Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

"Portrait of Alicia Keys Dean" by Kehinde Wiley (2024)

The moment I read about an exhibit featuring art from the collection of Alicia Keys and her husband, I started planning a trip to New York. I'll admit that I had no idea who Keys' husband is. I'm just not that cool. Kaseem Dean (aka Swizz Beatz) is a music producer and DJ. More important for purposes of the exhibit, Dean has been an art collector since he was a teenager. His first purchase was an Ansel Adams photo. His/their collection now numbers in the thousands. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they decided which works to include in the show. 

When I entered the space, I was greeted by giant portraits of Keys and Beatz done by Kehinde Wiley. That is the definition of a power couple. It's worth noting that the paint on the works was practically wet; they were just created earlier this year. 

My personal feelings about Wiley' and his work are a bit complicated. His insertion of the common man (actually, random people he met on the street) into historic images of power was groundbreaking. Think a reimagining of Jacques Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps"  with an unknown Black man in the saddle. His approach was pretty revoluntionary. But Wiley's been around now for more than two decades, and his paintings seem to be everywhere you turn. So the bloom is off the rose, as the saying goes. What an art snob I am. More troubling are the multiple allegations of sexual assault recently made against the artist. Wiley has denied the allegations and vowed to clear his name, but the question mark still hangs in front of his paintings for me. Still, the paintings are the perfect way to introduce the exhibit. 

"A Puzzled Revolution" by Titus Kaphar (2021)

I was pleased to find multiple works in the show by one of my favorite artists -- Titus Kaphar. Kaphar is known for taking iconic images from American history and shifting the gaze to a Black perspective. The idea is similar to Wiley's but executed in a wholly different way. Here Kaphar has used Muhammad Ali's "phantom punch" knockout of Sonny Liston as the anchor for the work. He cut out the images of Ali and Liston to allow the insertion of details from other paintings in their place. In this version, you can see portions of "The Death of General Wolfe" painted by Bejamin West in 1770. That work harkens back to the Seven Years' War between the French and Indigenous nations. Other options feature details of a Renaissance portrait of the Virgin Mary and a detail of John Singlteon Copley's "Warrior and the Shark" from 1778. And here's the cool thing. I specifically used the word "options" above because the canvases that fill the image of Ali and Liston can be slid in and out from behind the cut-out. As a result, there are multiple versions of this work. When not featured in this painting, the alternative narratives can be found in two other cut-out works Kaphar created. 

Kaphar has said that absence is a significant part of his practice. In this case, the absent figure is that of Ali in a historic moment in sports history. The insertion of images of revolution, religion and representation in the place of Ali encourages viewers to contemplate those depictions through the boxer's eyes. Brilliant. To see the work with "Warrior and the Shark" and the Virgin Mary inserted -- and to hear from Kaphar -- click here. And to see more of Kaphar's art, click here. 

From "Bread, Butter and Power"
by Meleko Mokgosi (2018)

The exhibit also introduced me to the work of some artists with whom I wasn't previously familiar. You could spend many hours dissecting Meleko Mokgosi's "Bread, Butter and Power." The series is comprised of 21 large scale paintings hung in a continuum. The wall card explained the artist's intent behind the series as "utilizing the scale and visual splendor of 18th c. European history paintings to discuss gender politics and power structures in southern Africa." It's a big concept that didn't jump out at me when I looked at the work in its entirety. But many of the paintings were engaging, perhaps none more so than this one featuring two women embracing beneath of portrait of Harriet Tubman. There's a lot going on here. 

The presence of Harriet Tubman is a nod to personal and political freedom, including the freedom to choose who you love. According to Amnesty International, it is illegal to have a sexual relationship with someone of the same gender in 31 countries. In some African countries, the death penalty is even on the table for violation. So the women pictured here are showing their feelings for one another at some personal risk. The poster next to Tubman features raised fists and the words "THEY WILL NEVER KILL US ALL," a phrase used at a demonstration following a police shooting in 1985. The bust is a portrait of British Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole. The work is owned by the Getty Museum where it is labeled simply as "Bust of an African Woman." Every object in the work -- and Mokgosi's other paintings -- has meaning. And while I'd love to go on, I'll let you do so on your own if you're intrigued. Click here for the full rundown on this painting and here to see the rest of the images in the series. I definitely would like to go back to Mokgosi's work in the future.  

"Untitled, Washington, D.C." by Gordon Parks (1963)

I'll leave you with one of several photos by Gordon Parks included in the exhibit. Although it is simply called "Untitled, Washington, D.C," the scene is easily recognizable as the day on which Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech to a crowd 250,000 strong. The speech capped off a march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. 

From his spot at the Lincoln Memorial, MLK talked about justice and freedom and his dreams for a future in which his four children would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. In looking back at the speech, one sentence jumped out at me. "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment." Six decades later, our nation finds itself in no less of an urgent moment. 

"Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys" closed earlier this month. But the show will travel, with its next stop being the High Museum in Atlanta. For more information about the exhibit, including a talk by Beatz and Keys about their collection and the show, click here. It's an exhibit worth seeking out if you get the chance.