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.
Beauford and Josephine Baker
I believe Beauford would be incredibly excited about the upcoming ceremony that the French government is organizing to honor Josephine Baker at the Pantheon.
Photo by Harcourt
Image in the public domain
Baker became a French citizen in 1937, when she married Jean Lion. She risked her life to serve France as a member of the French Resistance during World War II and was awarded several medals for that service. She will be the sixth woman, the first U.S.-born person, and the sixth person of African descent to be honored at the Pantheon.
According to biographer David Leeming:
Beauford admired Baker and followed her career closely. In 1968, when asked what he wanted for his birthday, he would request that he be taken to one of Baker's many farewell concerts at the Olympia in Paris. He would be as thrilled by her that night as he had been by her performance some forty years earlier*.
I am unaware of any sketches or portraits that Beauford may have done of Baker and wonder how he might have portrayed her.
*Leeming is referring to Baker's performance in the 1920s musical Shuffle Along.
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.
Beauford at the American Hospital
The American Hospital of Paris is a private, non-profit hospital that is certified by the French Haute Autorité de Santé (French National Authority for Health). Established in 1906 in the western Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, it is the only civilian hospital outside the U.S. that is accredited by the Joint Commission, an organization that sets the highest standards for health care around the world.
Image courtesy of the American Hospital of Paris
The hospital was in the midst of significant expansion when Beauford was admitted for several tests in 1961. These confirmed severe liver and kidney problems diagnosed at the hospital in Athens, Greece where Beauford was treated after his suicide attempts in Patras earlier that year.
Beauford returned to the American Hospital in February 1970, where the clinic treated him for flu and heart palpatations. This was shortly after his Christmas 1969 visit to Knoxville.
During the fall of 1970, the hospital treated Beauford's dear friend and mentee, James Baldwin, presumably for hepatitis that had been diagnosed in Istanbul when Baldwin was there to direct the play Fortune and Men's Eyes.
Other friends and acquaintances of Beauford who were treated at the American Hospital include Tria French, a friend and literary agent of Baldwin, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage there.
Writer Richard Wright was treated at the hospital several times during his 14-year stay in Paris. His wife Ellen had an appendectomy there and his youngest daughter was born there. Led by Wright, the Franco-American Fellowship protested the establishment's discriminatory hiring policy regarding black people in 1951.
The American Hospital informed Les Amis that all medical records for patients treated there prior to 1989 have been destroyed in accordance with their policy to archive records for a period of 30 years. Therefore, the details of Beauford's diagnostic and treatment regimens at this institution are now permanently lost.
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.
Beauford Delaney - A Musical Interlude
The jazz album entitled Soulful Noise, by Will Boyd, was released in September 2021.
Track 7 on this album is entitled "Beauford Delaney."
Four musicians worked on this instrumental - Will Boyd (woodwinds), Taber Gable (piano), Darryl Ford (bass), and Kenneth Brown (drums). It is available on multiple music streaming platforms, including Spotify and Deezer.
Brown hails from Beauford's hometown of Knoxville, TN - perhaps he suggested the name for the tune.
A Jazz Weekly review of the album by George W. Harris describes Boyd as "searing on 'Beauford Delaney'." Beauford was an avid jazz fan, and I can only imagine his delight at having such a vibrant composition named after him.
Take a few moments to insert this musical interlude into your day. Click here to enjoy! Beauford Delaney on Spotify
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.
Watercolors by Beauford
In the March 14, 2015 article entitled "More on Knoxville Museum of Art Acquisition of Beauford Delaney Paintings," Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator Stephen Wicks talked about the large number of watercolors that were part of Beauford's estate.
I recently re-read this article and was inspired to have a look at images of the watercolors that I've published on the blog over the years. Here are a few of my favorites.
(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
(1961) Watercolor on paper
Signed and dated "Beauford Delaney 61. San Telmo Mallorca" in the bottom right corner.
