ART DESCRIPTION
This piece is a work on paper from the major portraiture series of 2006-11 entitled ‘Is Is It’, a radical exploration into portraiture. The compositions from these works are taken from Old Master paintings from Bellini, Titian and other masters. This work is signed using the Plaster motif that begins to function as a signature from this date on.
These works are a celebration of the stance, power, pomp and ceremony that we see in traditional portraiture. This is also where Kamen begins to reconfigure these traditional portrait styles to include the Black experience (something that had been begun in fashion with Buffalo). Later, this theme would become a central concern of some of the most important contemporary portraitists of our time, including Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, with radical results.
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