Vessel

2012

In 2011, Wiley began to work in three dimensions. He turned to the format of the portrait bust, which portrays the subject's head, neck, and chest. In keeping with his painting practice, here he replaces the sitter with a young Black man in contemporary dress. The young man's pose in this bronze sculpture echoes that of the pose in French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon's (1741–1828) Anne-Germaine Larrivée, Madame Paul-Louis Girardot de Vermenoux (1777), a white marble bust in the collection of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California. Houdon's name is included in the title of Wiley's work, and the work is also an example of the Wiley often switches the genders of his sitters and artistic sources.