Sherald's subjects are based on models that she has photographed, but they are outfitted with clothing, props, and shoes by the artist so that they appear to be symbolic portraits without easily understood meanings. At times, they're shown posing for the artist straightforwardly and impassively, like the German working people in August Sanders' socioeconomic photo portraits, or Richard Avedon’s photos of celebrities; sometimes they gesture playfully, as if caught in a friend's snapshot-mugging.
In the last moments of the at-times progressive Biden administration, Sherald, a Georgian now living in New York, has been given her first museum retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It's a bittersweet irony, with 47 on the horizon, but still something of a moral victory for democratic values.
Both paintings, unveiled in 2018, received wide praise as both aesthetically stunning and politically gratifying, reflecting affection for the popular new First Couple. They were also received with an appreciation for the fact that two Black artists had cracked the historically white racial ceiling of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery-and in doing, doubled the gallery's attendance numbers.
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