Image via Complex Original
News surfaced last month of Drake's involvement with an upcoming Sotheby's art show based around artists of color. While it was confusing at first about what his involvement would be (curator, buyer, performer, etc.), it was announced that he would be curating not the art, but only the music for the show. While the collaboration is obviously an attempt to draw attention to the gallery show, and increase private sales, it had us wondering: what if Drake actually did curate an art show?
The Sotheby's event is filled with several major artists, including Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nick Cave, and Kehinde Wiley (just to name a few), that tackle the idea of race, time, and history. For someone like Drake (who admittedly isn't down for making artist references like some of his other contemporaries), being inspired by art is obvious. But having a gallery show with art that highlights his own struggles...well, that sounds like Drizzy. We imagined what these artists would create if they we tasked with creating Drake-themed works in their respective styles.
Needless to say, there's plenty of hypothetical artistic inspiration, well before Drizzy's Acura days. Check out what happens as we're Imagining the Pieces in Drake Curated Sotheby's Art Show.
All illustrations by Jonathan Fouabi
Glenn Ligon
Title of work: “Untitled (Running Through the Six With My Woes)”
Since his 2005 show, Warm Broad Glow, Glenn Ligon has be tackling the issues of race, history, and literature. While Drake lyrics may not be as impactful as the works of such authors as Gertrude Stein, his hypothetical incorporation of Drake's most quotable line from his 2015 mixtape If You're Reading This It's Too Late makes for interesting neon art. While “woes” in the context of “Know Yourself, is a reference to the slang term “whoadies” (which is a New Orleans term for a friend from the same ward), it would make sense for Ligon to use “woes” in the more true-to-dictionary context; that of moving through life with sadness or fears.
Kehinde Wiley
Title of work: “Portrait of Drake”
You may have seen his pieces in the background of your favorite “Empire” episodes, but Kehinde Wiley's work is anything but background material. A fusion of young, black youth, and old masters, Wiley places contemporary men of color and places them on a 17th, 18th, and 19th century patterned backgrounds and poses. The objective is to elevate the average man into a place that was once exclusively for the wealthy and nobility. Wiley has also tapped celebrity before, like Ice-T or Big Daddy Kane, for the subjects of his work. For Drake, we'd imagine that Wiley would portray one of Drake's most infamous portraits of the “Take Care”-era. Oh, and true to Wiley's earlier work, the background is old-world opulent, but subtly features the OVO owl.
Nick Cave
Title of work: “Soundsuit (Dada)”
Nick Cave is synonmous for his “Soundscapes,” a mixed-media sculptural art piece that conceals race, and gender allowing the user to “look without judgement.” While Drake most assuredly would hope that people would look without judgement at his tragic Dada uniform from the “No New Friends” music video, it's now heavily-memed pose is as much a part of Drake's persona as his music. A Nick Cave Soundscape homage to the pose would allow the viewer to see beyond the ridiculousness of the head-to-toe Dada outfit, elevating the scene into high art.
Rashid Johnson
Title of work: “Young Toronto Man”
A key proponent of the post-black art scene, Rashid Johnson is a multi-discipline artist, with his black and white portraits of black men as some of his most recognizable works. Shot photographs displayed as silver gelatin prints, his photographs discuss the empowerment of the African American man in a historical and modern context. His work is meant to discuss the historical touch points that have shaped the African American experience, while reshaping and presenting them for a modern viewer. Most of these portraits have a misty presence that's not simply because the artist's interests in mysticism and cosmology—there's also heavy smoke that shrouds the subject in the frame. Considering Drake's past and present, the cover to Nothing Was the Same not only tackles Drizzy's own introspective look at his past, it also ties in with the clouds that are part of the original image.
Kara Walker
Title of work: “Started From the Bottom…A Story in Three Acts”
Kara Walker is easily one of the most high profile black artists producing work today. While her archive of works spans over two decades, her use of silhouettes in her 1995 show, The Means to an End: A Shadow Drama in Five Acts, combines the Victorian-era narative medium of silhouettes, with a thought-provoking emphasis on race in U.S. History. While he work uses silhouettes to allow anonyminity and for the viewer to easily insert themselves into the heart of her work, they create a simple, yet powerful message about time, and the pre-Civil War black experience. Drake's rise to stardom is not nearly as twisted and complicated as the Antebellum South, but (in keeping with the idea of growth over time) Aubrey Graham had plenty of “Room For Improvement” (pun very much intended) before he would be the Drake he is today.
David Hammons
Title of work: “Untitled (Chalice)”
The late 1970's saw Hammons stretching his work to incorporate sculptures that were composed of entirely found and discarded objects. While his prior work had always tackled race, including grease-based body imprints and his iconic “African American Flag”, it would be his newfound practice of using…well, found objects that would earn him praise. As Hammons noted, this was his way of countering a movement towards “clean art.” Using found objects, specifically crushed up, discarded Drake CDs, would likely make a fitting material to recreate the chalice Drake held in alternative images for his second album, Take Care. We could imagine the trashed CDs would make an intriguing juxtaposition to the traditionally regal concept of a chalice, particularly one made out of gold—as is likely the case in the original image.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Title of work: “Nothing Was the SAMO”
Basquiat's SAMO isn't just a key part of his early artistic career in graffitti, it's his literal mark on downtown NYC and the gallery scene it hosted in the late '70s and early '80s. Something between street poetry and social commentary, SAMO (meaning “same old”) is used to remind people that what was going on in New York (especially in the art galleries) was nothing buy the “same old” stuff that had been going on; meaningless, rich people art for a consumerist society. Ironically SAMO, while used as a crtique towards the art world, would ultimately help Basquiat break into the gallery world he was mocking. For Drake, there's two ways this becomes applicable. Nothing Was the Same is the antithesis to the same old—literally nothing is what it was, no longer the “same old.” It also is (debatably) the album that helped him ascend to the point in his career where critics and contemporaries—including Kanye West—have noticed his skill and accepted him into hip-hop greatness. As Basquiat himself tagged in the early 80's, “SAMO IS DEAD.”
Wangechi Mutu
Title of work: “Somewhere Between Psychotic and Iconic”
An aesthetic that's somewhere between collage, found materials, and abstract art, Wangechi Mutu's work tackles the issues of race, colonialism, and consumption—with special focus on the female form. Her most notable work makes her subjects a visual chimera; a mix between animal and human, plants and machines. Add in the collage-like style of her works, and they seem almost Picaso-esque in their mashed-up look. In the case of a Drake-themed work, Mutu would likely incorporate parts of OVO's notable owl imagery (seen here in the form of talons) alongside a portrait of Drizzy. There's also collage-like absurdism in the form of lips for eyes, and references to Drake's crazy lifestyle via a sports car, and literal headlines in the background.