Beauford and the Sage
In Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, Beauford's biographer, David Leeming, tells us that Beauford's friend Larry Calcagno gave Beauford a "copy of Lao Tzu that he nearly always carried with him and was fond of quoting."
Numerous Lao Tzu quotes reference the Sage, and some translations refer to the Sage as female. I wonder if Beauford decision to call his 1967 portrait of James Baldwin The Sage Black had anything to do with his knowledge of and affinity for these references.
(1967) Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Leeming does not indicate whether Beauford had favorite Lao Tzu quotes, or what these might have been. So I'm sharing several of my favorites, which I'd like to think Beauford would appreciate.
"Be still. Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity."
"If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. For truly, the greatest gift you have to offer humanity, is your own transformation."
"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."
"When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you."
"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present."
"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong."
"Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel; yet it is its center that makes it useful. You can mold clay into a vessel; yet, it is its emptiness that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows from the walls of a house;
but the ultimate use of the house will depend on that part where nothing exists.
Therefore, something is shaped into what is; but its usefulness comes from what is not."
"Matter is necessary to give form, but the value of reality lies in its immateriality. Everything that lives has a physical body, but the value of a life is measured by the soul."
"At the center of your being, you have the answer."
"To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders."
Beauford and W. C. Handy
(1939) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
When Beauford met W. C. Handy at a party hosted by composer Luke Theodore Upshure in Greenwich Village in August 1930, it was the beginning of a long and influential friendship.
Already an accomplished musician and composer when he moved to NYC, Handy and his partner Harry Pace operated a successful music publishing business from an office on Times Square. By the time he and Beauford met, he had already rebounded from a severe reversal of fortune and was enjoying renewed interest in his greatest recordings.
Beauford immersed himself in jazz and embraced Handy's suggestion that he begin sketching jazz musicians and other notables in New York City's 1930s black community. He painted the oil portrait of his friend in 1939; it was used for the poster announcement of Beauford's solo show at the Vendome Gallery in midtown Manhattan in 1941.
Beauford's biographer, David Leeming, reports that a review of the show by New York Sun journalist Melvine Upton describes Beauford's portrayal of Handy as "personal and peculiarly understanding."
Beauford's pencil sketches of celebrated black Americans illustrate Handy's 1944 book entitled Unsung Americans Sung.
Unsung Americans Sung book cover
Several of these sketches are posted in two Les Amis articles that feted Women's History Month in 2021:
Swann Auction Galleries Sells Two Beauford Delaney Works at March 31, 2022 Auction
Swann Auction Galleries' March 31, 2022 African American Art sale is now history. Both of the Beauford Delaney works it offered during this auction were sold.
The estimated sale price for Untitled (Composition in Yellow, Orange and Red) was $40,000 - $60,000.
It sold for $137,000, including buyer's premium.
Untitled (Composition in Yellow, Orange and Red)
(c. 1958-59) Oil on paper mounted on linen canvas
1346x965 mm; 53x38 inches
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
By permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The estimated sale price for Untitled (watercolor) was $8,000 - $12,000.
It sold for $12,500, including buyer's premium.
(1956) Watercolor on cream wove paper
450x335 mm; 17 1/2x13 1/4 inches
Signed and dated in ink, lower right
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
By permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
For more information about the auction results, click HERE.
Beauford at Auction
Swann Auction Galleries is holding an African American Art sale on March 31, 2022.
Among the 241 lots available for purchase are two Beauford Delaney works.
(c. 1958-59) Oil on paper mounted on linen canvas
1346x965 mm; 53x38 inches
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
By permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1956) Watercolor on cream wove paper
450x335 mm; 17 1/2x13 1/4 inches
Signed and dated in ink, lower right
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
By permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Both works were created during Beauford's Clamart years, which were as personally tumultuous for him as they were professionally productive.
Swann describes the untitled oil on paper mounted on canvas as Beauford's "largest work on paper to come to auction." It is tempting to speculate that this work may have been among the six large abstract canvases that biographer David Leeming says Beauford sent to a group show in Leverkusen, Germany in the fall of 1958.
Leeming writes that during this year, Beauford "was changing directions slightly, attempting to solve a new problem, which involved the use of color to convey his own inner life.... He seemed now to be moving toward a more expressionist use of painting to represent the inner turmoil itself."
Beauford painted the 1956 watercolor during his first year in Clamart. This work shown at the Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition in Paris in 2016. When I look at it, I am reminded of Leeming's observation that Beauford "pursued what he saw as a therapeutic reading of the 'wisdom literature' of the Far East," including works by Lao Tsu and various Buddhist writings.
Beauford created several watercolors during his 1956 summer vacation in Ibiza and Majorca with Larry Calcagno, James Baldwin, and other friends.
The estimated sale price for Untitled (Composition in Yellow, Orange and Red) is $40,000 - $60,000.
The estimated sale price for Untitled (watercolor) is $8,000 - $12,000.
For information about the auction, click HERE.
Making Peace with Aloneness
In letters that Beauford sent to friends Henry Miller and Larry Wallrich in March 1960, he wrote of "finally hav[ing] to make peace with aloneness" and a need to "meet the challenge with the courage to begin again."
When I look at Beauford's works and think about the abovementioned words, I see his sentiments in the works below.
(1944) Oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
By permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1965) Watercolor on wove paper
Signed, dated and inscribed "avec amour" in ink.
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1963) Watercolor on wove paper
Signed and dated "July 19, 1963" in ink, lower right
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Signed, inscribed and dated "Beauford Delaney Mallorca 1961" lower right
(1961) gouache on paper
25 1/2 x 19 1/2 in. (64.8 x 49.5 cm.)
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1968) Oil on canvas
Permanent collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah
Gift of Dr. Walter O. and Mrs. Linda J. Evans
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Swann Auction Galleries - Fifteen Years of Beauford Delaney Sales
Long before I met Nigel Freeman, founder of Swann Auction Galleries' African American Fine Art Department, at the Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition in Paris in 2016, I had been following Swann's sales of Beauford's art.
