Amy Sherald: Why coming back to large full-size portraits?

Painter Amy Sheralds new exhibition opened yesterday at the Whitney Museum in Chelsea. Its called  American Sublime  and among other works features the painting she is probably most famous for–her official portrait of Michelle Obama. The show is entirely portraits,  of African Americans, forty in all. Maud Yaiche visited the Whitney Museum of American Art and has more.

On the street, just out the Whitney, is a billboard displaying a large work titled Four Ways of Being. It depicts four Black men: young, old, all different. And they’re staring right at you. Not smiling. Just looking. Nicole passes by the billboard as she heads into the Whitney. She says she loves that Amy Sheralds’ portraits of African Americans  reflect people who look like her and her family–especially at this historical moment.

Amy Sherald, Four Ways of Being, 2024

I feel like there's a lot of pressure to not acknowledge race and identity and gender and culture. And I think the opposite. I think it is important to be who you are and to see it in the world.

Nicole also likes the lively color and how beautifully Sherald paints. 

Her work is... So exquisite and it just makes me feel more creative to go look at it, so I'm really looking forward to the show.

Amy Sherald, Mama Has Made the Bread ( How Things Are Measured), 2018

When you enter the exhibition, five portraits out of the forty that make up the show welcome you. They’re  people you might see any day in New York City—a guy on the subway, a woman facing forward holding a camera. Each portrait pops against a bright, colorful backdrop: purple, pink, red. In a video shown in the exhibition, Amy Sherald says she hopes that these larger than life portraits bring comfort to people, that they feel calm, grounded, centered.

I love beauty. I know beauty is a bad word, but I like make things that make people feel good. I think beautiful paintings are important. I say  figuration  is the the soul food of art-making, it was takes you back home. 

She adds that painting portraits of this size are very different from her past work.

It's something that I'm still getting used to. Certain things have to be more exaggerated, like highlights have to be more exaggerated to still come to life. 

Some of  people she paints are extremely famous. Her portrait of Breonna Taylor, which appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, is there,//  as is the official portrait of Michelle Obama. This simplicity is what draws Ilsa, a very lively seventy-year-old woman, who is coming to the Whitney with her husband and say she only know Amy  Sherald from her portrait of Michelle Obama.  

Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018

I think that it's the very simplicity of it, that sort of, you know, kind of in your face, simplicity. You don't expect it.

Amy Sherald  exhibition “American Sublime”  is on view at the Whitney until August 10. 

Maud Yaïche Columbia Radio news,