Beautiful Boys

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Beautiful Boys

Artist William Villalongo (American, born 1975)

Date2019

Dimensions70 × 39 7/8 in. (177.8 × 101.3 cm)

MediumAcrylic, cut velour paper, and pigment print collage

ClassificationDrawings

Credit LineWilliam J. Hitchcock Fund in memory of Grace J. Hitchcock

Object number

2019.58

Not on View

Label TextThrough inventive visual strategies and sensuous materials, William Villalongo’s Beautiful Boys metaphorically comments on the fraught Black experience. The large cut-paper work belongs to Villalong’s group of portraits that reimagines the Black male body as an invisible entity in the context of America’s charged social and political climate. Known for his irreverent narratives that underscore historical erasure, Villalongo here depicts a camouflaged figure made from black velour cut-out shapes and collaged images of gems, ancient Greek and African sculptures, and butterflies. This array of swirling historical artifacts and natural elements is bounded within painted body parts—arms, hands, and a tied durag indicating the figure’s head—to suggest the form’s navigation of the world through various states of alteration and mutation. Like falling leaves whose colors change with the seasons, Villalongo’s figure is a shapeshifter who modifies and continually redefines his identity as a necessary condition of Black male existence.