work of the month


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Slick, Self-Portrait, 1977

Barkley Hendricks (American, b. 1945)
Oil, acrylic, and magna on canvas, 67 x 48-1/2 inches
Gift of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York,
Childe Hassam Purchase Funds

Just how lasting is a first impression? Take one look at Slick, then decide. Barkley Hendricks' self-portrait contains all the details to evoke a powerful first-response from the viewer -- colorful cap, pristine white suit, shades, and a toothpick. Slick gazes at us with the nonchalance and confidence of a man who knows himself.

Barkley Hendricks spends a great deal of time exacting the clothing and expression of his subjects to convey a powerful persona. His best-known figures are confidently posed, life-sized, and realistic, with fashion details that connect his art with African American daily life. The artist's home and studio are vast repositories for common objects that inspire his work -- hats, shoes, roller skates, basketballs, souvenirs, photographs -- with jazz music almost always playing somewhere in the background. A photographer and a painter, he considers himself a specialist in portraiture and landscapes.

"Hendricks' portraits provide us opportunities to both develop and question first impressions," says Floyd R. Thomas, curator of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Ohio. "He invites us to look more closely and carefully -- to delve below the surface and explore his subjects' psyches. He challenges us to explore our own reactions to the people whose portraits he paints. Why do I perceive them as I do? How do we differ; how are we the same? What are they thinking and why?"

Hendricks uses jackets and dresses, jewelry and sunglasses as vehicles to enrich the persona. "Clothing and fashion are part of our daily lives," says the artist, "and I like to use them to convey a particular state of mind. Let's face it -- a number of human beings like to define themselves by their fashions." Slick's colorful cap is an African design, probably an influence from the artist's student days at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, when he won scholarships to travel through Africa in 1966 and 1967. The necklace, given to him by a lady friend, serves as the perfect shape to fill the opening of his suit." His sunglasses reflect the gothic windows of his studio.

Slick is one of many African American figure studies for which Hendricks has won notoriety. His images of the black figure against a light background broke the standards of European and American portraiture, commanding particular power during the 1960s and 1970s civil rights era. By combining oils and acrylics, Hendricks explores various intensities of white. Art critic Doreen Mangan believes his well-known white-on-white dramatic effects actually began with his basketball still lifes, where he painted balls floating and arcing in air. "Hendricks feels that in a white-on-white painting of a black person," explains Mangan, "the person's head floats much the same way his basketballs did." This stark counterpoint of color moves Hendricks into his own brand of realism.

Realism regained popularity in the 1960s as a reaction to abstract art. Painters such as Chuck Close, Philip Pearlstein, and Alfred Leslie (see Leslie's Marcelle and Pierre Monnin, 1975 also on view in the Contemporary Gallieres) looked at the human figure with a renewed sensitivity to techniques of the old masters. Photo Realism gained prominence during this decade as well, where artists reproduced reality as literally as the camera. But Hendricks says, "To link myself with Photo Realism would not necessarily be correct, although I do use a camera. The human eye - that's the first lens." The artist often paints people from photographs, but he focuses less on a rigid interpretation of the figure and more on the personality of the subject.

"His brand of realism has been referred to by various critics as 'straight-at-you' realism, New Realism, hyper-realism, cool realism," explains Mangan. "The latter seems most apt. It should be understood, however, that the phrase 'cool realism' does not mean slick or superficial." In 1977, art critic Hilton Kramer criticized the artists' work for its "slickness," a term to describe the jarring effect of a stylized figure standing against a stark, blank background. Did the artist name his 1977 self-portrait as a bold response to Kramer's comment? Hendricks agrees somewhat. "However, my sister had more to do with the name of the painting. She said, 'You think you are so slick. Just wait till some woman gets a hold of you.' That was her remark about my single living activities before getting married," says the artist.

Hendricks joined the faculty of Connecticut College, New London, in 1972. Since that time, he has enjoyed many solo and group exhibitions including Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976), The Many Faces of Barkley Hendricks (Norwalk Community-Technical College, 1993), and Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art (Whitney Museum, 1994). Hendricks and his wife Susan have been working together to open the artist's most recent show, The Barkley L. Hendricks Experience, on display at Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut, through June 17, 2001. The show features larger than life oil portraits, landscapes painted in tribute to Jamaica, a series of conte drawings on paper, and various multi-media works. "The exhibition has already unleashed a bevy of recollection experiences," says Hendricks, whose career demonstrates an inseparable connection between art and life.

What does Slick tell you about the painter and the man, Barkley Hendricks? What does your first impression of this figure tell you about yourself? If Hendricks painted your portrait, what lasting impressions would it make on others?

-- - Julie Strohkorb

ARTIST PROFILE

Barkley Hendricks earned a certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a M.F.A. from Yale University. His earliest works were in watercolor, but he is best known for his solitary figures depicting African American life. His work Dixwell, 1971, is featured in the current exhibition To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities at the Chrysler Museum of Art and Hampton University Museum. He spoke during an Artists' Panel at Hampton University Museum on May 5, 2001.

On view at Hampton University Museum:

Barkley Hendricks (American, b. 1945)
Dixwell, 1971
Acrylic on canvas, 13 x 16 inches
North Carolina Central University Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Clyde de Loache Ryals.		 Dixwell, Barkley Hendricks, 1977

RESOURCES

Art Talk Program #12. Videocassette. Griffis Art Center and local access cable station, 1993. 59:45 min.

"Barkley L. Hendricks." Connecticut College. Accessed March 24, 2001. http://camel.conncoll.edu/academics/web_profiles/blhen.asp

Kramer, Hilton. "Art: To the Last Detail." The New York Times, 17 June 1977.

Mangan, Doreen. "Barkley Hendricks and his Figurative Drama." American Artist, July 1976: 34-38, 68-70.

Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art Bicentennial Exhibition. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976.

Thomas, Floyd R. "A Personal Reflection on The Barkley L. Hendricks Experience - As I See It." The Barkley Hendricks Experience. New London: Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 2000.

To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Louise Stone. Andover: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1999.

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