A recently-revealed portrait of President Barack Obama may have been made in China, according to a new report.
Artist Kehinde Wiley was commissioned to paint the portrait of Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama.
Wiley’s portrait shows the former president sitting on a chair in front of a wall of greenery and flowers.
“It’s his base of operation,” art critic Charlie Finch, who was a student with Wiley at Yale University, told the outlet. “He has dozens of assistants working for him.”
Finch indicated that Wiley normally sketches out the most important parts of a work and has his assistants fill out the rest.
Wiley may have completed the important parts while Obama was sitting for him, but the portrait may have then been sent to China for the assistants to finish, according to the Post.
Wiley didn’t respond to a request for comment from the outlet.
The magazine conducted an on-site interview with the artist and noted that the subject of his assistants made him uncomfortable. “I’m sensitive to it,” he said.
The assistants were all sent away before the reporter and photographer arrived at the Beijing studio. He acknowledged freely that he has assistants. “I don’t want you to know every aspect of where my hand starts and ends, or how many layers go underneath the skin, or how I got that glow to happen,” he said. “It’s the secret sauce! Get out of my kitchen!”
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