Us News

Comment: “Amy Sherald, America’s Sublime” by SFMOMA

Installation view of “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” by SFMOMA. Photo: Matthew Millman

In SFMOMA’s “American Sublime,” Amy Sherald elevates portraits with fifty glowing paintings that change canvas and cultural perspectives. The title of her exhibition resonates on multiple levels – “Sublime”, which hints at how her work reshapes contemporary representation. Her near-life-sized theme exudes a huge dignity, while her signature use of grey-sized signatures suggests a metaphorical shift that challenges audiences’ assumptions about race and detach from skin tone. Through this layered approach, Sherald thoughtfully explores Black American identity while celebrating her theme with undeniable beauty and complex intrinsicity. Her artistic journey spans twenty years and marks a unique stage of evolution.

Sherald has been prolific over the past two decades, famously painted thirty portraits by Michelle Obama and 2020 Breonna Taylor, in 2018, And paint in 2020. However, celebrities and tragedies are not her criteria for choosing. “I’m looking for something I call existence-this quiet magnetism attracts me,” she told Observer. “It’s actually seeing someone who feels that she already has a story to tell, even Before I painted. “This vision of democracy is evident in the most comprehensive exhibition to date, “American Sublime,” which opened in San Francisco in 2023 and headed to Whitney next year – full of a decade of ambitions. “I wrote in one of my journals that I wish my first museum show was at SFMOMA or Whitney,” she recalled. “I started working for Whitney 10 years ago; I just told myself : “This painting goes into Whitney here. “Look, now it will.”

Michelle Obama's painting portrait shows her sitting on a soft blue background, wearing a dress in a striking black and white geometric form with pink, yellow and grey decorations.Michelle Obama's painting portrait shows her sitting on a soft blue background, wearing a dress in a striking black and white geometric form with pink, yellow and grey decorations.
Amy Sherald, Michelle Lavaughn Robinson Obama. Provided by SFMOMA

Although she stands out through the high-profile committee by like Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor. Her elevation of the status of a prominent contemporary painter is similar to that of contemporaries such as Kerry James Marshall, who also mentioned and challenged “the lack of image banking” and reconnected to Western Canon. As successful black artists, they also reflect breakthrough appointments from Hauser & Wirth’s representative to Antwaun Sargent as Gagosian director, and they also reflect a wider institutional shift. This recognition goes beyond Sherald, the belief in the New Museum (2022) Ringold paves the way for black female artists at major institutions. The concurrent Whitney retrospective of Henry Taylor similarly reimagined black portraits, using focused details while flat areas of candidness to capture individual nature and collective experience. These shows share spaces in major institutions, reflect the art world’s awareness of black excellence while creating avenues for future artists.

A woman in a long patterned dress sits on a circular bench in an art gallery with a black man leaning against a green John Deere tractor, with bright blue sky on the background.A woman in a long patterned dress sits on a circular bench in an art gallery with a black man leaning against a green John Deere tractor, with bright blue sky on the background.
Amy Sherald from SFMOMA. Images of Kelvin Brooke

However, in addition to these famous portraits, there is a deeper art project: displaying black Americans in an unprotected state of existence, free from the burden of representation. This approach aligns her with other contemporary black artists such as Jordan Peele and Donald Glover, who are equally direct in their eyes to the audience. But while Peele and Glover often use this technique to express alienation or criticize systematic racism, subjects in Sherald exudes a quiet dignity that translates everyday moments into full personality statements.

Sherald developed her iconic technical elements in her early work from 2007 to 2011 – Sherald’s portrait contains the psychological effect of the audience through direct gaze and discounted backgrounds. Her isolated form and grim environment elicits religious portraits, exploiting lonely figures and simple backgrounds, freeing them from worldly distractions and time contexts. She gestured to the European painter, applying the high realistic chiaroscuro technology of the old master to her face while leaving other areas (wearing clothes, peculiar objects or bodies), popping up, joining the subject’s face, and guiding the audience to their Nothing. But most importantly, Surrealist René Magritte is her most common guide as they all use monochromatic backgrounds, support-like objects and clothing to attract their figure. This pair of artists’ deployment of drama props tends to expose the audience, forcing them to question the psychological reality of the subjects reflected by the object. The rabbit in the hat (2020), for example, features a playboy with lemon oil (to incorporate personal style into the original traditional outline), picking up the rabbit in a hat Miss everything (2013) reveals a woman with a skull-sized porcelain teacup and saucer – two visual effects juxtapose the hallucination journey of Wonderland Wonderland. Meanwhile, Magrit’s A man’s son (1946) is characterized by a more ascetic gentleman, an apple hanging in front of his face, obscuring it, subverting the purpose of traditional portraiture, as well as prejudiced curiosity, anonymity and compliance.

