The Baroque & the Black Aesthetic’s Take on Beheading One’s Oppressor
As a hardcore horror fanatic reading about old, long-dead painters from Italy, a place I had never been, I had somewhat of a jolting experience when I landed my eyes on Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes. Intrigued, I hungrily read all the textbook had to say about it; it was based on a Bible scene unreleased in most versions, depicting a woman, after much prayer, cutting a drunk man’s head off with a sword with the help of another woman counterpart. Even before I knew that the titles were the same, when I was assigned to compare an old European work to any contemporary work, I immediately thought about Kehinde Wiley’s infamous and controversial portraits. These paintings of Black women standing among a background of flowers holding a sword in one hand and the disembodied head of white women in the other have sparked much conversation and discomfort. A powerful and jarring image indeed, these disturbing and horrific images fascinate me so. How can you capture so much vengefulness, so much raw emotion, and so much historical commentary in a single, immovable picture? And more importantly, why would you? What compelled these two artists, separated by many worlds in both distance and time, to say the same message? What does this say to us about womanhood, or even about what it means to be human?
To be woman, which for this essay can be used interchangeably with human, is to be oppressed and abused to the point of violent retribution. The same white supremacist patriarchy that oppresses white women for being women, oppresses Black women for being both Black and women and protects white women for being white. White women see white men as their abusers, the ones whose sexual, domestic, and emotional abuse has stifled them as a demographic. Gentileschi personally had been sexually abused by her drawing teacher at 19, and during this period women weren’t permitted to take art classes with fully nude models, making anatomical accuracy difficult for sculptors and painters. However, this didn’t stop Artemisia from painting the human form accurately and translating some of her trauma at the hands of toxic masculinity into beautiful art for us to enjoy centuries later. Her representation of the scene depicts white women’s anger and hurt, depicts them in an empowering and vindictive light. Mirroring this sentiment, Black women are fed up with being oppressed by white women in ways that white women are not oppressed. Simply because both demographics are women does not mean that they are equal, and white women frequently oppress Black women and use their privilege as white people to dodge accountability. Wiley’s representation depicts this sentiment. In both portraits, it is portrayed as a rite of passage as a woman (human) to commit murderous acts in the name of retaliation for one’s oppression.
Aesthetically, the two portraits vary greatly. Gentileschi’s is dark and angled so that we see the man’s body on a flat surface, a bed, curling up in agony as a woman saws the blade through the flesh of his neck, squirting blood towards her. The women’s arms are flexed and fixed as they focus on cutting at the right angle. The lighting is dark except for one light source appearing to come from behind the viewer or camera, adding a chilling effect. The background is dimly lit yet textured, so the audience can’t make out what exactly lies out of that direct pool of light. The only thing for the eye to focus on is the brutality taking place on the flat surface of the bed. Contrarily, Wiley’s portrait is of lighter color and heart; the woman is among a background of beautiful red flowers entangled in deep green vines and a light blue, patterned backdrop. The woman is adorned in a glorious golden dress, a dress not particularly popular among modern women but fairly resembles the women in Gentileschi’s portrait. This creates less of a dramatic, horrific image and more of an empowering, regal, and peaceful image. When one looks at Gentileschi, one is confronted with darkness, mystery, gore, death. When one looks at Wiley’s portrait, one is confronted with an almost picturesque pose from the Black woman, and also death, but delivered in a way that evokes feelings of peace. Wiley is intending to, on a small scale, rewrite and recreate (hence using the same name) history by portraying Black women as the beautiful, powerful, and dangerous victors. While Gentileschi is emphasizing the gruesome, cathartic morbidity of beheading her abuser, Wiley is focusing on the triumphant raising of the abuser’s head after the act is done.
Gentileschi’s message is seasoned with hatred, Wiley’s is crafted in a fashion that depicts Black women in ways that Black people have not been depicted in art until recently: as victors over their oppression. Although this gifted young woman Artemisia Gentileschi, who was discouraged in many ways from drawing full bodies, drew a portrait of two women murdering a man in 1614, this portrait of a Black woman not even amid the act of murder still elicits deep controversy in 2018, when people were alarmed that Barack Obama would commission Wiley for his presidential portrait. Kehinde Wiley must have felt as though, because white women can see themselves sticking up to their oppressors, Black women should also have images of themselves sticking up for themselves against their oppressors. Black women have many oppressors; however, Wiley chose a white woman’s head to highlight the tension between white and Black women due to the shared identity of woman, but the complete and total opposite identity of race. Perhaps the message both artists share is that to be human is to exist at the intersections of multiple identities that influence the way we are seen and treated by the world, thus influencing the way we see and treat the world.