Swann has been offering Beauford's work since 2007. It claimed the 2018 auction record for a Beauford Delaney painting with the sale of Untitled (Village Street Scene),
(1948) Oil on canvas
737x1016 mm; 29x40 inches
Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
Image from Swann Auction Galleries Web site
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Below are some of my favorite works that the organization has sold.
(1965) Watercolor on wove paper
546x457 mm; 21 1/2x18 inches.
Signed, dated and inscribed "avec amour" in ink.
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(circa late 1950s) Gouache on Schoeller Parole paper
450x300 mm; 17 3/4x11 3/4 inches
Signed in red gouache, lower right
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1963) Watercolor on thick wove paper
660 x 508 mm; 26 x 20 inches
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1958) Oil on wove paper
750x560 mm; 29 1/2x22 inches
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1963) Watercolor on wove paper
641x501 mm; 25 1/4x19 3/4 inches
Signed and dated "July 19, 1963" in ink, lower right
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Find the entire history of Beauford Delaney works that Swann has offered at auction HERE.
"Red" Is for Passion
It is generally agreed that the color "red" symbolizes passion and energy. The Sensational Color Website indicates that it
... speeds up our heart rate, blood flow, and body temperature. Red stimulates our senses of smell and taste, making us more sensitive to our environments. Red also stimulates the adrenal gland, making us more prone to take action and giving us more energy. Red is a physical stimulant.
"Red" was one of Beauford's favorite colors.
In Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, biographer David Leeming recounts a story of Beauford's mother, Delia, putting a red bedspread on his bed in 1933, when he returned home for the first time after moving to New York. Leeming says that the color excited Beauford so much that he couldn't sleep all night.
Because Valentine's Day is only two days away, I thought I'd pave the way for this celebration of love and passion with some images of Beauford Delaney works in which shades of the color "red" are prominent.
Abstraction #12
(1963) Oil on canvas
Knoxville Museum of Art
Image courtesy of Levis Fine Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Untitled
(c. 1956) Watercolor and gouache on paper
Collection of the Delaney Estate
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Untitled
(1963) Aquarelle on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image © Discover Paris!
Untitled
1956, Inks on paper
45 x 33.5 cm; 17.7" x 13.2"
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The Sage Black
(1967) Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Happy Valentine's Day from Les Amis de Beauford Delaney!
1964 Beauford Delaney Abstract for Auction
On January 21, 2022 a beautiful Beauford Delaney abstract, signed and dated 1964, was offered at auction by De Baecque et Associés in Paris.
41 x 33 cm; 16.1 x 12.9 in
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Nineteen sixty-four (1964) was a busy year for Beauford. He received a $3,500 grant from the Fairfield Foundation in January, participated in a group show at the Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporaine in the spring, displayed ten abstract gouaches in the Copenhagen exhibition entitled 10 American Negro Artists in July, and sold a large oil painting to the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Beauford sold several paintings to a collector in October, had works shown at Farleigh Dickinson University in October/November, and participated in a television interview for artists and writers who were members of the Artists Abroad for Johnson Committee. Most importantly, he prepared for the opening of his monographic exhibition at the Galerie Lambert in December.
Untitled, 1964 was part of the collection of Hélène Baltrusaitis, the woman who became director of the art center at the American Cultural Center in Paris in the wake of the departure of Darthea Speyer. According to biographer David Leeming, Baltrusaitis arranged for Beauford to contribute three abstract paintings for an itinerant show of works by American artists in December 1966. She also organized his participation in many exhibitions at the American Cultural Center and sponsored an evening dedicated to Beauford at the center in March 1969.
This painting (Lot No. 101) was estimated to sell for 8000€ - 12000€. It sold for 52,000€ (not including buyer's fees).
Sold! Two paintings from the Resonance of Form exhibition in Paris
A few days before Christmas, two paintings from the 2016 Beauford Delaney: Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition were put up for auction by Pierre Bergé et Associés in their Art Moderne et Contemporain (Modern and Contemporary Art) sale.
One was the self-portrait that served as the cover image for the exhibition catalog.
(undated) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The other was a lyrical abstract work in pastel hues.
(1961) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Pierre Bergé & Associés chose Composition as the work to display on its catalog cover.
Both paintings fetched handsome prices.
The estimated price range for the abstract (Lot 6) was 300,000€ - 400,000€. The actual sale price was 371,120€, including the buyer's fee.
The estimated price range for the self-portrait (Lot 7) was 250,000€ - 300,000€. The actual sale price was 308,220€, including the buyer's fee.
New Year Greetings from Les Amis de Beauford Delaney
In January 1962, Beauford moved into what would be his last studio in Paris - a space at 53, rue Vercingétorix purchased by Solange Du Closel and her husband, Jacques, for the express purpose of providing Beauford a place to live and work.
That was sixty years ago!
Today, in commemoration of this anniversary and in celebration of the New Year, I'm presenting an abstract work that Beauford created in 1962. Similar to last year's New Year post, I'm hoping it is a visual metaphor for what 2022 will bring.
(1962) Gouache and watercolor on paper, signed
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
This untitled abstract fairly glows with warm, vibrant colors. It was shown in the recent Frieze Masters exhibition mounted by the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery* in the UK.
I see orange and yellow as the predominant hues in this work, with red, pink, and a touch of white as accents.
Here's what several Websites have to say about the positive symbolism of these colors:
"Orange is the color of joy and creativity. Orange promotes a sense of general wellness and emotional energy that should be shared, such as compassion, passion, and warmth. Orange will help a person recover from disappointments, a wounded heart, or a blow to one’s pride."
"Associated with the more pleasant things in life, yellow kindles joy and happiness. Most prominently recognized as a cheerful and lively hue, yellow inspires positivity. With its effortless innocence, the color yellow resonates deeply with children."
