly contemporary cultural interpretation.
Big Daddy Kane, "Ain't No-Half Steppin'" (1998)
i Connie H. Choi, “The Artist and Interpretation,” in Eugenie Tsai, ed. Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic (Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 2015), pp. 23-24.
Provenance
Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles
Acquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited
Washington, D.C., Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture, February 8–October 26, 2008, p. 12 (illustrated)
Boca Raton Museum of Art, January 7, 2013–January 7, 2018Literature
Sareet E. Yoseph, “Where Swagger Meets Stoicism,” The Root, May 16, 2008, online
339
Big Daddy Kane
oil on canvas, in artist's frame
106 x 82 1/8 in. (269.2 x 208.6 cm)
Painted in 2005.
Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $189,000
Patrizia Koenig
Specialist, Head of Day Sale, Afternoon Session
+1 212 940 1279
pkoenig@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session
New York Auction 19 May 2022
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