The other features him nude before a flat black background and is entitled “Brilliantly Endowed.” Both paintings, painted in 1977, are Hendricks at his wry best, working on multiple layers. One painting, “Slick” features Hendricks clad in an elegant white suit before a white background. In this exhibit, we see a “triple” black and white self-portrait of Hendricks in which he stands photographed before two of his life-size painted self-portraits.
(Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)
#Portrait painter show series#
He began a series of portraits, both photographed and painted, featuring Black folk. From that moment, Hendricks understood his mission to be that of bringing all the grandeur of a Velázquez painting to the people he knew and saw around him. But missing at del Prado, the Louvre and the Vatican Museums were paintings centered on Black life. It was after a 1966 trip to Europe that Hendricks found himself profoundly inspired by the portrait paintings of old masters like Velázquez, van Dyck, van Eyck, Rembrandt and Caravaggio.
The show is divided into seven groupings, including self-portraits, portraits of others, photographs centered on fashion, technology, and finally, Hendricks’ photographs documenting his experiences living as a Black man living in a racist society. What’s on view is about 65 or so works that juxtapose the many facets of Hendricks’ creative output, with a special emphasis on the photography he referred to as his “mechanical sketchbook,” a quick way to capture those unique visual moments that might otherwise get lost in the fray of daily life.
#Portrait painter show full#
And so, this full picture of his creative genius really is something we have the opportunity to showcase.” “He really didn’t use the categories and hierarchies that Western art employs, thinking that a Polaroid or photograph is less than a painting which is less than a drawing,” says Ankori. (Courtesy Rennie Collection, Vancouver, photo Blaine Campbell) It was after the Rose acquired one of Hendricks’ self-portraits in 2021, featuring the artist wearing a big black hat, that the museum began to think about doing a broader show on Hendricks, a much beloved African American artist who has inspired subsequent generations of African American portrait painters, including Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley. “The photographs become a different invitation into his intimate and interior life than the paintings.” “In the photographs, Hendricks gives us a chance to see the world as he sees it, without the same level of manipulation as the portraits,” says Hill. Hill, guest curator of African and African diaspora art. “They provide a deeper view into not just his art, but his vision and his life and his ways of seeing and ways of being in the world,” says Gannit Ankori, Rose director and chief curator who co-curated the exhibit with Elyan J. 10 at the Rose Art Museum, we finally get a chance to see this other side of Hendricks’ oeuvre, including Polaroids, photographs and never-before-seen works on paper, all discovered in the artist’s New London, Connecticut studio after his death in 2017. Now, in “ ‘My Mechanical Sketchbook’ - Barkley L. While some of his photographs served mostly as studies for paintings, others were conceived as stand-alone works of art to be admired in their own right. And they share a lot in common with his paintings, including expert composition, a deep interest in fashion, a masterful eye for color, and an unerring capacity to capture mood while making sly social commentary. (Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)īut the truth is that Hendricks - the virtuoso painter known for bold life-size portraits of both himself and others - did take photographs.
Hendricks, "In the Crosshairs of the States," 2016. Hendricks was famous for his arrestingly vivid paintings of people of color, modeled after the regal portraiture of European court painters. (Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)įor most of his career, Barkley L.
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