"Red is powerfully linked to our most primitive physical and emotional needs of survival and self-preservation. It is the color of physical energy, passion, courage, power, will, and desire. Red symbolizes energy, action, confidence, courage, and change.
"The color pink symbolizes charm, sensitivity, tenderness, the feminine, politeness, and the romantic. It also stands for universal love of others and of oneself."
"White is the lightest color, meaning purity, innocence, and integrity. It is considered to represent perfection, as it is the purest and most complete color. It ... represents new begging and erases any trace of past actions. It is like a piece of white paper not being written yet. It leaves the mind open and free to whatever it might create in the way."
I hope you infuse all these elements into your life in 2022!
LES AMIS DE BEAUFORD DELANEY!
*Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is Special Advisor and Representative of the Estate of Beauford Delaney.
France Owns Two Beauford Delaney Abstract Paintings
When I launched the campaign to raise funds for Beauford's tombstone, I contacted the U.S. Embassy to inquire whether they could help me research information about the French government's acquisition of Beauford Delaney works. They told me that France owns two of Beauford's paintings and sent me an image of Jazz, a painting that they told me was allocated to the French Embassy in Taipei, Taiwan. They obtained the image from France's Fonds national d'art contemporain (National Contemporary Art Fund).
I published this information in an article dated April 6, 2010.
The Centre national des arts plastique (CNAP; English translation: National Center of Plastic Arts) manages the works amassed by the Fonds national d'art contemporain on behalf of France since 1791. I was privileged to be invited by Jean-Baptiste Delorme, Conservateur du patrimoine - Responsable de la collection arts plastiques (1945-1989) to visit one of their archive facilities earlier this week to see Beauford's works in person!
Frequently, photographs of a particular work neither resemble each other nor do justice to the original, and this was definitely the case for Jazz.
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Photo courtesy of France's Fonds national d'art contemporain
Published on the Les Amis blog in 2010
Collage and individual images © Les Amis de Beauford Delaney
Jazz, 1966
FNAC 29060
Centre national des arts plastiques
© droits réservés / Cnap /
Crédit photo : Yves Chenot
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Delorme and I discussed this work at length, including the fact that it was shown at the Musée Galliera in 1967, was purchased directly from Beauford in 1968, and bears the name of a second, earlier Beauford Delaney work - Portrait of Marian Anderson (1965). A letter that Beauford wrote in French to the French government and dated March 16, 1958 (the year is evidently written in error, given the previously mentioned facts) states that the government has informed him that they have purchased Portrait of Marian Anderson. He expresses his joy about the fact that this work is "appreciated by the government of a country that I love and where I chose to live" (my translation).
The second abstract, which is untitled (sans titre), is much larger (130 x 96 cm / 51.2 x 37.8 in) than Jazz (60 x 49 cm / 23.6 x 19.3 in). It was shown at the Salon des Réalités nouvelles exhibition in Paris in 1972. CNAP loaned this work to the United States of Abstraction: American Artists in France exhibition that was shown at the Musée d'art de Nantes in Nantes, France (May 19 to July 18, 2021) and the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France (August 6 to October 21, 2021).
© Les Amis de Beauford Delaney
FNAC 31447
Centre national des arts plastiques
© droits réservés / Cnap /
Crédit photo : Yves Chenot
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Both museums are part of the FRAME (FRench American Museum Exchange) network, a group of 32 major U.S. and French museums whose mission is to promote cultural exchange through the development of innovative exhibitions, educational and public programs.
The coloring and the size of Sans titre, 1963 remind me of another untitled painting that hung in the Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition in Paris in 2016. It now belongs to the Mint Museum in North Carolina.
(1959) Oil on canvas
144.5 x 95.5 cm / 56.9 x 37.6 in
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
About CNAP (excerpted from the CNAP Website):
The Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) is a public institution under the French Ministry of Culture. It fosters and supports artistic creation in France in all areas of the visual arts: painting, performance art, sculpture, photography, installation art, video, multimedia, graphic arts, design and graphic design. It follows young artists closely, provides expertise and support to the emergence of new forms, and assists artists and contemporary art professionals.
On behalf of the French State, CNAP expands and manages France’s national contemporary art collection, the Fonds national d’art contemporain, of over 105,000 works. Each year, it lends some 2,500 works from its collection.
Stephen Wicks and Rachel Cohen Discuss Baldwin Portrait - Part 2
Rachel Cohen: Brief Introduction to Part II
(Read Part 1 HERE.)
What’s written here is transcribed and edited from the second part of a conversation I had with Knoxville Museum of Art curator Stephen Wicks. The conversation began from Wicks’s close observations of Beauford Delaney’s Portrait of James Baldwin, 1966, and the discoveries Wicks had made about the way Delaney was evidently thinking not only about James Baldwin, but also about Alberto Giacometti and Giacometti’s biographer James Lord, mingling ideas about the three men and their work in his painting.
Delaney had long admired Giacometti’s work, knew him in Paris, made a pastel sketch of him, and mourned his passing when Giacometti died in January 1966. Delaney also knew another figure in Giacometti’s world, James Lord, who would eventually write a magisterial Giacometti biography, and had, the year before, in 1965, published his A Giacometti Portrait about the experience of being painted by Giacometti. Delaney knew Lord well enough to have fed him what he wrote to Lord apologetically had been an “awful lunch” at Delaney’s studio in Clamart. After Giacometti’s death, Delaney read Lord’s Giacometti Portrait with interest and spoke of it in this letter he wrote to Lord, also in 1966.
At the same time, Delaney’s dear friend James Baldwin was entering a new period in his renown, and Delaney was keeping files of press clippings of Baldwin’s activities – including the coverage and cover photo of Baldwin in Time Magazine. After a long time apart, in the summer of 1966, Delaney spent two important months with Baldwin in Istanbul, and began his 1966 painting of Baldwin there.
