Amy Sherald: American Sublime

All American (2017) by Amy Sherald - Courtesy of Monique Meloche Gallery

Amy Sherald is best known for her iconic portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama (2018). When she was honored with this commission, she had been creating  portraits of Black Americans for over a decade. Now, in her first major retrospective, we see 50 works that express what she calls her Democratic vision, portraits of everyday Black Americans.

Sherald’s portraits reveal the quiet dignity and strength of individuals going about their everyday lives. A man sits atop a tractor, proud to be a farmer when his ancestors were forbidden to own land. “The Bathers” shows two young girls holding hands, dressed in colorful two-piece bathing suits, in a wry commentary on earlier works by Renoir and Cezanne. A man in a polka dot shirt smiles shyly, and is simply titled “Handsome.” 

Sherald describes how she finds her subjects: “I look for something I’d call presence—this quiet magnetism that pulls me in. It’s really about seeing someone who feels like they already have a story to tell, even before I paint them.”

The portraits seemingly refuse to make political statements.   These individuals  do not represent anything other than themselves. They simply claim their humanity, in what Sherald calls “a gentle presentation of Black identity.”   

So it is shocking to find ourselves in this political moment, when images of Black Americans are being flagged for removal in a purging of DEI content. Just as Sherald’s exhibition travels from SF-MOMA to New York’s Whitney Museum, the goons now in power are attempting to eliminate the historical record of achievement by people of color. This includes  images of the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first Black military pilots in World War II. 

These heroic figures live on in the faces of Sherald’s everyday Black Americans.