Amy Sherald: American Sublime

The tender embrace shown here conjures V-J Day in Times Square, the iconic 1945 photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt of a male sailor kissing a woman. Published in Life magazine, that image embodies the spirit of celebration felt at the end of World War II. In restaging the kiss with a Black gay couple, Sherald reflects on the Black soldiers who returned from the war to a still segregated society, and advocates for a more nuanced understanding of masculinity.

This painting represents a turning point in Sherald’s work, as evidenced by the near-human scale of the figures and the complexity of the composition. Here, the artist’s view has expanded to include a detailed landscape and two figures, one who seems to be fully aware of the viewer and one who is mesmerized by a rocket taking off in the distance. Since the “space race” of the late 1950s, gathering to watch a rocket launch either in person or on television has become an American pastime and a source of great pride in one of the nation’s most aspirational endeavors.

Breonna Taylor was a twenty-six-year-old emergency room technician who was killed in March 2020 by police officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) who forced entry into her home. Her tragic death highlighted the disproportionate levels of police violence enacted against Black Americans.

Vanity Fair magazine commissioned Sherald to create this portrait of Taylor for its September 2020 issue. In preparation, Sherald met with Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, to learn about the person her daughter had been. Drawing on these conversations, Sherald took care to incorporate several symbolic references to Taylor’s life and interests. These include the dress she wears in the painting, which Sherald commissioned from Jasmine Elder, a Black female designer, and the engagement ring on her finger, representative of the love between Taylor and her partner, Kenneth Walker, and the future that was taken from them. Sherald has stated that she made this work to “codify that historical moment, and in honor of all the lives that were lost—specifically, the Black women we lost to police brutality.”