Thus, ideas about mortality, legacy, and what Delaney described to Lord as the “delicate ambiance between two friends,” are in the background, and the foreground, of Delaney’s Portrait of James Baldwin, 1966.
(1966) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
For this part of our conversation, I have transcribed a section where Stephen Wicks talks about the actual blending of different figures in the painting itself, and others where he and I spoke together about the atmospheres and techniques of Giacometti and Delaney, about the great essay by James Baldwin on Beauford Delaney’s work, "On the Painter Beauford Delaney," that was published in 1964, and about how Wicks worked from that essay to curate the important show Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door at the Knoxville Museum of Art in 2020.
— Rachel Cohen, Chicago
December 8, 2021
Rachel Cohen: I found it striking, and kind of delightful, that you think you’ve found some of James Lord’s facial features in the painting. Tell me about that.
Stephen Wicks: I was actually looking at the 1965 press photograph of Baldwin (that I think was the basis for the blue ink sketch of Baldwin by Delaney) and at period photographs of James Lord from around the time that the book was written and the sitting was happening, and I found frontal shots of Lord that appeared to align with Delaney’s 1966 painting of Baldwin.
And I just kept looking at Lord’s tight mouth that's tucked up right underneath the nose and the nose actually has this fairly bulbous base and I thought that's the way the nose looks in the Delaney painting. Baldwin doesn't have a nose like that, Baldwin's mouth isn't like that and it led me to think Delaney might have been looking at Lord’s image for some of the key features.
Blue ink on sketchbook paper, 5 ½ x 3 ½ inches
Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee
Photograph by Bruce Cole
© The Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
RC: I wondered if Delaney might have been laughing to himself as he was doing it, kind of making Giacometti's Lord, at the same time that he was making Delaney’s Baldwin. This kind of overlapping… there’s also overlap in the two painters’ artistic interests, I think.
SW: According to David Leeming’s Delaney biography [Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney], as early as 1953 or ‘54, Delaney is supposedly admiring Giacometti’s work for quote “its simple lines of African sculpture.” Both Giacometti and Delaney place great attention on the volume of the head of their sitters, and in some ways that’s reflective of their mutual interest in African sculpture. And both thought about depicting people in ways that represented a spiritual or psychological portrait rather than a physical portrait. Certain traits or qualities seen as important such as the mind, the eyes, and the head would be enlarged – it's the same thing you see in a lot of medieval art where this presence of an enhanced spiritual awareness is denoted by enlarged eyes.
RC: I find it really fruitful to think about Delaney and Giacometti together, because there’s something similar about their intentions, about how they understood abstraction and figuration, and what they were able to bring through, the way they worked so long on their canvases.
SW: And the end result is as much or more a record of that struggle, and their internal atmosphere during the time that the work is going on, as it is a record of the sitter or the subject matter. The sitter usually is consumed or withered away in the process of all that energy coming out.
Usually as you create someone's portrait, you're putting marks, matter, together, you're building up and out fleshing out. In the case of Giacometti, the more he goes at that figure and tries to bring it into shape the more it ends up eroded, and with Delaney a lot of his figures are “dissolved” by the veils of abstract brushwork.
At the Galerie Lambert show [important Delaney show in Paris in 1964], people were confused about the difference between a painting that's just total abstraction and another one that appears 80% abstraction but yet there's clearly the profile or silhouette of a figure. Delaney viewed them all as “studies in light.” I think ultimately Delaney dissolves and erodes a lot of his sitters in a way that’s similar to what Giacometti does, but the effect is very different.
RC: Say a little more about the contrast.
SW: With Delaney, it is almost as if he's depicting the light within sitters that seems to radiate or break the boundaries of their outer shell, or that bombards them from the outside in a way that makes them appear spectral rather than a solid figure sitting in space.
RC: And what would you say that Giacometti is...
SW: With Giacometti, it seems more like he's tugging at the raw material that he's using to represent the sitter, he's pulling it, in elongating it, attenuating it, peeling back the skin, pulling the muscle away, getting at the center, getting at the truth, maybe, of the figure ... taking away any likeness, leaving only the raw architecture of the figure. And yet somehow, when you look at those abstracted elongated sculptures or paintings by Giacometti, you're still able to see who's being depicted. Somehow he's left enough trace there for you to make the connection.
RC: I think that's a wonderful comparison, that seems right, because Giacometti is so architectural and sculptural, and in Delaney, it’s …
SW: it's light and color.
The surface of Giacometti’s sculptures and paintings are built up and textural and gestural in a way that you see in quite a few of Delaney’s paintings, but again, the handwriting is different. You've got that same desire not to hide the mark, not to suppress it. To leave that record of it, an honest record that an artist of integrity wouldn't want to erase.
Alberto Giacometti in his Montparnasse studio in Paris,
photographed by his wife, Annette
Author: FAAG Paris
Archives Fondation Giacometti
© Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti, Paris + ADAGP, Paris) 2019
CC-BY-SA-4.0
RC: I’m really interested in the quality of time – time in the painting and the time of painting.
SW: Take cubism and its radical approach, for instance. Instead of having this fixed view of the world, you are getting multiple views in one image in a manner that conveys an element of time. In the works we’re discussing here, Giacometti and Delaney create an image that has some resemblance to what they actually saw with their eyes, but then with that are their perceptions of the sitter’s essence or inner likeness, all the while conveying something of their own internal world in the way they shape the image. These elements are constantly working to resolve themselves or maybe maintain a state of tension and often it’s the tension that we love.
RC: In both cases, Delaney and Giacometti, there’s not only the long work on individual paintings, there’s also long work with certain sitters, and in that way I think the real comparison with the way Delaney painted Baldwin, over and over, is the way Giacometti painted his own brother Diego, over and over, through his whole career. James Lord wrote a book about being painted, but he wasn’t in that relationship of sitting, through the whole life of the painter, the way Diego was, and the way Baldwin was for Delaney. I mean I think Baldwin and Delaney did think of each other as family.