© Christie's Images
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1962) Watercolor
Signed and dated at bottom left
Photo courtesy of ADER
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1963) Watercolor on thick wove paper
Signed, dated and inscribed "Clermont Seine" in blue ink at the lower left.
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1961) Watercolor on paper
© Christie's Images
© 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
Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney
On Wednesday, September 8, the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (MRG) launched its third solo exhibition of Beauford Delaney paintings. Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney features 25 portraits and 7 abstract works with the intent to explore the passion with which Beauford undertook - and masterfully mingled - both forms of artistic expression.
(1962) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
According to MRG, the exhibition will present paintings that span thirty-one years of Beauford's career, "beginning with his masterful early portrait of a young James Baldwin, Dark Rapture (1941), and terminating with his penetrating 1972 depiction of Jean Genet."
(1941) Oil on masonite
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
(1972) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Many of the works in this show were displayed at the Studio Museum in Harlem retrospective organized by Richard Long in 1978. I'm particularly partial to the portrait of my friend, Colin Gravois.
The exhibition catalog will include new scholarship by Mary Campbell, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, whose current book project examines the religious impulses at play in Beauford's paintings and drawings. It will also feature numerous images of previously unpublished archival materials and a section dedicated to "statements from such historical and contemporary voices as James Baldwin, Richard Long, Julie Mehretu, Georgia O’Keeffe and Amy Sherald, who describe the indelible impact Delaney’s work had on their practices and the broader evolution of 20th century modernism."
Be Your Wonderful Self will be on display through Saturday, November 13. To see installation views of the exhibition, click HERE.
If you're in New York and wish to visit the exhibition in person, MRG encourages you to reserve a time slot by clicking HERE. Note that you must show proof of vaccination along with a valid photo ID upon entry.
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
100 Eleventh Avenue @ 19th
New York, NY 10011
T: 212.247.0082
F: 212.247.0402
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC is Special Advisor and Representative of the Estate of Beauford Delaney.
Groundbreaking for the Delaney Museum at Beck
On Monday, August 30, 2021, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center hosted a groundbreaking ceremony to announce the start of construction on the Delaney Museum at Beck, an international museum that will celebrate the history of the Delaney family.
Housed in the only remaining ancestral home of the Delaneys, Delaney Museum at Beck will
encompass galleries consisting of artifacts, historic photographs, and art that celebrates the legacy of the family that produced world-renown artists Beauford and Joseph Delaney.
Established in 1975, Beck is the only state-designated repository for African-American history and culture in East Tennessee. The cultural center acquired the the historic Delaney family home located at 1935 Dandridge Avenue in 2015 and announced plans to explore its restoration and possible adaptive reuse the following year.
Following the passing of patriarch Rev. John Samuel Delaney in 1919, elder brother Samuel Emery returned home to provide for his family, including his mother Delia and his younger brothers Beauford and Joseph. Sam supported his brothers’ pursuit of art through a barbershop out of the family home at 815 East Vine Avenue in Knoxville. He purchased the house on Dandridge Avenue in 1948 for the growing Delaney family.
The home on 815 East Vine is no longer standing. It was destroyed by Knoxville’s Urban Renewal Projects, which were implemented lasted from 1959 to 1974. These projects disproportionately affected the Black community, resulting in the displacement of more than 2,500 families, 15 Black churches, and 107 Black businesses, including the Delaney barbershop. As a result, the 1935 Dandridge Avenue location is the only surviving home of the Delaney family.
© Wells International Foundation
© Wells International Foundation
Though the groundbreaking event announced the formal start of construction on the ancestral property, Delaney Museum at Beck is a project that is several years in the making. The vision for the new museum includes a permanent exhibit that celebrates the history of the Delaney family, an artist in residency program to nurture the talents of upcoming artists, and a rotating exhibit of African-American artwork.
