Just so [becoming a chef ] that I could support my art habit. You know? I mean, this is - this is something where you've been literally given an opportunity to put the world on pause for a second.
In the Studio Museum in Harlem, when I was dealing with that community and dealing with my peers in the streets, it allowed for me to get outside of Yale, to get outside of art-speak, and to really think about art as a material practice that has very useful and pragmatic material precedent.
He [Michael Jackson] would choose specific moments. They were art history books that I prefer. They were paintings that he prefers. It's this dance back and forth. We were halfway through the dance. He died.
One of the weirdest things that happened to artists and art criticism was this moment when everyone got cynical and stopped believing in the ability to engage the world in all of its myriad purposes, transformations, and incarnations.
In our conversations, he [Michael Jackson] revealed a surprising understanding of art history. We were going through the finer points of the difference between one Italian sculptor to the next. You know, this - these are things that we don't necessarily assume of people in sanctified light.
I think that an obsession with art history gave rise to the work.
I think that once you're able to sort of get in line with who and how you relate to the world, you'll become closer to this index that I'm referring to. Because what you want is this card that relates to that book. What you want is this human that relates to this world, rather than having this art school society scattering that point of view somewhere in between. It becomes diffused. And that level of clarity, I think, was gained at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
This is - it's a sociological experiment in many ways. And so you're seeing the results of what happens when you put a lot of boys in a room looking at art history.
I think what's really interesting and useful about this question is that ultimately all art is a type of self-portraiture. And so in the act of identifying yourself, you're using others to get to that point. And so you're parsing out different aspects of different people in the world. You're choosing not only from America but increasingly globally different aspects of what's out there.
![Just so [becoming a chef ] that I could support my art habit. You know? I mean, this is - this is something where you've been literally given an opportunity to put the world on pause for a second.](http://cdn.quoteddaily.com/images/kehinde-wiley/just-so-becoming-a-chef--that-i-could-support-my-art-habit-you-know-i-mean-this-is-.jpg)