SW: What I find interesting too is, you know as you were mentioning Baldwin was just becoming this international figure in the mid 1960s and yet at that time, I think we have maybe the greatest number of Baldwin portraits by Delaney in this window of time. You've got the 1967 painting that Rosenfeld Gallery displayed recently [James Baldwin in Be Your Wonderful Self], you’ve got The Sage Black (James Baldwin), 1967. Of course, there's the 1966 portrait that we've been talking about, and the one that's held by the Chrysler Museum [Portrait of James Baldwin, 1965]. These are among the most significant portraits of Baldwin and they happened during this time, when, as you say, Delaney and Baldwin maybe had a hard time finding time to be in each other's presence with the exception of the 1966 summer trip to Istanbul.
(1967) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image from Michael Rosenfeld Gallery Website
(1967) Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image from Artsmia Website
(1965) Oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
I think about what Delaney said to James Jones when Jones was visiting him in Paris, and looking at Delaney’s painting of Ella Fitzgerald – this brilliant yellow orange abstraction, and then some eyes and nose and the mouth. And Jones is going what is this about and it says Ella Fitzgerald but doesn't look at all like her, why did you make it look this way, and Delaney said, “Oh no, I've never laid eyes on Ella Fitzgerald. I just painted something ‘I saw in my mind.’”
(1968) Oil on canvas
Permanent collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah
Gift of Dr. Walter O. and Mrs. Linda J. Evans
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
I see this in the 1966 James Baldwin painting. It's really something he saw in his mind after digesting and absorbing and internalizing all of these different elements that had been in his thoughts around the time that this portrait began to take shape.
RC: You know, you’ve mentioned that you think Delaney was hoping that Baldwin would be his “chronicler” the way that Lord was Giacometti’s. And that that hope might be present in the 1966 portrait. But I wonder if maybe also Delaney felt Baldwin already was that chronicler, because of the important essay for the catalogue of what was probably the biggest show of Delaney’s work in his lifetime, the 1964 Galerie Lambert show, for which Baldwin wrote the catalogue essay. That essay was beautiful and Delaney knew it was beautiful and that it showed great reverence for his work.
SW: Delaney probably understood that based on Baldwin's schedule and the demands that his life was under as a leading international figure, getting that essay for the show was equivalent to what Lord did for Giacometti.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of that essay. To take the 38-year relationship and squeeze it down into an essay that speaks volumes about the lasting lessons Delaney taught him, what Baldwin owed him and what one should see when looking at Delaney’s art.
I feel like Baldwin's words have actually taken a body of Delaney’s work—the Clamart abstractions, in particular— and elevated it in terms of people's ability to see and appreciate it.
In the exhibition we presented here in Knoxville [Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door, 2020] I tried to, what's the word, channel James Baldwin. He was kind of my co-curator and when I was reading that essay for the 1964 Galerie Lambert show, I thought, how would I approach the Clamart abstractions, how would I lay them out in a way that James Baldwin would have and I tried to go about it in a way that gave you this feeling of sequential atmospheres seen through Delaney’s Clamart studio window that Baldwin describes as this portal of artistic ideas.
Through the Unusual Door catalog cover
RC: In that essay, Baldwin really brings the reader to the studio in Clamart, where Baldwin stayed with Delaney one whole summer, and brings the light and darkness through that window.
SW:I tried to arrange the paintings, some reminiscent of the brilliant first light of day and some maybe right before it becomes almost too dark to see anything but deep blue. I wanted to suggest a sequence of views of light as Beauford experienced them looking through that window. To me those words of Baldwin’s were so helpful and so meaningful.
RC: That's a wonderful insight into the exhibition. The way you staged that room of the late abstractions.... I found that extremely illuminating and I was so glad you devoted that space to that. I remember standing there with you also and really talking those over.
© Les Amis de Beauford Delaney
SW: Delaney often painted the abstractions with a dark base layer and then he would add brighter veils of gestural brushwork in circular patterns. His letters from Clamart indicate a new interest in conveying movement as well as light, and in the union of the two. Somehow, by combining movement and light, he was unlocking something that was taking him where he wanted his art to go and eventually those top layers become brilliant while somehow still allowing us to glimpse the darkness at the base of the composition.
It makes me think of a letter that Baldwin wrote on behalf of Delaney. I think it was for a fellowship that Delaney wanted to actually go out away from the city and work from nature. And Baldwin says something about, how, coming out of the darkness of Tennessee and his roots into the light, no one has endured a greater struggle or more difficult journey than Delaney, and I almost feel like in many ways, some of the abstractions of Clamart and some of his later portraits that have that same abstract brushwork. It's as if he's working each image from its own darkness into its own light.
Rachel Cohen is a professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago. She writes about art for the New Yorker, Apollo Magazine and other places, and you can find her art notebook at www.rachelecohen.com or on IG @rachelcohennotebook.
Stephen Wicks is the Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator at the Knoxville Museum of Art, and organized the 2020 exhibition Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door, which examined the life and art of painter Beauford Delaney within the context of his thirty-eight-year relationship with writer James Baldwin and the ways their ongoing intellectual exchange shaped one another’s creative output and worldview.
Stephen Wicks and Rachel Cohen Discuss Baldwin Portrait - Part 1
Rachel Cohen: A Word of Introduction
In February of 2020, just before all locked down, there was a wonderful conference, organized by Amy Elias at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, about the relationship of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin.
Delaney grew up in Knoxville, and the museum there, under the direction of Stephen Wicks, has gradually and carefully accumulated one of the most important collections of Delaney’s work in the world. The conference was planned to be simultaneous with an extraordinary exhibition, curated by Wicks, called Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door.
