Jerry Saltz at Vulture:
The artist Amy Sherald is best known for her magnificent 2018 portrait Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, which has been looked at, studied, and written about as much as any portrait in the 21st century. It features Obama resting her chin on her right wrist, her gaze both self-aware and probing. She seems to be sizing us up as much as the other way around, forcing the viewer back on their own preconceptions about the first Black First Lady. Wearing a wonderful quiltlike sleeveless maxi dress by designer Michelle Smith, this woman radiates a casual gravitas. She is suspended in a field of turquoise paint, her skin tone a pewter-gray grisaille, which removes her from our realm and gives her an almost alien interiority and agency.
Most people only know Sherald through photographs of this one work. But as Sherald has said, “I had a career before Michelle Obama.” This is more than evident in her new mid-career survey at the Whitney, “American Sublime,” an experience in having your breath taken away.
more here.
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