Background

Wardell Milan was born in 1977 in Knoxville, Tennessee. He is a son of Wardell Sr. Milan and Linda Milan.

Education

Wardell Milan spent his childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee.

He revealed his passion for art at an early age. When he was eight, his parents enrolled him at after-school and weekend art classes and constructed a separate studio in their home to help their son develop his skills. By his teens, photography became the center of Milan's artistic interests.

In 2001, Milan earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Tennessee. In a couple of years, he spent a year as an artist in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Then, he pursued his studies at Yale University where he received his Master of Arts degree.

Career

Wardell Milan’s career started when he relocated to New York City after graduating from Yale University. In 2005, he showed his talent in using different mediums to create paintings, presenting his ‘Frequency’ at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The same year, he debuted as an artist abroad with the show ‘La Beaute de l'Enfer’ (The Beauty of Hell) at the Galerie Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels. The shows at MoMA PS1 and Log Cabin, as well as the first solo exhibition at Taxter and Spengemann Gallery, forged his status of a prominent artist.

During the subsequent years, Wardell Milan has taken part at lots of solo and group exhibitions in art spaces in the United States and abroad in such galleries as Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Samson Projects in Boston, at Context Gallery, in Londonderry, Ireland, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis, the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

In 2017, Wardell Milan served as an artist in residence at the Rauschenberg Residency. Earlier, he has also served in the same capacity at the Lower East Side Printshop (2010), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2010-2011).

The recent shows of the artist include Kingdom or Exile: Parisian Landscapes (2013) at Savannah College of Art and Design, Parisian Landscapes (2014) at Osmos Address, New York City, and Parisian Landscapes, Blue Zenith at David Nolan Gallery, New York City (2019). The latter is the now-representative of Milan’s art in New York City.

Achievements

• Wardell Milan is an accomplished artist whose brilliant mastery in mixing various media to express such immortal topics as beauty, sexuality, personal identity, and the perception of the human body are widely recognized.
  
  During his career, Milan received such awards as Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Awards, and African American Trail Blazer Award from the University of Tennessee among others. He has been a recipient of grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Art Matters Foundation, and others.
  
  The artist’s paintings, drawings, photographs, and three three-dimensional structures are acquired by many galleries and art spaces, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Denver Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and elsewhere.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Untitled
  • A Series of Inspiring Women (#11)
  • Portrait, Ned
  • Little Red Tulip
  • Portrait, Chloe Rose
  • Oliver Brown
  • Portrait, Victoria
  • A midnight bell, a passing moan
  • The new sun will warm our proud and naked bodies

  • The Flower no.4

  • The Flower no.6

  • The Flower no. 1

  • Portrait, Agnes

  • Portrait, Tammy

  • In Memoriam V

  • Late afternoon, between late summer and early fall no.2

  • Portrait, Marie-Kate

  • Strangers in a Park

  • Holy Holly

• photography

  • Miss Floral Pagaent
  • Early Spring. The Charming Evening
  • The Adulterous Wife and Her Erotic Spirits
  • The Inauguration of St. Valentine's Day

• work of art

  • Puerto Rican Woman with a Beauty Mark, N.Y.C.
  • Transvestite at a Drag Ball, N.Y.C.
  • Woman with a Veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C.
  • Blonde Girl with Shiny Lipstick, N.Y.C.
  • A Naked Man Being a Woman, N.Y.C.
  • A Young Man and his Pregnant Wife in Washington Square
  • Woman and Botanicals (10 of 13)
  • Girl with a Cigar in Washington Square, N.Y.C.
  • Stedman
  • Jack Walls
  • A Puerto Rican Housewife, N.Y.C.
  • Untitled (Female Flexing)

  • Romantic Sunset

  • Portrait, Ken

  • Sunday, sitting on the bank of Butterfly Meadow

  • One could still dream to devise an optimistic antidote

  • Magical Black Girls

  • In Euphoria, we find two Kung Fu Warriors fumbling towards a reconciliation

  • 3 Warriors: Kung Fu Kelvin, Samurai Seitu, and King Kunta Kinte

Views

Wardell Milan characterizes his work as ‘visual narratives’ which can be linear or non-linear in terms of the viewer’s perception.

Quotations: "During the past year, photographs, works on paper, and drawings were conceived and birthed without concessions. For me, this was, and is the most significant use of the received grant... The [Grants to Artists award] has doubtlessly influenced my artistic advancement, allowing me to set a tone in my studio practice that is risky and more assertive..."

"I like this idea of creating duality of this uncomfortable shift for the viewer when they're looking at the work."

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Mr. Milan's work has plenty of finesse, but also feels flexible, on a growth curve an auspicious debut." Holland Cotter, art critic

Interests

• Writers

  Tennessee Williams, Alice Walker, James Baldwin

Connections

Father:

Wardell Sr. Milan

Mother:

Linda Milan

References

• Wardell Milan's Official Website