I had begun writing about the relationship between Baldwin and Delaney in 2003, as part of a book called A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, and for me the conference and exhibition were a rare opportunity to be immersed in artistic work I had cared about for a long time.
On a wonderful afternoon at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Stephen Wicks and I stood together in front of a yellow painting with a curious hatch work of very black lines, Portrait of James Baldwin from 1966, in the collection of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. It is unlike any other Delaney painting.
(1966) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Stephen’s ideas about that painting – about the ways you can see in it a confluence of Delaney’s ideas about portraiture and abstraction, his relationship to James Baldwin, his interest in the writer James Lord, and his long admiration for the painter Alberto Giacometti – really surprised me and stayed with me. So, I was delighted when Monique Wells got in touch about this 1966 painting, giving Stephen and me the chance to revisit that conversation. This allowed me to learn about the new research and thinking he’s done about this work since that time.
I’ve edited our conversation to appear in two parts here as part of the record that we are all so grateful to the Les Amis blog for keeping for the community around Beauford Delaney, in the present and for the future.
— Rachel Cohen, Chicago
November 30, 2021
*****************
Rachel Cohen: Stephen, tell me a little about this painting, Portrait of James Baldwin, 1966 and how the research on it has been coming together, before the exhibition and since.
Stephen Wicks: Well, what I knew about first was the sketch [of Baldwin by Delaney] that I came across when we did the exhibition here in Knoxville. It felt like it was the only thing I had seen that appeared to be a precedent for Delaney’s 1966 Baldwin portrait that I thought was so remarkable.
Blue ink on sketchbook paper, 5 ½ x 3 ½ inches
Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee
Photograph by Bruce Cole
© The Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
As I began looking through the archive, I stumbled upon another work, this pastel sketch of Giacometti in a batch of things from that same time, and started seeing these different characters in this cast stepping on to the stage.
Pastel on paper, 20 x 16 inches
The Estate of Beauford Delaney, Knoxville, Tennessee
© The Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(Image horizontally flipped and cropped from original)
Poll Art Foundation, legal successor of photographer Erhard Wehrmann
CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
And then there was a letter that I saw when I was at the Schomberg Center in New York. I was looking for Baldwin letters, from Delaney to Baldwin, and I see one addressed to this “James,” and I think here’s a Baldwin letter, oh, James Lord, who is that, and then I started doing more research and realized what this meant.
RC: That letter from Delaney was written in the year Giacometti had died, and the year after James Lord had just published his book, A Giacometti Portrait, that’s like a diary of being portrayed by Giacometti. It’s really about the kind of studio practice we’ve talked about. Giacometti hurling himself at the canvas, and taking it apart, sometimes he will paint and sometimes he won’t and he’s just ...
1964 Oil on canvas
45,66 x 31,69 inches
Image courtesy of l'Institut Giacometti
SW: Wrecking it every day.
RC: Like a sine curve. Making and unmaking a painting. I think that book would have fascinated Delaney. Like what you were saying about “leaving a record of the struggle.”
SW: At the same time, even though Delaney’s process went on over a long time, making and making again, even still, from the letters from Clamart, I don’t ever really get the sense of struggling. It’s as if he’s finding this new voice. The view of nature outside his Clamart studio window is feeding him, but he also writes repeatedly of turning within himself looking within himself. Delaney is channeling this natural imagery through the window in ways that are just filled with power and momentum.
RC: It’s true, that’s really a different atmosphere of work than what we know of Giacometti.
SW: Delaney was aware of Giacometti’s work and admired it as early as his New York years, and then was acquainted with him in Paris. But the degree to which they knew each other, whether they visited each other’s studios, I just don’t know ...
Delaney and Lord had evidently known each other for years. In the letter to Lord, Delaney talks about how he regretted the awful lunch he fed to Lord when Lord visited him at Clamart.
That letter, in addition to the pastel sketch of Giacometti, and the fact that these sketches for the Baldwin portrait before it was completed looked almost as much like Giacometti sketches as they did like a Delaney sketch, all these factors just fell into place in a way that I think helped me resolve my view of the 1966 James Baldwin painting.
Never in Delaney’s production have I seen a portrait where the background and the figure are so divorced from one another. It’s as if he creates this yellow green orange abstraction and then decides later to lay down these marks in black to define this framework figure that almost looks like it’s been scored or branded into the field of yellow.
RC: Here I think might be a good place just to say that great artists have a facility for “trying out” other artists’ styles, which doesn’t at all mean that their work is derivative of those other artists. When Picasso tries out Braque, he’s not derivative of Braque, he’s expanding his own possibilities, maybe making a commentary.
SW: Yeah, I don’t think it was possible for Delaney to shift into a realm where he was just plugging in someone else’s style. Anything that he saw or came into contact with he might pick up elements of that, they might be swirling around his mind, but what came off of that brush or what came out of those hands was always his authentic deeply felt response to whatever subject he was trying to depict – whether his own internal atmosphere in turmoil, or that turmoil that he read in someone else that he was portraying, it’s always authentic and it's always deeply felt. The same is true of Giacometti – always deeply felt.
In that letter to Lord, Delaney is talking about how he marvels at “the delicate ambiance between” the two men, Giacometti and Lord. And I think at this time Delaney was thinking about Baldwin – thinking “How do I find a way to be around him … he’s not in my life as much as I’d like … how wonderful it would be if he would write a piece about my studio practice ....
RC: Baldwin is becoming an international activist and celebrity – The Fire Next Time is published in 1963, Baldwin and Buckley debated in February of 1965, Baldwin is in demand, traveling a lot.
SW: In this period, Delaney is actually making Baldwin portraits based on press images, photographs, and other secondhand images of Baldwin … not that he needed them, because clearly, in his vivid memory, he had all kinds of images of Baldwin, and he was also creating portraits from memory.
RC: Maybe, in a way, it interested him, or was emotionally necessary to him to reconcile this new public Baldwin with the intimate and remembered and sketched Baldwin.
