“My paintings were about people that were part of my life.
If they were political, it’s because they were a reflection of the culture we
were drowning in,” – Barkley Hendricks to The Brooklyn Rail magazine in a 2016 interview.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "What's Going On," 1974.
I’ve not posted in a while, but it is only fitting that my
first post back be about a true cultural icon, Barkley Hendricks, who passed
away last week at the age of 72.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Jack Shainman Gallery
Hendricks was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and lived
and worked in New London, Connecticut. He earned both his BFA and MFA from Yale
University. He also was Professor
Emeritus of Studio Art at Connecticut College, teaching drawing, illustration,
watercolours and photography, from 1972 until his retirement in 2010.
Barkley L. Hendricks
Hendricks fell in love with portrait style painting during
his time in Europe as an undergraduate art student in the mid-1960s, but he was
troubled by the lack of black people immortalized in art. He set about rectifying that situation in his
own art.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Lawdy Mama," 1969. Collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
In the eye of the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of
black power and black pride, Hendricks began creating these arrestingly
beautiful, life-sized postmodern masterpieces featuring of ordinary black folks
– sometimes friends and neighbors – doing ordinary things.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Down Home Taste," 1971.
Hendricks was and will forever be one of my all-time
favorite artists. He did it for the culture, a culture that mainstream believed
irrelevant to art. His works are still
widely missing from American museum collections. But his influence is apparent – in the works
of Kehinde Wiley’s majestically modern takes on Old Master portraits, Kadir
Nelson’s cool portraits of American black history and culture, Mickalene Thomas’
seductive, modern studies on beauty, and many more contemporary black artists.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Sweet Thang (Lynne Jenkins)," 1975-1976.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Jackie sha-la-la, Jackie Cameron," 1975.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Take All the Time You Need (Adrienne Hawkins)," 1975.
The largest traveling exhibit to feature his work was Barkley
L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool, organized by Trevor Schoonmaker at the Nasher
Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
About Hendricks, Schoonmaker said, “His bold portrayal of
his subject’s attitude and style elevates the common person to celebrity
status. Cool, empowering, and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks’ artistic
privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today’s
younger generation of artists.”
Barkley L. Hendricks, "New Orleans Niggah," 1972 on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Hendricks currently has pieces on display at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in
Washington, D.C. and at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. An upcoming Tate Modern exhibit, “Soulof a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” (which looks amazing, btw) will
feature his work as a centerpiece.
Bakley L. Hendricks, "Vitamin K for Fun," 1982, Jack Shainman Gallery.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Fela: Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.......," 2002, Jack Shaiman Gallery.
Jack Shainman Gallery has represented Hendricks since 2009.
His solo exhibitions at the Gallery include Heart Hands Eyes Mind
(2013) and Barkley L. Hendricks (2016).
Barkley Hendricks, “In the Crosshairs of the States,” 2016, Jack Shainman Gallery.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Crosshairs Study," 2015, Jack Shainman Gallery.
Hendricks has never said that he was a protest or political
artist, but his piece “In the Crosshairs of the States (2016),” presents a
black man in a gray hooded sweatshirt holding his hands up. He is seen through the crosshairs of a gun
scope and a confederate flag hangs behind the piece. Hendricks, said in an interview with artspace.com
that, among other things that the painting was “in direct correlation to what’s
happening as we speak.”
The first Hendricks I ever saw was his provocative self-portrait
“BrilliantlyEndowed” (1977). He painted it in a
cheeky response to art critic Harold Kramer’s review of his work. In the portrait, Hendricks is nude, save for
socks and sneakers, a cap, and glasses and jewelry, a toothpick hanging
casually from his lips as he looks ahead.
I loved the envelope it pushed.
Here is this black, male body beautifully and daringly painted on a
towering scale. It is defiant and
brilliant and provokes thoughts on the political implications of the black male
body and black masculinity.
I have spent years pouring over Hendricks’ work and I still
cannot pick a favorite, he was that brilliant.
The art world lost a true master.
Barkley L. Hendricks, "Slick (self portrait),"
In reflecting on his legacy, Hendricks said “I’ve been
painting for 40 years. … I get all kinds of different thoughts about what my
painting’s about, and many of them don’t relate to the areas of inspiration.
There should be a degree of mystery — what can I tell you? You know enough. I
want it to be what I call memorable. I don’t want it to go poof.”
