Officer Of Hussars Analysis

The painting by Kehinde Wiley, Officer of Hussars, shows a black man in contemporary clothing on a horse in a deserted battlefield. At first glance the modern day man appears stuck in time because of his pose, and background. Kehinde Wiley’s Officer of Hussars appears just like another painting made in 1812 by Théodore Géricault named Charging Chasseur. As said in an interview with Audie Cornish, Kehinde Wiley’s style takes historical paintings and puts a subject he finds off the street in the historical setting (Wiley, Kehinde “Artist…”). Kehinde Wiley’s painting Officer of Hussars makes viewers observe who has power in a different way by having them come to the realization that black people have power. The subject matter in the Officer of Hussars shows that black people have power. In Mr. Wiley’s Officer of Hussars the man is wearing a silver watch and an expensive brand of shoe known as Timberlands. However, in Théodore Géricault’s Charging Chasseur, the white man dressed in traditional clothing and his medals of honor exposed flaunt his social status. Demonstrated by their accessories in both paintings, the subject of each painting has a high social status in their respective community. Social status is a way to …show more content…
The colors and the intensity of them are important in setting the underlying tone of the message. In 1942 psychologists Odbert, Karwoski, and Eckerson conducted a study to examine the reactions one has to different colors (D'andrade, R). They took people from different cultures, in order to ensure culture does not influence synesthesia, and put them in different color rooms to observe how they would react. Since the subjects of this experiment acted differently with each of the different color rooms supports the theory that colors and emotions are