This equestrian portrait appropriates Jacques-Louis David's famous Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard Pass, (1800).

Gay black men are often doubly victimised in society, and Wiley's purposeful queering of recognizable images his use of flowers and camp, playful portraits are all important contributions to what queer black art can look like in America, and the importance of blackness to queerness, and visa versa.Ģ005 Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps As a gay black man, it is important for Wiley to reposition black male bodies as objects of desire, eroticism, and vulnerability, as opposed to fear, strength and violence.He does this as a way to critique art historical norms - the way we almost only see white people painted by other white people when we look at painting - and to use pre-existing tools to elevate black folk to the important positions inhabited by these white people of art history. Wiley often appropriates, or re-uses, recognizable art historicaly images and tropes, such as portraits of Napoleon, heroic sea paintings, and traditional nudes.Wiley's subjects often embody this oppositional gaze, and successfully challenge comfortable white modes of looking and being looked at, in a way that is unique and hugely important in decolonizing the Western art canon. bell hooks put forward the idea of the 'oppositional gaze' where black subjects interrupt white looks, and thus white power. bell hooks challenged Mulvey by pointing out that race was totally absent from Mulvey's argument and that black men are excluded (in that they are punished for looking at white women) as well as black women (in that they are never beautiful enough to be objects of desire). In 1975, Laura Mulvey put forward the idea of the 'male gaze', that images of women are produced to be static objects for men to look at.Wiley talks about portraiture and the 'field of power', referring to the way that painted portraits of people indicates that they are powerful, but also that portraits hold the potential to give power to those who are painted in this way, turning traditional portrait painting upside down.At a time when young black men are constantly vilified in the press and mainstream media, and even murdered on the street by racist policemen, Wiley's portraits are an essential document of the power, fashion, versatility and beauty of the black community in the USA. It is vitally important to Wiley that black people, especially black American men, are both the subjects and the audience of his paintings. Wiley's work falls into the category of Identity Art and Identity Politics, which is art, film, and writing, that deals primarily with aspects of the artist's identity, for example race, gender, and sexuality.

Painting inspiration