Barkley L. Hendricks was known to wear his camera around his neck as an extension of himself. Most people associate the artist with his paintings which gracefully embody the black experience in America. But in an upcoming exhibition titled Myself when I’m realwhich opens at the Jack Shainman Gallery on April 13, his photographs will take center stage.
His widow, Susan Hendricks, was aware of the painter’s extensive inventory of slides, negatives and prints, but in officially editing and digitizing the images since late 2018, she discovered a vast cache of previously unseen photos by the artist. .
“People have seen a lot of his paintings; they are fantastic,” she said Hyperallergic. “You could watch them multiple times. But it’s an opportunity to get a fresh look at what Barkley was looking at and why he was so intrigued by certain images.
Hendricks, who passed away on April 18, 2017, describes his camera as a mechanical sketchbook. “He always said he was a photographer before he was a painter,” recalls Susan Hendricks. His next door neighbor in Philadelphia gave him his first camera, a small Kodak Brownie, when he was 10 years old. For 62 years he took photographs that inspired his portraits, placing black Americans living in urban settings at the forefront of his work in the 1960s and 1970s, when many subjects in mainstream artwork were white. . His innovative works led him to win the 2016 Rappaport Prize, the Amistad Center for Art and Culture President’s Award in 2010, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2008. He has also taught studio art at Connecticut College for 38 years.
Hendricks’ art is creative and unorthodox, honoring itself and addressing social issues in the United States. One of his most recognizable paintings is “Victory at 23” (1981), a portrait of a black woman wearing an all-white suit with a watermelon pinned to it, standing in front of a white background and holding a black balloon as she blows a bubble into the air with her chewing gum -gum.in”Miscellaneous Tyrone (Tyrone Smith)“(1976), a man against a bright pink background wears denim overalls over a white blouse and black jacket with his legs in a V shape as he holds a white tote bag.”Icon for my man Superman (Superman never saved black people-Bobby Seale)(1969) depicts a black man wearing a blue Superman shirt and sunglasses in front of a gray background with white, blue, and red outlines around him. Hendricks’ work embodies the charisma of his fascinating and intriguing subjects.
Although the public perceives the personality of the subject in his paintings, Elisabeth Sann, director of the Jack Shainman Gallery who worked closely with Hendricks, argues that his photographs show more of his character.
“I love his little jokes he had, the visual jokes, the puns, and I think the paintings alluded to it in details here and there,” she said. “But I think you really get a better idea of it from the photos.”
Hendricks took powerful photos of historic moments on television at his local Connecticut dive bar to convey the start of people’s 24-hour television access, capturing, in the words of Susan Hendricks, “the zeitgeist of this moment in American culture”. These include an image of Denzel Washington playing Malcolm X in the eponymous 1992 film and the moment Brook Lee became the first woman from Hawaii to be crowned Miss USA after taking a stand against Donald Trump, who had criticized previous winners. “Untitled” (1992) is a close-up image of the screen while “Untitled” (1997) is a wider shot of his neighborhood bar which gives the audience a more detailed look at the atmosphere and setting, with a view of a deer. head hanging on the wall. Susan argues that the pictures mark the beginning of public overconsumption of television.
Her photographs have sparked conversations, whether on media and television or high heels. In a 1993 Art Talk interview at the Griffis Art Center, Hendricks said he noticed that when he added high heels to his unique, edgy photographs, it created a dialogue. “Tales of Hoffman Woman #2” (1984) is one such image, featuring a black woman wearing a white dress with one bright orange heel still on it and the other resting sideways in front of her feet. Next to her is a wooden piece of furniture resembling a bench chair. The image evokes Hendricks’ childhood, when he used to watch women take their heels off in church when they sat down and put them back on when they left. He realized that shoes were an important fashion statement for women in the community, especially his mother, and decided to use them in his art to connect his work to his family. These references to intimate moments emphasize that “art and life are inseparable”.
“Clothes and fashion are part of our everyday life,” Hendricks said in his 1993 interview. “I love using this element [shoes] to convey a particular state of mind, and let’s face it, many human beings are defined by their fashions.
All of her photographs capture moments of everyday life in thoughtful and beautiful ways. “Untitled” (1967) is a print of three black women seated in a semi-circle talking to each other, with a figure in the center holding a camera. Looking at the print, the viewer gleans the essence, style and personalities of the subjects; as in “Sister Lucas” (1972), a round photograph of a smiling black woman, the piece encapsulates black joy. “Untitled” (2004), featuring a woman in a white hat painting horses in the middle of a forest with a dog sitting at her feet, projects a sense of calm and biophilia. Another exhibition highlight, “Untitled” (1992), is a black-and-white print of a car with a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. pasted inside a side window, centering the importance of Dr. King in an everyday moment.
“If he could have taken the camera with him to the hospital he went to before he left us, he would have had it with him,” Susan said. Hyperallergic. Hendricks enjoyed capturing the world around him, and in turn, audiences saw a world that admired him. As he said in 1993: “I love what I do, and I can do it for a long time.”
