This is a recent Detroit Institute of Arts purchase.
I think it's amazing.
The Virgin Martyr St. Cecilia, 2008
I like both paintings for different reasons. I am unclear based on your post, which one was purchased by the DIA? I will say that I far prefer the second one you've posted. It's fantastic, but still within reason. The first one is an amazing image, but it requires a suspension of belief. I was out to dinner tonight with the in-laws and we stopped to have a drink at the Crunkleton which houses some of my favorite art by Michael Banks. My wife hates his work and my in-laws didn't seem too friendly towards it either, but I adore it: What do you think of it?
The top one was purchased by the DIA. Kehinde is doing well, he is 38, and has pieces in many major museums across the world. I think the Michael Banks piece is ok. What do you like about it specifically? It definitely has an anti-establishment feel to me, but that's only if the guy in green represents a subject of the Queen.
I also just like his aesthetic. I find it very disturbing in the same way I found the film Pans Labyrinth disturbing. There is a nursery rhyme feel to his work but in the vein of Grimm's fairy tales. Dark yet lurid. I want one, but "J" can't stand his work. Someday, one will hang in my office at Hubski HQ :)It definitely has an anti-establishment feel to me
-Precisely. The establishment is telling us what to think and what to speak. Our tongues are literally tied to them. Look at how red around the eyes and tired the "subject" is.