The title deliberately echoes Otto Müller’s earlier Three Girls in a Wood, but American artist Kehinde Wiley transforms that art reference with contemporary women fully clothed in garments that read as self-chosen, poised between intimacy and autonomy. Three Black women sit together on a vivid red background before a dense, decorative field of pink floral patterning. The left woman sits cross-legged, her arms folded around one knee, wearing a dark short-sleeved top, patterned leggings, sandals, a watch, and a choker. Her face turns slightly to the side with a calm, guarded expression. At center, a woman in a coral-pink shirt and hoop earrings sits with her back mostly toward us, twisting her torso so her profile appears in sharp relief. One hand braces behind her while the other arm rests loosely on a bent knee. At right, a woman in a pale lavender T-shirt and blue star-patterned pants sits with her legs folded close, turning her head outward to meet us with a direct, serious gaze. Wiley paints their skin with luminous care and individualized attention, while curling green vines and small blossoms seem to spill across their bodies, partially overlaying clothing, arms, and legs. The setting is not a naturalistic forest but a flattened, theatrical surface of ornament, beauty, and visual tension. This work emerged from Wiley’s practice of inviting local residents into compositions historically reserved for people granted prestige, permanence, and power. The floral wallpaper-like field replaces the “wood” with a stylized environment that feels both seductive and encroaching, as if history, design, and representation are pressing in. In 2018, Wiley was extending his well-known revisions of European portrait traditions into more sustained depictions of women, asking who gets to occupy monumentality, beauty, and museum space. The result is both homage and correction: 3 women presented not as allegorical types, but as individuals with complexity, agency, and quiet force.
“Three Girls in a Wood” by Kehinde Wiley (American) - Oil on linen / 2018 - Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, Nebraska) #WomenInArt #KehindeWiley #Wiley #JoslynArtMuseum #BlackArt #ContemporaryArt #TheJoslyn #BlackArtist #AfricanAmericanArt #art #artText #2010sArt #BlueskyArt #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist
