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拍品專文
Danielle McKinney’s quietly evocative paintings seek to give agency to women and their personal spaces. Challenging the traditional depiction of Black women in subservient roles or relegated to the margins of the composition, McKinney’s intimate canvases present them in quiet contemplation. “There is a strong sense of self that emanates from each solo figure,” says Thelma Golden—Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, “made all the more powerful by the intimate spaces that they not only inhabit, but command… Her focus unveils assumptions around what is afforded Black women at rest, as much as it maintains a level of protective distance from the viewer. Ultimately, Danielle bringing these scenes to life is an act of reclamation” (T. Golden, quoted by A Okeowo, “The Interior Lives of Danielle McKinney,” Vogue, September 20, 2022, online [accessed: 4/17/2025]).
Often depicting scenes she sees in photographs or movies, McKinney always starts with an all-black canvas, before lifting her figures out into the composition, followed by the interior spaces which they inhabit. In The Fool, painted in 2021, the figure of a young woman is shown contorted at the end of her bed. The room is sparsely decorated apart from the dark green walls, a prominent color in her work. “I’m kind of putting myself in those spaces, I just hope that I leave them open enough for people to feel comfortable coming in” (D. McKinney, ibid.).
McKinney had admitted being drawn to the work of artists such as Barkley Hendricks, Jacob Lawrence, and Francisco Zurbarán, but none so much as Henri Matisse. "I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces in me," Matisse once said (H. Matisse, quoted in C.T. MacChesney, "A Talk with Matisse, Leader of Post-Impressionists" in New York Times Magazine, 9 March 1913; reproduced in J. Flam, Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 66). In a similar fashion The Fool reproduces the feeling of the space the figure occupies, in a similar way to Matisse’s own female-centered domestic interior in Odalisque with a Tambourine (1925-26, Museum of Modern Art, New York). McKinney even incorporates some of Matisse’s work directly into her own work, such as her painting After the Dance (2022). Similar paintings to the present work are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Miami Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
Often depicting scenes she sees in photographs or movies, McKinney always starts with an all-black canvas, before lifting her figures out into the composition, followed by the interior spaces which they inhabit. In The Fool, painted in 2021, the figure of a young woman is shown contorted at the end of her bed. The room is sparsely decorated apart from the dark green walls, a prominent color in her work. “I’m kind of putting myself in those spaces, I just hope that I leave them open enough for people to feel comfortable coming in” (D. McKinney, ibid.).
McKinney had admitted being drawn to the work of artists such as Barkley Hendricks, Jacob Lawrence, and Francisco Zurbarán, but none so much as Henri Matisse. "I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces in me," Matisse once said (H. Matisse, quoted in C.T. MacChesney, "A Talk with Matisse, Leader of Post-Impressionists" in New York Times Magazine, 9 March 1913; reproduced in J. Flam, Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 66). In a similar fashion The Fool reproduces the feeling of the space the figure occupies, in a similar way to Matisse’s own female-centered domestic interior in Odalisque with a Tambourine (1925-26, Museum of Modern Art, New York). McKinney even incorporates some of Matisse’s work directly into her own work, such as her painting After the Dance (2022). Similar paintings to the present work are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Miami Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.