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Historically, you could say, oil painting has had trouble representing people of color. So, seeing black skin sit comfortably in the modernism of Manet, Cezanne, etc. reminds one of the entirety of a historical lineage of failed attempts at it by white painters getting it stubbornly, wincingly, wrong, from orientalism to the particularly inept Dutch to Eric Fischl and the spectacular failure of Elizabeth Peyton's initial foray into it, the painting's halting failure among so many luminous whites highlighting the lacking portrayal. Peyton has since gotten better. But Yiadom-Boakye's easy naturalism, without an issue of it in a historical vernacular, stands out for it, evincing the casual omission of this natural representation from historical painters who, untrained in such matters by an academy, lacked an ability to literally represent this other flesh not of their own palette, racism underlying tones and pigments, issues of representation abound. Something for which the lived in easiness of Yiadom-Boakye provides relief.
