Ornament

The Dauphine’s bedchamber, 1747, Versailles, France. © Jim Coggins.

Like the wallpaper and bedding seen in this royal bedroom at the French Palace of Versailles, Kehinde Wiley’s contemporary revisions of historical portraiture often include all-over decorative patterns. Wiley explains:

“In portrait making, there is a clear relation between the figure and the field—between man and the land that he stands upon. That power dynamic has historically been one of domination: the erect, strident figure who presents himself as in complete possession and control over the natural world. In my paintings I try to do away with that set of assumptions…and the decorative becomes a type of field, a type of void. It’s at once a landscape and not…”