Nearly 50 paintings by Amy Sherald, well known for her realist portraits of Black people, are on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the artist’s first mid-career survey.
Continuing through March 9, “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” features paintings made from 2007 to 2024. Curated by SFMOMA’s Sarah Roberts, it includes iconic portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, rarely seen pieces and new works created for the exhibition.
Sherald, a Georgia native living in New Jersey whose works are in the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and more, has a style following in the tradition of Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper. Displaying technical skills reminiscent of century-old master portraitists, Sherald’s portraits are grounded by 19th century studio photography, reflecting the era’s formal, frontal presentation of figures, single-source lighting and flat backgrounds that leave few indications of time, location or context.
Still, Sherald’s paintings are contemporary and prescient. Replicating the gray skin tones found in the early black-and-white photos of humans of all races, Sherald resists radicalization and politicization of the famous, and less famous, people in her work.
An exhibition highlight is 2022’s “For Love, and for Country,” which recently was acquired for SFMOMA’s permanent collection. Inspired by the famous 1945 photograph depicting a sailor kissing a woman suspended in a back-bending posture, Sherald’s reimagined portrayal of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s “V-J-Day in Times Square” is a 10-foot-tall painting with two Black men engaged in an embrace.
“I could not be more thrilled,” Roberts says. “Amy was thinking about the fact that there were many, many African American sailors/soldiers who fought in World War II and don’t show up in the pages of Life magazine. She also makes a statement about gay love. It’s an absolutely gorgeous, sweeping, romantic, affirmation of gay life. When the possibility of acquiring the work came up, we just felt it had to live in San Francisco.”
Displayed in chronological order, works in each gallery of “American Sublime” are anchored by a painting that gives the exhibit an “organizational spine,” Roberts says. Paintings are grouped by themes and connected recurring principles. A section called Precious Futures, which is filled with images of young people, came together around the painting “The Boy with No Past.”
Roberts says, “Amy described it as thinking about what it would be like for a little Black boy to grow up without the preconceptions, historical baggage and constraints that inevitably face a Black boy in this country because of its history of racism.”
The 2020 portrait “Breonna Taylor” in The Girl Next Door gallery is one of only two named portraits; the well-known 2018 “Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama” is the other.
Roberts calls the Breonna Taylor painting an exception for Sherald, who portrays essential aspects of the sitter in the piece rather than creates an imagined narrative.
“Coming out of the horrific events of 2020, when Breonna was murdered by the police in Kentucky, the work connects to Amy’s overall body of work in that she wanted to convey something deeply human, so people connect to the subject. She found a model of similar body type, studied photographs of Breonna to paint the face, and included details like the engagement ring she got permission from Breonna’s boyfriend to paint on her finger. It’s an indication of the future that was lost and gives it an ongoing positiveness in a world in which her death has dominated the news media coverage,” Roberts says.
“American Grit,” a painting of a boxer completed in fall 2024, came in response to expressions of gratitude Sherald received for expanding representation in contemporary art. Asked if she would paint someone with a disability, she invited a mixed martial arts boxer to participate in her process. The portrait shows the athlete who was born with no legs wearing red and blue shorts that drape over him, like a flag. His white boxing gloves and the red, white and blue ropes behind him complete and amplify the all-American color scheme.
“It’s one of the most beautifully painted works I’ve ever seen,” says Roberts. “The technique is extraordinary. His skin has a tactile, velvety quality. He’s magnificent. There’s empathy, compassion, pathos and gravitas that pours off the canvas.”
Roberts says that “American Sublime,” which debuted in San Francisco and will move to New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, launches productive conversations about inclusion that are slow in arriving and essential: “The work demands you see yourself, regardless of race. It asks you to identify with the person you’re looking at. It opens us up to who we are, how we think about others, and reveals Sherald’s universe of thought that’s deeply moving, culturally and socially important, and sparks conversations we need to have.”
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” continues through March 9 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., San Francisco. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays-Tuesdays and Fridays-Sundays; noon to 8 p.m. Thursdays and closed Wednesdays, except open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Jan. 1, 2025. Tickets are $23 to $30. Visit sfmoma.org.
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