Kanye West’s high school art just showed up on ‘Antiques Roadshow’

Kanye West accepts the video vanguard award at the MTV Video Music Awards at the Microsoft Theater on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015, in Los Angeles. | Matt Sayles, Invision

If this whole music thing doesn’t pan out for Kanye West, he’s definitely got a fallback.

The musician/producer has won a bunch of awards, sold a ton of albums and become one of the world’s most-recognizable celebrities. Before all that, though, he was a gifted young visual artist. And thanks to “Antiques Roadshow,” we now have proof.

The long-running PBS program recently showcased a unique appraisal: a portfolio of visual art that West completed as a teen at Chicago’s Polaris School for Individual Education in the mid-1990s. The artistic quality of the pieces is impressive.

The art portfolio now belongs to West’s cousin, who received it after West’s mother, Donda West, passed away in 2007. The cousin’s husband brought it to “Antiques Roadshow,” and a few of the pieces were collectively appraised at $16,000-$23,000. The pieces show West working in a variety of visual mediums, including graphite pencil, gouache painting and scratchboard.

Included in the collection was a flyer for West’s first art show when he was 17 years old. The flyer details the extent of West’s artistic training, which included the Hyde Park Art Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago State University and Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China. West’s mother was an English professor who traveled the world and exposed him to numerous art experiences.

“And I have to say, he has a very impressive resume,” appraiser Laura Woolley said in the episode. “So by age 17, he’s already been studying at these extraordinary artistic institutions.”

In 1997, West received a scholarship to attend the American Academy of Art in Chicago. After a short time there, he transferred to Chicago State University to study English. He then dropped out at age 20 to pursue music full time — inspiring his debut album “The College Dropout,” which went triple platinum.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/34r4DK8