The groundbreaking event took place on a significant date: August 30th, 2021 marks 102 years since the Knoxville Race Riot of 1919, an event that shaped the lives and world views of brothers Beauford and Joseph. Two days of racial violence shook the city as a mob of 5,000 white men descended upon downtown Knoxville in hopes of lynching a Black man. When they could not find him, the mob instead turned their ire toward the Black community located at the intersection of Vine Avenue and Central Street.
Beauford personally witnessed this violence, and memories of it haunted him for the rest of his life.
Reverend Reneé Kesler, president of the Beck Center, presided over the ceremony, which took place outdoors under a tent at the property. Attendees wore masks and respected social distancing to maintain the health and safety of the community during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Image courtesy of Beck Cultural Exchange Center
Image courtesy of Beck Cultural Exchange Center
Rev. Kesler had the following to say about this historic event:
“So why are we having the groundbreaking on this day? Because on August 30, 102 years ago, we were fighting for our lives. On that day, armed white men plotted to attack the Black community, and Black men prepared to defend themselves. This would be a defining moment in Knoxville’s history, and it was particularly horrifying for Beauford. Today, 102 years later, we sit under a tent to celebrate the groundbreaking of an international museum with a Black, white and brown community together,
commemorating a Black family of talented artists. I’m sorry if it’s a little warm, but it’s not as hot as it was 102 years ago.
“Beck is serious about preserving and conserving this rich and amazing history, and we are being intentional about bringing everybody along.”
Rev. Kesler expressed her belief that “Beauford Delaney is by far the most important artist Knoxville produced in the twentieth century, at least in terms of national and international reputation.” She believes that the Delaney Museum at Beck will build on the legacy of Beauford and the Delaney family and notes that while the construction of this museum doesn’t mean that racial inequality isn’t still an issue affecting the world today, it’s a step in the right direction.
See press articles about the ceremony below:
New museum at Beauford Delaney's ancestral home designed to inspire artistic expression
Beck Cultural Exchange Center breaks ground on Beauford Delaney Museum
Image courtesy of Beck Cultural Exchange Center
Zachary James Miller, the Paris-based producer/director/writer of the full-length documentary entitled Beauford Delaney: So Splendid a Journey, attended the ceremony and shot footage of the event to include in the documentary.
The Delaney Museum at Beck hopes to be open to the public by Fall 2022.
Gathering Light: Evolution of a Beauford Delaney Initiative
Not long after the Beauford Delaney: Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition in February - March 2016, residents of Beauford's hometown of Knoxville, TN gathered to launch what they called the "Beauford Delaney in America" initiative. The project has steadily evolved since that first meeting, and it is now known as Gathering Light: The Delaney Project.
I've published posts about many Gathering Light events since 2016, including those shown below:
- Historical Marker Honors Beauford and Joseph Delaney in Knoxville
- "Bringing Delaney Home" at the Knoxville Museum of Art
- KMA Mounts Classes Duo Paris / Knoxville Exhibition
- Knoxville Continues to Celebrate Beauford: What's Coming Next
- In a Speculative Light - UTK Symposium on Beauford and Baldwin
- Beauford Delaney Opera a Tremendous Success!
Though Covid-19 interrupted the fantastic line-up of events that was scheduled to unfold in 2020 and put Gathering Light into somewhat of a holding pattern, the initiative is now poised for relaunch. The August 30 groundbreaking ceremony for the Delaney Museum at Beck will serve as the kindling for the new blaze of activities that will focus on music, visual arts, and local community building.
In conjunction with the ceremony, Beauford Delaney: So Splendid a Journey documentary director/producer/writer Zachary James Miller will interview representatives of several Gathering Light member organizations and incorporate these videos into the film.
As a council member of the Delaney Project, I'm excited about everything that is to come! Continue to look for reports on our activities here, in the Les Amis blog.
Beauford on Art Sphere Inc.
Over the past few years, I've written a couple of posts about art lessons inspired by Beauford's work:
Museums Use Beauford's Art to Reach Out to Children
Today I found another example of this.