SW: During this time, Delaney is saving clippings of Baldwin being in the news – he appeared at this rally, or he’s having this head-to-head with William F. Buckley – in some cases, even sending the clippings to Baldwin…. I think I’m the person who suggested that the Chrysler Museum portrait of Baldwin from 1965 was a reverse image of the Baldwin Time Magazine cover of March 17, 1963.
(1965) Oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
May 17, 1963
Fair Use claim
And then it goes from drought to flood, when Delaney gets to go to Istanbul and hang out with Baldwin, for an extended period, I guess it was July 7th through late August of 1966. I know from [Delaney’s friend and biographer] David Leeming that he started the portrait there in Istanbul, but I don’t know whether that means he did the beginning sketch on that trip, or whether he had an actual canvas that size that he was lugging around, but anyway he finished it after he returned to Paris.
RC: All these things are coming together in the painting – Giacometti’s death, James Lord’s book, Baldwin’s essay about Delaney, the visit with Baldwin, and the distance from Baldwin.
Come back to the blog next week for more of what Stephen Wicks and Rachel Cohen had to say about this in Part II.
Rachel Cohen is a professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago. She writes about art for the New Yorker, Apollo Magazine and other places, and you can find her art notebook at www.rachelecohen.com or on IG @rachelcohennotebook.
Stephen Wicks is the Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator at the Knoxville Museum of Art, and organized the 2020 exhibition Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door, which examined the life and art of painter Beauford Delaney within the context of his thirty-eight-year relationship with writer James Baldwin and the ways their ongoing intellectual exchange shaped one another’s creative output and worldview.
Rediscovering Style through Beauford's Work
On November 22, 2021, art historian Karima Boudou presented research that explored the double-sided concept of "style as a function of meaning" and "meaning as a function of style" when the two pertain to the work of art historians and art critics.
Funded by the Collège des Bernardins in Paris for a project called "L'Art au présent" ("Art in the Present"), Boudou examined this topic using several Beauford Delaney works as her proverbial lens. Her paper is entitled "Redécouvrir le Style et l'Implication dans l'Œuvre de Beauford Delaney" ("Rediscovering Style and Its Implication in the Work of Beauford Delaney").
Karima Boudou presenting her research© Les Amis de Beauford Delaney
Boudou began working with the intent to answer two questions:
What does Beauford Delaney's œuvre expect from us in 2021 from a French perspective?
and
What can we expect from his œuvre?
Some of the paintings she used to investigate these questions were Village (Saint-Paul de Vence), Portrait of Irene Rose, and Portrait of Jean Genet.
(1972) Oil on canvas
Bequest of James Baldwin
Image courtesy of Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries
(1944) Oil on board
45 1/2 in x 35 in
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Photo courtesy of ACA Galleries, New York
(1972) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Boudou supported her analysis with elements drawn from the philosophy of Erwin Panofsky, the 19th-20th-century art historian known for his iconographic approach for evaluating visual art works. She created scenarios that demonstrate how the art historian's work relies on that of the art critic and vice versa, comparing them to two halves of an arc that require each other to be able to stand erect and bear weight.
She spoke of the art historian's work as searching for "facts" and the art critic's work as making "value judgments," pointing out that both professionals rely heavily on their knowledge of previously identified works to evaluate newly discovered ones. And she contended that viewers of Beauford's work cannot truly "see" (interpret) it without knowing his story.
Regarding Beauford's œuvre, Boudou observed that Beauford may have considered the inclusion of messages in his art to be aesthetically restrictive, despite the fact that he was profoundly affected by the events of his time. She described these messages as subtle, saying that they push the viewer to reflect and look at his work more closely and attentively.
Boudou said that Beauford's œuvre proves that he constantly pushed himself to discover new ways to express himself. She described his works as technically and aesthetically excellent and says that these qualities place them in the "universal domain."
Beauford's "The Burning Bush" in "The Dirty South" Exhibition
Valerie Cassel Oliver, who currently serves as the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), has included Beauford's The Burning Bush in her exhibition entitled The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse.
(1941) Oil on paperboard
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The painting is part of the "Sinners and Saints" section of the exhibition, which "explores the belief systems that have emerged from this country's unique mixing of cultures, particularly West African, European, and Indigenous American spiritual traditions."
While working at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Oliver became intrigued by the content of Southern hip-hop (aka Dirty South) videos and conceived the exhibition as a means of examining "100 years of call and response between visual artists and musicians." Her selection of the themes presented in the exhibition - "Landscape," "Sinners and Saints," and "Black Corporality" - was inspired by content presented in these videos. She describes "Dirty South" as "something which embodies ... the contemporary expression of Southern sensibilities."
Most of the works shown in The Dirty South were created by southerners or persons who are one to two generations removed from the U.S. South. Most are contemporary pieces. Others, such as The Burning Bush, represent the work of artists of previous generations upon which the framework of contemporary art is constructed.
In her Virtual Curator's Talk, recorded on May 20, 2021, Oliver explains in detail her effort to examine the connection between sonic and visual artists in the exhibition. A number of the artists whose works appear in it were/are also "engaged in music" as singers, composers, and/or musicians. Beauford is one of these artists; he sang beautifully and as a child and a teenager, he proclaimed that he wanted to pursue music as a career.
The Dirty South originated at VMFA. It is now being show at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, where it opened on November 5 and will remain on display through February 6, 2022. From there, it will travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where it will show from March 12 - July 25, 2022.
X-Ray of Beauford's 1944 Self-portrait at the Art Institute of Chicago
Beauford's 1944 self-portrait is one of my all time favorites.
(1944) Oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
By permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Wells International Foundation intern Maija Brennan selected it as the banner image for her online exhibition of Beauford's portraiture: Beauford Delaney: A Study in Portraiture
The Art Institute of Chicago has published a Web page that describes how it x-rays works in its collection, and it too has selected the 1944 portrait for the featured image on this page. It has included a fascinating interactive image that shows the x-ray "behind" the full color image of the painting.
