San Francisco MoMA — Amy Sherald: American Sublime

Jessica Skwire Routhier | Antiques and the Arts | 18th November 2024

Because of her acclaimed portrait of Michelle Obama, one might assume Sherald is a portraitist. Mostly, it seems, she is not. Her “luminous figurative compositions” are usually done using models and they tell stories Sherald has imagined. Taking a lesson from social media, her pictures use detail and nuance to project a narrative – about black people and about American-ness. “Sherald’s subjects keep themselves to themselves … less concerned with how they are perceived than with their own imagination”.