Art Sphere Inc. has a section on its Web site called Art Basics, through which it encourages youth to build art skills and express creativity through a series of brief online lessons and downloadable handouts. They have created a handout that presents Beauford's relationship with James Baldwin, talks about Beauford's painterly style, and encourages readers to use their imaginations to color images of Beauford and Baldwin. The black and white tracings are inspired by Errol Sawyer's photo portrait of Beauford and Beauford's 1945 portrait of Baldwin.
Rue Guilleminot
France 1973
© Errol Sawyer
(1945) Oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Find the Art Sphere Inc. page here:
The Delaney Museum at Beck - Groundbreaking Ceremony Scheduled for August 30
Established in 1975, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that was created as a result of the City of Knoxville’s Urban Renewal projects. It has been designated by the State of Tennessee as the primary repository of black history and culture in East Tennessee.
Beck is restoring the only remaining ancestral home of the Delaney family with the intent to create a museum that will preserve an extraordinary piece of Knoxville history. Located next door to the cultural center, The Delaney Museum at Beck will honor Beauford and his brother Joseph as internationally known artists.
© Wells International Foundation
BarberMcMurry Architects of Knoxville is undertaking the renovation. Click the following link for a virtual tour of the future museum: Delaney Museum at Beck Virtual Tour
Beck has announced that a "groundbreaking" ceremony will be held on Monday, August 30 at 5:30 PM Eastern Time.
It is anticipating global interest in the facility, saying that "The eyes of the world will be on Knoxville as art lovers from around the world make the pilgrimage to the Delaney Museum at Beck to experience this unparalleled showpiece."
To sign up for a formal invitation to the groundbreaking ceremony and receive notifications about the project, click HERE.
Brandeis University's Greene Street Painting on Display at Rose Art Museum
Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is proudly touting its Beauford Delaney abstract, entitled Abstraction (Greene Street), as part of its re: collections, Six Decades at the Rose Art Museum exhibition.
(1950) Oil on canvas
Gift of Mr. Maurice Geller, -.1050.
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Curatorial Intern Sam Forman describes the work as follows:
Greene Street (1950) is filled with swirling colors that evoke a sense of motion around its stationary black figures, reflecting the vibrancy of city life even in still moments. One cannot quite tell who is who and what is what—where are these figures? Why are they together? What is nearby? The green-yellow-orange mound in the center appears to be a fire à la Can Fire in the Park (1946), an example of Delaney placing explicit focus on a community-building and -sustaining source of warmth and light. Every object in this piece, human or otherwise, feels slightly out of focus due to the meandering lines and multi-hued outlines, bringing the viewer back to those questions about the scene and its contents. The abstract nature of Greene Street (1950) lets the scene reflect an infinite number of moments as the figures can be anyone and anywhere.
The Rose’s Greene Street (1950) is rather different from some other Greene Street paintings. The Greene Street (1940) in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, features more defined objects, although it maintains the abstraction of the Rose’s. A Greene Street (1946) sold by art collector Jonathan Boos retains this characteristic: a streetlight, fire hydrant, and food carts are readily identifiable. These other pieces of the same name also lack the human focus that the Rose’s does: whereas ours features prominently three people, there is one person in the 1946 piece and none in the 1940 piece.
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 2021
Photograph by Isometric Studio, Brooklyn, New York
Image courtesy of the Rose Art Museum
Rose Art Museum granted Les Amis an exclusive interview regarding Abstraction (Greene Street) 1950. Find it below.
Les Amis: When did the museum acquire Greene Street, 1950?
Rose Art Museum: Greene Street belonged to Brandeis University prior to 1961, when the museum was founded. It was gifted to the University with the credit line, “Gift of Mr. Maurice Geller.” Upon the Rose’s founding, it entered the museum’s collection. It was first displayed on January 18, 1971 at Brandeis University in the Morton May Memorial Hall, now the Shapiro Admissions Center.
Les Amis: Is the painting on permanent display?
Rose Art Museum: No. The Rose does not display any works permanently, but it is currently on view within the exhibition re: collections, Six Decades at the Rose Art Museum.