To see this and to read the museum's description of the x-ray, click here and scroll down the page to the section entitled "X-RAYS OF SELECTED WORKS."
Autumn Colors II
Last October, I published an article called "Autumn Colors," in which I shared images of works by Beauford that made me think of the beauty of fall.
The fabulous weather that Paris has experienced over the past few days inspired me to look for more such images. I found several among the works the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery recently showed at the Frieze Masters exhibition in London.
Enjoy!
(c. 1968) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(c. 1962) Gouache and watercolor on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1961) Watercolor on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1963) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(c. 1960) oil on canvasboard
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is Special Advisor and Representative of the Estate of Beauford Delaney.
Friese Masters 2021 - 1st Solo Beauford Delaney Exhibition in the UK
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (MRG) has organized the first solo exhibition of Beauford's work in the UK at Frieze Masters 2021 in Regent's Park, London. Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center, curated the show, which is entitled Beauford Delaney An American in Paris.
This magnificent exhibition consists of nine works on canvas and twenty-two works on paper. It was previewed on October 13 and 14 and opened to the public on October 15. It will be on display through Sunday, October 17.
Tickets to Frieze Masters are limited and only available online. Purchase them here: Frieze Masters 2021.The online catalog opens with the following quote:
“[I have] worked terribly hard here in Europe and much has sundered and exploded, but now it coalesces with lava-like smoke and fluid color, sometimes a veritable flame, other times subdued essences… yes, I am again painting in my old feeling – tense, difficult, but compulsive, and I love it.”
—Beauford Delaney, 1964
Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney
(1963) Oil on canvas, signed
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1963) Watercolor and gouache on paper, signed
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
View the online catalog here (use "full screen" for maximum effect): Beauford Delaney An American in Paris
MRG is showing Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney concurrently in NYC. Read the NYTimes review of the show HERE.
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is Special Advisor and Representative of the Estate of Beauford Delaney.
Bon Naissance Howard
While perusing the Internet for painterly descriptions of Beauford's Portrait of Howard Swanson, I found an online catalog that mentioned the portrait in the context of an African American Fine Art Auction.
(1967) Oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Image courtesy of Levis Fine Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The catalog was created by Thom Pegg of Black Art Auction in support of the "inaugural sale of art by African Americans at the Toomey/Treadway Auction." I reported the sale of the Beauford Delaney abstract offered during this auction on December 5, 2015: Where to Find Beauford's Art: Art Basel Miami Beach and Treadway Toomey Auctions
The catalog presents beautiful photos of the framed work and the unframed work.
Oil on canvas
Image courtesy of Thom Pegg, Black Art Auction
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Oil on canvas
Image courtesy of Thom Pegg, Black Art Auction
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
In my 2015 article, I reported that the work was untitled. So I was intrigued to see that the catalog lists the title of the painting as Bon Naissance Howard. It provides a photo of the rear of the painting in support of this assignation, and mentions the horizontal lines and circles that Beauford drew above his name and what is taken as a message to Swanson as being reminiscent of a musical clef with notes. (Swanson was a classical composer who studied under Nadia Boulanger in Paris.)
Oil on canvas
Image courtesy of Thom Pegg, Black Art Auction
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The word "naissance," which means "birth," is misspelled in the inscription. The dedication likely indicates that Beauford created the painting as a birthday gift for Swanson, who was a close friend of Beauford. Read the Les Amis article about their relationship here: Beauford and Howard Swanson
Colin Gravois' Portrait
I have written about Beauford's portrait of Colin Gravois many times over the course of the life of the Les Amis blog. Until two weeks ago, I illustrated the posts with an image that appears in the 1978 catalog of Beauford's retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Oil (undated)
80 x 64.5 cm
Photo of page from Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective catalog
Studio Museum in Harlem
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
In my most recent article, I posted an image which appears on the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (MRG) Website as part of its promotion of the Be Your Wonderful Self exhibition of a selection of Beauford's portraits.
31 7/8" x 25 1/2" / 81.0 x 64.8 cm
Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The difference in color is so striking that I began to wonder whether there might be two versions of this work. So, I contacted the gallery to ask some questions about this as well as additional differences in the information published in the Studio Museum catalog (name and dimensions of work) compared to the information published in the MRG fact sheet.
MRG commented on these difference as follows:
There is a Studio Museum exhibition label affixed to a stretcher bar on the verso of the painting, which lists the title Portrait of a Man in Green.
The images reproduced in the 1978 Studio Museum catalogue are generally quite inaccurate in color and quality compared to the appearance of the works in-person or with modern digital photography .... With the major advancements made in digital photography and printing over the past forty years, many of the works in our current show that were published by the Studio Museum look quite different in-person than as printed in the 1978 catalogue. Once acquired by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, the painting was cleaned by a painting conservator.
There are often small discrepancies between published dimensions for an artwork and the dimensions we measure here at the gallery. The difference between these dimensions is minute.
The coloring of the MRG image closely corresponds to that of a photo I took of the portrait when I visited Knoxville in 2016.
Photo © Wells International Foundation
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Derek Spratley, Court Appointed Adminstrator of Beauford's estate, informed me that the portrait was not restored before it was sold. He indicated that MRG confirmed the identity of the subject of the portrait, notified the Estate, and made the name change, while acknowledging the prior name.
MRG also commented on the current name of the painting, as follows:
The title we have for the painting, Colin Gravois (aka Portrait of a Man in Green), names the sitter (Colin Gravois) followed by the title given to the painting for the Studio Museum retrospective in 1978. We include this previous title in our current title in order to make clear that this work is the same one that was exhibited in that show, as we have done with other works that have similar title differences. The artist did not title this painting.
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is Special Advisor and Representative of the Estate of Beauford Delaney.