A painting of a black man in sailor-style outfit kissing passionately on a blue background, a man in a white hat and shirt embracing another in striped blue and white shirt and yellow pants.A painting of a black man in sailor-style outfit kissing passionately on a blue background, a man in a white hat and shirt embracing another in striped blue and white shirt and yellow pants.
Amy Sherald, For love and the country. Provided by SFMOMA

By the mid-2010s, Sherald perfected her color approach: This manipulation of pigmentation went beyond mere aesthetic choices and entered the psychological realm again. Like the Spanish Auteur Pedro Almodóvar, he waved saturated colors to externalize the inner turmoil and passion of the character – most recently The next room Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore’s performance on rich vermilion and cobalt – Sherald deploys a vibrant monochrome background as a counter-attack The emotional opposition of the subject’s contemplation state. These bold color fields, from power yellow to dark blue, form tension with her character’s grisaille renderings, suggesting an interaction between public presentation and private reflection. The sharp contrast increases the psychological weight of her gaze, while the pure, unmodified colors echo their clarity and directness toward the audience, giving the feeling of intimacy a huge feeling.

See also: Andrew Edlin explains how the Outsider Art Fair helps build a genre market

2018 marks a key shift in composition and content. Sherald Between the plane, the rocket and the space (2018) was her first foray into the double-picture work, and away from her traditional environments that were vividly simple (you don’t often see words side by side). Tableau reveals the binary interaction between the two characters, holding hands before the missile takes off, while the female character’s forehead view almost breaks the fourth wall, encountering the audience as her companions and foil look at the spectacular event look. If asked which is more dramatic: a glimpse of an opposing young man and a young woman or missile shooting, the latter seems obvious, whether it exists in a vacuum. But within the scope of Sherald’s work, human behavior is even more distinct. Sherald’s subjects face the audience with impenetrable visual force, but are usually static, or simply meant to be motion. If you surrender into the air (2019) and Rare jewelry by the sea (2019) marks an earthquake-like transition beyond a single-like portrait and towards a more complex environment.

The beach scene painting features two black men carrying two black women on their shoulders in front of the ocean background with bold red and white striped beach umbrellas and a picnic basket on the beach.The beach scene painting features two black men carrying two black women on their shoulders in front of the ocean background with bold red and white striped beach umbrellas and a picnic basket on the beach.
Amy Sherald, Rare jewelry by the sea. Provided by SFMOMA

In addition to the enlarged casting and those new environments, the meaning of the emotional state of her characters becomes clearer through their interactions. Between the plane, the rocket and the space Depicted intimate handheld with dramatic launch If you surrender into the air (2019) Captures pure joy through airborne characters. The Bathman (2020), pays homage to Renoir and Cézanne while reimaging classical scenes, continues this exploration of numbers in the environment. church (2023) The use of landscapes and intergenerational gatherings further promotes this evolution to explore the themes of community and inheritance. These multi-digit works create narratives through gestures and relationships, deepening the emotional resonance of Sherald’s portrait while maintaining her signature direct gaze.

As Sherald’s work evolves on technology and themes in the 2020s, it is increasingly involved in a wider cultural dialogue about representation. Although Sherald’s connection with other black and queer artists may be indirect, her artistic achievements are undeniable. Through the development of complex diversity works from minimal background to rich environments to complex diversity works, she maintains the permeable psychological power of the gaze of the subjects while amplifying their emotional resonance. This technological talent has a profound democratic vision—a weight that demonstrates the existence of black Americans without representation or trauma. Sherald’s “American Sublime” is both aware of personal ambitions for institutions and also achieves a wider transformation of American art, in which case transcends daily through the quiet dignity and unwavering existence of her subject.

Portrait of a black man sitting on the blue sky showing him wearing white turtleneck orange pants and red beans expressing calm and meditative.Portrait of a black man sitting on the blue sky showing him wearing white turtleneck orange pants and red beans expressing calm and meditative.
Amy Sherald, If you surrender into the air. Provided by SFMOMA

Amy Sherald: America’s sublime“As of March 9, 2025, SFMOMA will be seen on SFMOMA.

The Quiet Force of Existence: Amy Sherald of SFMOMA



Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button
×