How artist Amy Sherald reinvented the most famous kiss in history

This may be the most famous kiss ever captured on camera – the young US Navy man wrapping his arms around a woman in a white medical uniform in Times Square, his body draped dramatically over hers.

Taken amid the jubilation of Victory Over Japan Day, which effectively ended World War II, the black and white image captured by Alfred Eisenstaedt was first published in Life magazine in 1945 and has since become an important element in popular culture.

Eventually, the image fell into the hands of artist Amy Sherald, where the celebrated painter draws on different visual references from American history to inform her portrayals of everyday black life – representation that has largely been excluded from art history.

In her new painting “For love, and for country,” Sherald co-opts Eisenstaedt’s image to make a bold declaration of love: two black sailors sharing a deeply passionate kiss, their eyes closed as they lose themselves in the moment.

It is a monumental work and, at more than 3 meters high, larger than what Sherald usually paints. At a time when the rights of gay and transgender people in the United States are being threatened by a record number of draft anti-LGBTQ laws, the artist said she wanted her friends to feel “safe” through her work.

“We are in a place where same-sex marriages are being threatened and where there is often fatal violence against transgender and non-binary people,” she said over a video call.

“Affection within that community is policed, and so the politics of public pleasure comes into play. There is a long history of censorship and erasure that weighs heavily on gay kissing, and it is often excluded from public view. I think we’re living in a time when implanting a kiss – and specifically a gay kiss – could be used like a giant.”

Over the past decade, Sherald has become a leading figure in American contemporary art, most widely recognized for a 2018 portrait of former US First Lady Michelle Obama, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery.

His black figures, painted in “grisaille” (shades of grey), are often dressed in colorful fabrics, facing the viewer against a tranquil expanse of sky blue, lilac or ocher.

Sherald’s reinterpretation of the Victory Day kiss is part of a new collection of nine paintings, debuting at London’s Hauser & Wirth gallery during Frieze London, titled “The World We Make”. The exhibition will be accompanied by his book of the same name next month.

The title came from a radio show Sherald was listening to, a briefly mentioned phrase that stuck with her as she prepared the exhibit.

“It’s a reflection of my desire to record life as I see it or feel it,” she said.

divergent images

Sherald uses a camera extensively in the creation of each artwork, staging studio photo shoots before beginning to paint. His work doesn’t hide his relationship to photography, but it has a penchant for it, with each canvas feeling like a meeting of the two mediums.

But his painting of the kiss in Times Square, for all its similarities, has an entirely different feel to Eisenstaedt’s image, in which the woman’s face is obscured as the sailor grips her tightly.

In Sherald’s retelling, a man in a white embroidered shirt and sailor hat pulls his partner close, holding his head as he bends over and kisses him. The second figure, in stripes, with a red scarf around her neck and canary-yellow cropped pants, holds her hat aside as she gives in to the kiss, trusting the hug.

The original photograph has a complicated history. Although several people have come forward over the decades claiming to be the couple, they are believed to be Greta Zimmer Friedman, a 21-year-old dental assistant, and George Mendonsa, a WWII sailor the same age as her, and who spontaneously kissed her when the news of Japan’s surrender was announced.

Friedman reflected in 2005 that the date “wasn’t a romantic event,” adding, “It wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came and (me) kissed or grabbed.”

In 2019, during a global flurry of accusations and revelations from women who were sexually harassed or assaulted, a vandal in Florida spray-painted “#MeToo” on a sculpture based on Eisenstaedt’s image.

In light of the conversations about consent, many online commentators have begun to see the Victory Day kiss in a new light — not the height of passion embodied in a Hollywood-style pose, but perhaps a forced, unrequited kiss.

“I think people started talking about it in a different way,” Sherald said. “It’s a different generation.”

In contrast, Sherald prioritized the comfort of the couple who participated in her scene. “If they weren’t comfortable, it would be a different painting,” she said. “Even though they were models who didn’t know each other, they managed to create that moment where you feel the intimacy of what’s happening there.”

a place for reflection

The color also influences the mood of “For love, and for country,” as the city backdrop is stripped down in favor of a shadowless stretch of blue.

“I think the most common feature in the exhibition is the color palette, specifically the color blue, and […] based on the figures,” she explained. “Even though our interpretation of color is subjective, (I was) thinking about hope, healing and divinity, ocean, sky, spirituality.”

Throughout Sherald’s new exhibit, blue backdrops give the screens a sense of daydream rather than clues to location. In one painting, “Kingdom,” a child at the top of a green slide pauses to look at the viewer, the sky forming a great expanse behind him.

This echoes the minimalist feel of recent work “If You Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It,” which depicts a man sitting on a green industrial rafter with a seemingly endless cold tone below and above him.

That last image was also a nod to a famous American photo: the 1932 photo of construction workers having lunch, in the air atop a rafter in New York City. “I love this painting so much,” she said of her 2019 artwork. “I’ve been trying to recreate it since I made it.”

Photography has always had a profound influence on Sherald’s work. After centuries and centuries of paintings devoid of black presence, the invention of the camera gave black artists and families a way to present themselves and their communities.

“I was able to look at the history of photography and find images of black families, black people, and that was really important to me,” she said. “I think about the photographs I grew up seeing and my family’s house. I just got a deeper understanding of what I was doing.”

Sherald strove to convey these feelings of reflection and belonging to her viewers. She once called her paintings a “resting place” for the black community, and no matter how her work evolves, that, for her, will never change.

“Because of the way art history has evolved without the voice or image of the black artist, I think the work will always be like this – I don’t think it will change,” she said. “It’s almost like my manifesto, if you will. It’s occupying space, recovering time and trying to create change in the world through the work I do. I think images are seen by the eyes, but they are also felt by the heart.”

“The World We Make” is on view until December 23 at Hauser & Wirth in London.