More than 40 colorful and arresting paintings of Black American life will soon take the spotlight at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
The “American Sublime” show, which opens April 9, solidifies realist painter Amy Sherald as one of the most important living artists in America. Sherald is renowned for her portraits of former first lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, but she typically finds inspiration in the beauty of strangers and everyday life.
One of the show’s featured pieces, “As American as apple pie,” features a warm and stylish Brooklyn couple who collect vintage cars. Sherald said she met the two by chance, sensing something special in them.
“I’m looking for soulmates,” Sherald said. “I really don’t know how to describe it. … It’s energetic. I think they have kind of a weight to their soul, like they’ve been here before.”
Sherald paints all her subjects’ skin in shades of gray to emphasize universality and shared experience while centering Black Americans in an artistic genre from which they were historically excluded. Her body of work is both an act of resistance against erasure and a celebration of joy and wonder.
One of the show’s standout pieces is the massive triptych “Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons),” featuring three distinct figures standing in watchtowers. It is inspired, in part, by a photo booth in the Wes Anderson film “Grand Budapest Hotel” and the stained-glass windows of Catholic churches.
“This is just about contemplation,” she said. “Are they above water? Are they above land? Maybe these are guides waiting to call the ancestors back. I love the big question mark around this one,” she said.
As visitors explore the exhibit, they may feel as though they are making direct eye contact with the pieces’ subjects, almost as though they are in dialogue. That’s by design.
Sherald’s works are positioned at eye level, lower than most museum exhibits, she said, in hope of creating a deep and lasting connection.
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