Art + Culture Diaries #8: Barkley L. Hendricks

A while back I heard a quote, “No one chooses to be an artist. You just are.”  So, in a sense, it’s a spiritual calling and the work produced a reflection of the inner evolution, excavation and unveiling of a human being - for better or for worse.  In the case of Barkley L. Hendricks, it appears he’s had a pretty groovy journey and one that is 30+ years later, entirely of the moment.  Hendricks’ achievement of a certain liberation through the sensuality of the body in his work is timeless.  A lived existence emerges that is not born primarily of rationality, but of swagger and spirit.  An aura permeates the physical presence of his subjects that precludes and overpowers the projection of a storyline.

(Images from left to right: Barkley L. Hendricks, Misc. Tyrone (Tyrone Smith), 1976. Oil and magna on linen canvas, 72″x50 1/4″. Courtesy of the artist. Barkley L. Hendricks, Bahsir (Robert Gowens), 1975. Oil and acrylic on linen canvas, 83 1/2″ x 66″. Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University.)

Just as Hendricks’ work reverberates in the African American contemporary art scene through artists like Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley and Jeff Sonhouse, he reflects the liberated spirit of Harlem Renaissance painter, William H. Johnson. A description of Johnson’s work by Art Historian David Driskell in Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America, is quite apropos to Hendricks’ own oeuvre, “His self-imposed aesthetic rules and restrictions, relating to what he called ‘primitive painting,’ freed him from academic traditions and permitted a lyrical artistry to flow from his brush.”  Although Hendricks’ work is not exactly primitive it is most definitely lyrical, and has often lived outside the confines of the academic and art establishments.  Hendricks’ painting of portraits that show three views of the same subject (i.e. Bahsir (Robert Gowens), above, and Sir Charles, Alias Willie Harris) suggest a lineage to Johnson’s own, Self Portrait (triple), housed at the Hampton University Museum, and  taken together, reinforce the notion of a gaze that allows for the multidimensional nature of man. 

(Images left to right: Barkley L. Hendricks, Icon for Fifi, 1982. Oil and combination leaf on lined canvas, 60 1/4″ x 50 1/4″. Courtesy of the artist. Barkley L. Hendricks, Tequila, 1978. Oil and acrylic on linen canvas, 60 3/4″ x 50 1/4″. Collection of Butler Institute for American Art, Youngstown, OH.)

This multidimensional nature alongside, the vibrant auras captured in many of Hendricks’ portraits, finds it lyrical metaphor in soul music.  Without even hearing a sound, his work leaps of the wall (or page) and into a smooth groove that is oh so divinely and sweetly, Black American.

Hendricks’ work is currently on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University until July 13, 2008.  The show is accompanied by a highly recommended catalog with essays from multidimensional art world cognoscenti: Franklin Sirmans, Trevor Schoonmaker and Thelma Golden.