Les Amis: Has it ever been displayed at the Rose Museum prior to the current exhibition?
Rose Art Museum: It has been displayed on the Brandeis campus, but there is no record of it being exhibited at the Rose prior to May 2021, when we opened re: collections.
Les Amis: What is the full exhibition history of the painting?
Rose Art Museum: Aside from its display in the Morton May Memorial Hall in 1971, one exhibition is in our record: "Beauford Delaney: The New York Years / [1929-1953]," April 9-May 28, 1994, Philippe Briet Gallery, New York. This is the exhibition in which University officials discovered the whereabouts of Greene Street two decades after it was stolen.
Beauford Delaney: The New York Years
Invitation card (interior)
Courtesy of Sylvain Briet
Les Amis: Might your Greene Street painting be the one shown in a 1950 exhibition at the Whitney Museum?
Rose Art Museum: We are unsure—Whitney research and archives experts may be able to help. I found a “catalogue number 88” listed with Delaney’s name in that exhibition but cannot access anything specific. The New York Times also potentially has an article on the exhibition, accessible with a subscription to the newspaper.
Les Amis: What is the full provenance of the painting?
Rose Art Museum: There is no provenance record at the Rose, aside from the gift by Maurice Geller.
Les Amis: I understand that Greene Street was stolen in 1971 and the whereabouts of the painting were unknown for several years before it was recovered in 2000. Please provide details about the theft and the recovery.
Rose Art Museum: The November 21, 2000 edition of The Justice, Brandeis’ oldest newspaper, ran “Stolen painting’s brush with adventure ends” about how Greene Street was stolen around April 1971 after its display in the Shapiro Admissions Center. In 1994 the work appeared in a gallery show in New York City, detailed above. Brandeis General Counsel Judith Sizer worked for six years to bring it back, contacting the New York Police Department which held the painting in that time, and fighting another claimant to ownership of the painting. In 2000 Ed Callahan, Brandeis’s director of public safety, got the NYPD to release the work and return it to the University.
Les Amis: Did Beauford name the painting or was the name ascribed by someone else?
Rose Art Museum: Delaney had numerous paintings that are now called Greene Street, either as their name or connected to their actual untitled status. The full name of the Rose’s is Abstraction (Greene Street) and I can find no information on who named it, Delaney or otherwise.
Installation view, re: collections, Six Decades at the Rose Art Museum
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 2021
Photograph by Isometric Studio, Brooklyn, New York
Image courtesy of the Rose Art Museum
re: collections will be on view for three years, with several rotations.
Rose Art Museum
Brandeis University
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02453
Telephone: 781-736-3434
roseartmuseum@brandeis.edu
Hours: Wednesday - Sunday 11 AM - 5 PM
Admission is free.
Case Antiques Sells Beauford Delaney Abstract for $348,000
On July 24, Case Antiques placed an "unusual" Beauford Delaney painting up for auction.
Untitled
(c. 1972) Oil on canvas
63 3/4 x 51 1/4 inches
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
The estimated sale price was $60,000-$70,000.
On Monday evening, July 26, Sarah Campbell Drury, Vice President of Fine and Decorative Arts at Case, contacted me to tell me that the painting sold for a whopping $348,000!
Case's press release describes the work as "a rhythmic abstract oil on canvas" that is "a bit of departure from the modernist urban scenes and atmospheric abstractions which typically define Delaney’s work."
On the sales page for the painting, Case posted an image of Beauford's niece, Ogust Delaney Stewart, sitting in the storage facility in which the painting had been stored. The painting can be seen at the right side of the image.
Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator of the
Knoxville Museum of Art
Multiple phone and internet bidders competed for the abstract, with the hammer eventually falling to an anonymous phone bidder. The sales price includes a 20% buyer's premium and applicable taxes and fees.
The painting resembles an abstract acquired by San Francisco MoMA last year.
(1974) Oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
63 3/4 x 51 1/4 inches
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator