Amy Sherald

Traveling from the artist’s major exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in London, her first solo show in Europe, a selection of new and monumental works by Amy Sherald will be on display at the gallery in Monaco. Amy Sherald, one of the defining contemporary portraitists in the United States, is acclaimed for her paintings of Black Americans that have become landmarks in the grand tradition of social portraiture—a tradition that for too long excluded the Black men, women, families and artists whose lives have been inextricable from public and politicised narratives. As Sherald says, ‘Sharing these paintings in Europe is an opportunity for me to reflect on how the tradition of portraiture finds continuity as one of several lineages alive in my work.’

Sherald humanizes the Black experience by depicting her subjects in both historically recognizable and everyday settings, at once immortalizing them and reinserting them into the art historical canon. In this new body of work, she continues this practice while confronting the Western canon through allusions to significant historic works or images.

The work deals with the rejection of queer rights to equal participation in public space, as Sherald replaces the white heterosexual couple with a Black male couple in sailor-esque clothing, reminding us of the discrimination against non-heterosexual people within the US military in recent history. The photograph prompted Sherald to think of the Black soldiers who returned from the war, still facing persistent inequities, and what it would mean to broach the iconic pose through another understanding of masculinity. Sherald hopes to offer the viewer a reflection of themselves and the complexities of their interior lives, void of the constructs of race, gender, religion and preconceived notions.

In line with this sentiment, Sherald is interested in the idea articulated by artist Alice Neel that ‘art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom’. In a large-scale diptych over 3-metres tall entitled ‘Deliverance’ (2022), inspired by the bike culture that is local to Baltimore in Maryland, United States, where Sherald has lived, the artist reflects on the sense of freedom that is part of riding. This work shows two bikers in mid-air, as if suspended in time, in a space free from oppression.  The composition in this work is reminiscent of equestrian portraiture, alluding to a reappropriation of this historically Western style of painting.

A monumental work entitled ‘A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt)’ (2022) depicts a man proudly atop his tractor and references traditional farm paintings from the 19th Century which reinforced notions of American identity. Here, Sherald reflects on the history of agriculture in art as well as ideas around land ownership and systematic land loss. With this painting, Sherald also seeks to honour the legacy of farming in a world where new technologies are favoured.

A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt) 2022 Oil on linen 244.3 x 330.6 x 6.4 cm / 96 1/8 x 130 1/8 x 2 1/2 in

Sherald foregrounds the idea that Black life and identity are not solely tethered to grappling publicly with social issues and that resistance also lies in an expressive vision of self-sovereignty in the world. While her subjects are always African-American, Sherald continues to render their skin-tone exclusively in grisaille—an absence of colour that directly challenges perceptions of Black identity.

A certain kind of happiness 2022 Oil on linen 137.5 x 109.2 x 6.4 cm / 54 1/8 x 43 x 2 1/2 in

The first widely available monograph on Amy Sherald accompanies this traveling exhibition, published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers. Newly commissioned texts include an art historical analysis of Sherald’s work by Jenni Sorkin, a meditation on the poetics of the Black ordinary by cultural scholar Kevin Quashie and a conversation between Sherald and author Ta-Nehisi Coates.