The widening scandal surrounding former President Barack Obama’s official portrait continued to swirl on Tuesday, with shocking allegations the artist included ‘secret sperm cells’ within the painting and once joked about “Killing Whitey” during an interview.
Controversy surrounding Kehinde Wiley’s wildly non-traditional portrait of the Commander-in-Chief broke out within minutes of its unveiling; with industry insiders claiming the artist secretly inserted his trademark technique -concealing images of sperm within his paintings.
“His portraits initially depicted African-American men against rich textile or wallpaper backgrounds whose patterns he has likened to abstractions of sperm. Some of the subjects were famous (rap and sports stars), others not,” wrote the New York Times in 2008.
More shocking were comments Wiley made in 2012 while discussing a recent work that featured a “black woman” decapitating a Caucasian woman; imagery Wiley said was based on the biblical story of Judith.
“It’s sort of a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing,” he told New York Magazine.
