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It features Obama resting her chin on her right wrist, her gaze both self-aware and probing.
Wearing a wonderful quiltlike sleeveless maxi dress by designer Michelle Smith, this woman radiates a casual gravitas.
Most people only know Sherald through photographs of this one work.
But as Sherald has said, I had a career before Michelle Obama.
The first sight is a great curved wall with five portraits of Black subjects.
Sheralds story is one of overnight skyrocketing success preceded by a lifetime of work.
Six years before this, she had undergone a heart transplant.
It now feels like this self-described late bloomer is in a race against time.
Her art fetches astronomical auction prices of $3 million to $4 million.
I was also vexed by the lack of formal radicality.
This picture looked like credible illustration.
What a train ride home!
This was a rigorous, formally flowing work about being young and alive and a little aloof from history.
I voted for the painting, which marked a turning point in my taste.
Seeing it again at the Whitney, it practically seethes with subtleties.
Straight-on portraiture may be the most challenging genre.
Basically, a portrait is a figure and ground.
Efforts to transform or romanticize portraits fall flat, and Sherald knows this.
Sheralds backgrounds are generally monochromatic, and her figures are rendered in what has become her signature gray tone.
She has a very particular fashion sense that includes retro looks, Americana, patterned fabrics and uniforms.
Each is poised, self-possessed, but a little wary of our gaze.
His legs and feet disappear behind the green girder.
A vast blue sky envelopes and vivifies this absolutely self-aware being who looks right at us.
Sheralds show comes at what feels like an important art-historical moment.
This spring, four major Manhattan museums are having one-person shows of African American artists.
All four artists are represented by the same gallery, the prestigious Hauser & Wirth.
In the past, this sort of one-sided favoritism would have made for scandal.
