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  • photo of Aimee Ng and Antwaun Sargent

    Curators' Tour

    Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick is curated by Aimee Ng and Consulting Curator Antwaun Sargent.

    Listen to the curators' tour of the exhibition.

     

      530 — Speakers: Aimee Ng and Antwaun Sargent
  • Portrait of a woman in a black shirt and pants wearing sunglasses and a gold belt.

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    Miss T, 1969
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    66 1/8 x 48 1/8 in. (168 x 122.2 cm)
    Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Purchased with the Philadelphia Foundation Fund, 1970
    © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

     

    On his first trip to Europe in 1966, Hendricks was struck by a portrait in the Uffizi gallery, in Florence, by the Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Battista Moroni: “The figure in a black, skin-tight outfit made me see the illusion of form and simplicity in a different light.” Miss T was a “direct by-product” of this encounter with the four-hundred-year-old painting. Hendricks’s subject, Robin Taylor, was his then-girlfriend: “Several paintings come with good color besides what’s on their canvases. Robin (Miss T) scared the shit out of my mother when she told her, ‘If she couldn't have me, no one would.’” (Another portrait by Moroni, his Portrait of a Woman, recently entered the Frick’s collection.)

      531 — Speaker: Richard J. Powell
  • Portrait of a man in a yellow unitard with his right leg and arms extended to the side.

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    Woody, 1973
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    66 × 84 in. (167.6 × 213.4 cm)
    Baz Family Collection
    © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

     

    This is one of the earliest of the paintings Hendricks described as having a “limited palette”—works in which the figure (except for the skin) and background are presented nearly monochromatically. The varnished oil paint used for the figure contrasts with the matte acrylic of the background to create a distinction in materials and surface visible only when the paintings are viewed firsthand. Striking one of the most dramatic poses of any of Hendricks’s figures, the subject was recently identified by Richard J. Powell as Woodruff (Woody) Wilson, a dancer of Jamaican descent who participated in the American Dance Festival that took place at Connecticut College, where Hendricks had begun teaching the previous year.

      532 — Speaker: Antwaun Sargent
  • Triple portrait of a woman in a white dress against a white background

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    October’s Gone . . . Goodnight, 1973
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    66 × 72 in. (167.6 × 182.9 cm)
    Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge; Richard Norton Memorial Fund
    © Barkley L. Hendricks and President and Fellows of Harvard College. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

     

    The Three Graces, figures from Greek mythology, was a popular motif for artists throughout early modern European art—from Sandro Botticelli to Peter Paul Rubens to Antonio Canova. Hendricks acknowledged the “direct influence” of the theme on this portrait of an unnamed Connecticut College student. She had sent anonymous letters to Hendricks, and, after he learned her identity, she posed for him. “She was married at the time,” he recalled, and her husband came to the studio. “I told him, ‘I am interested in painting, not messing around,’ and the brother never came back. And I finished the piece.” This is the earliest of Hendricks’s white-on-white limited-palette paintings.

      533 —  (1) Speaker: Linda McClellan (2) Speaker: Jack Shainman
  • Triple portrait of a man in a blue coat yellow pants with a hat against a yellow-green background

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    Bahsir (Robert Gowens), 1975
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    83 1/2 × 66 in. (212.1 × 167.6 cm)
    Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham; Museum purchase with additional funds provided by Jack Neely
    © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo Brian Quinby.

     

    Hendricks described the sitter as “a good friend from Philadelphia” who visited him in New London, Connecticut. The arched windows of Hendricks’s State Street studio are reflected in the eyes of the central figure. Like October’s Gone . . . Goodnight, Bahsir draws on the classical motif of the Three Graces, the triple-portrait format suited for subjects for whom he “felt that one pose was not enough.” Here, however, two of the figures slightly overlap, enhancing the illusion of the bodies in space. Bahsir is among the tallest of Hendricks's figural paintings. He recounted having stood on a paint bucket to reach the heads and hats in the upper section.

      534 — Speaker: Trevor Schoonmaker
  • Portrait of a man in a hat and checkered suit holding a tambourine against a red background.

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    Blood (Donald Formey), 1975
    Oil and acrylic on canvas
    72 × 50 1/2 in. (182.9 × 128.3 cm)
    Collection of Jimmy Iovine and Liberty Ross
    © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

     

    Donald Formey was a student at Connecticut College. For this limited-palette painting, Hendricks altered the sitter’s clothes as he did in many of his portraits. Formey had worn jeans to model, but Hendricks painted him wearing plaid pants that matched the pattern of his jacket. Over the course of the sittings, Hendricks added the tambourine. Formey recounts that the artist gave him the instrument to pose with after he noticed him tapping his foot to the music playing in his studio.

      535 —  Speaker: Donald Formey
  • Portrait of a man in a white suit wearing a colorful cap and glasses against a white background.

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    Slick, 1977
    Magna, acrylic, and oil on canvas
    67 × 48 1/2 in. (170.2 × 123.2 cm)
    Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk; Gift of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York
    © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

     

    Regarding self-portraiture, Hendricks wrote: “‘Since you are always around’ was one of the descriptions I heard to define self-portraiture. I was not fascinated with myself as much as Rembrandt or depressed to the extent of Van Gogh.” (Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait is in the Frick's collection.) Hendricks based the title of this self-portrait on his sister telling him, “You think you're so slick, just wait, one day a woman is going to straighten you out.” The composition is enhanced by the colors of his cap, which, according to the artist, is from an African design and probably of Muslim origin. The leg-shaped pendant, recounted Hendricks, was made in Mexico and was a gift from a lady friend; it had no significance other than being the right shape to fit in the V of his coat.

      536 — Speaker: Elisabeth Sann
  • Portrait of four women in white dresses against a white background.

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    Lagos Ladies (Gbemi, Bisi, Niki, Christy), 1978
    Oil, acrylic, and Magna on canvas
    72 × 60 in. (182.9 × 152.4 cm)
    Private collection
    © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

     

    In 1977, Hendricks traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, to attend FESTAC (Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture). There he met these women, who worked as cooks at a hotel. Photographs show them outdoors, standing on sandy ground. Transporting them to the flatness of a white-on-white painting, Hendricks showcases the range of the women’s skin tones and variety of their shoes. An early critic accused Hendricks of using the “same all-purpose brown” for his figures, on which the artist later reflected: “Damn, even Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles can see a difference in the variety of skin handling I was involved with! The attempt on my part is always to address the beauty and variety of complexion colors that we call Black.” Painting about a hundred years earlier, the American artist James McNeill Whistler (whose portraits are in the Frick's collection) also experimented with form, limited palettes, and flesh color in his portraits.

      537 — Speaker: Zoé Whitley
  • Portrait of a woman in a black shirt and pants with furry legwarmers holding a leopard print muff.

    Barkley L. Hendricks (American, 1945–2017)
    Ma Petite Kumquat, 1983
    Oil, acrylic, white gold, and silver leaf on canvas
    72 x 40 in. (182.9 x 101.6 cm)
    Collection Ben and Jen Silverman
    © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

     

    Hendricks painted this portrait of his wife, Susan, shortly after the couple married. The title comes from the small orange fruit held in the sitter’s hand: “I needed an additional warm color. So that little piece of citrus...gave the painting just what it needed as well as its name.” Susan modeled both for photographs and for live sittings, and Hendricks later added accessories like the green curtain pull, bow tie, muff, leg warmers, and bows on the shoes. He applied the silver-leaf dots on the upper register using the back end of a pencil. On her modeling for this painting, Susan remarked, “You’d be amazed how hard it is to stand in high heels with your eyes closed.”

      538 — Speaker: Susan Hendricks
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