Nick Kripal 'Swarm,' terra cotta installed at Philadelphia International Airport

Flying to the CAA meeting  after big snow and just before another meant delays, so I was happy to have Jenelle Porter’s catalog to Dance with Camera (ISBN 978-0-88454-118-9) for airport reading.   She gives a particularly clear idea of the development of film technology, the background in Hollywood musicals and the influence of John Cage’s ideas on the form she calls dance with camera (or cine-dance): dancing choreographed to be filmed, rather than films of dances choreographed for the stage.

Kelly Nipper 'Interval' (2000) one of four color photographs in 'Dance with Camera'

Porter also describes succinctly the circumstances of each of the films’ creation, something not always obvious to the viewer. I’d have liked more analysis, but then it might have been a textbook rather than a catalog, and she did re-print a number of important earlier essays (by Edwin Denby, Yvonne Rainer and Arlene Croce, among others) and interviews with Charles Atlas, Sharon Lockart and Shirley Clarke, all of which discuss ideas around the films.  The well-illustrated catalog also includes a bibliography.

The exhibition, Dance with Camera, continues through March 21 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the catalog will certainly send me back (for the 4th time) to see films I missed and re-view some I saw.  I love dance in any form: live, filmed or music videos (twenty years ago I presented a program on the art of music video), and have seen almost all the Hollywood musicals to which Porter alludes and some of the films and/or dancers; but even for the less dance-inclined viewer the exhibition will be in turns fascinating, funny, challenging, exhilarating, and provocative.

Michael Leja of Penn and Jenelle Porter, ICA, arriving late to the CAA meeting because of snow

Any national meeting held in February is asking for weather problems somewhere, but this year was surprisingly bad with massive delays from most of the East Coast.  I ran into Janelle Porter (author of the catalog I’d just read) and Michael Leja (Penn), who had just arrived when I saw him Thursday afternoon (missing a full day).  Still, the conference was well- attended and participants seemed happy with the events.

detail of 'The Rapids, Hudson River, Adirondacks,' showing where Homer scraped away color to create white foam

Full disclosure: I’m on CAA’s  board  – which, as I told all who asked, meant I was there to answer questions,  field suggestions or complaints and be helpful; it also meant that I spent too much of the conference in meetings.  But one of the highlights for me was a workshop, sponsored by the American Institute of Conservation and held in the Print and Drawings Study room of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). Curator Martha Tedeschi and conservator Kristi Dahm had a dozen Winslow Homer watercolors laid out for the group of thirty artists, art historians and curators who attended – we were able to examine them without glass!  Tedesci and Dahm explained that their investigations of Homer’s virtuosic technique was prompted by the many artists who visited and would ask Tedeschi how Homer achieved those effects. I reviewed the catalog of the exhibition they organized here ; the AIC has a website which allows users to examine their research and “correct” the colors on watercolors which have faded.

Watercolor box owned by Winslow Homer, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

The book and trade fair is always an indication of trends in the field. Two new journals on graphic novels and comics are forthcoming: Studies in Comics and Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics; someone thinks the need is great!

There was also an evident interest in artists’ studios despite many years’ discussion of post-studio practice.  I saw a number of books on the subject (one of which I reviewed here ) and two exhibitions on the subject were in Chicago: Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside Out at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which I missed, and Picturing the Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), which was smart, lively and varied (from self-reflective to humorous, videos to installations, and artists from Rodney Graham and Bruce Nauman to Ivan Brunetti and Amy Sillman);  sorry I didn’t have more time.  It was partially supported by CAA. and was the site for a festive reception which I attended Friday night.

Rodney Graham,' The Gifted Amateur, Nov 10th, 1962' (2007) in the SAIC's 'Picturing the Studio'

Three young artists were manning a booth for a nation-wide, participatory project Threadless; they run competitions for tee shirt designs and the winners (voted on by 900,000 on-line members)  are printed and available on the site.  Some illustration and graphics design teachers use the competitions as class projects, so they have a pedagogic aspect as well as a populist one. When they told me of an upcoming museum exhibition of their tee-shirts I mentioned Philadelphia artists’ active interest in screen-printing and suggested they look for a venue here.  The booth also showcased a zine they produce, Faesthetic, which can be seen on their website.

A winning design from Threadless: 'Space Needs Color' by Alvaro Arteaga Sabaini

Faesthetic's current issue on Ghost Stories

The CAA annual conferences have recently seen increasing organized activity among the younger artists and scholars. The Students’ and Young Professionals’ Committee had a lounge with wi-fi where they met and organized a series of  practical exercises in job interviewing, resume-writing and associated professional skills.  Jobs were scarce, but they were making good use of their time to network. Seeing colleagues has always been the major reason I attend the meetings. I’d met Barkley Hendricks at the recent symposium connected with his exhibition at PAFA, and saw him intermittently at the Art Institute, looking at paintings, and at the conference, where he was awarded a prize.

Barkley Hendricks won CAA's prize for a Distinguished Body of Work

New York Times critic, Holland Cotter, was also at the conference where he won the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art. He amused the convocation audience when he said the award surprised him since it implied that he had a life;  he told us he writes and re-writes slowly and painstakingly, which means he works all the time.

winner of CAA writing award, Holland Cotter

PMA Director Timothy Rub spoke on museums and new standards for archaeological objects

Bashir, Jules, Tuff Tony and Angie wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. But in Barkley Hendricks’ “Birth of the Cool” at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, these seemingly ordinary people, depicted in nearly life-size paintings, become new icons for a secular age. The works have such a sense of stillness that they feel almost like religious images.

Barkley Hendricks, Tequila

Which is not to say these people are saints. While the Philadelphia-born Hendricks—trained at the Academy (certificate, 1967) and at Yale (MFA, 1972)—uses the conventions of religious painting (gold leaf in several works and a halo above Fela Kuti in another), these figures have attitude. Their body language is confrontational. They smoke. They blow bubblegum in your face. Kuti grabs his crotch; Tuff Tony scowls; hardly anybody smiles in these portraits. Hendricks serves up a new paradigm for the high art portrait: Instead of wealthy folks, he depicts ordinary people who lead complicated lives, have struggles and are worthy of contemplation.

It’s highly political move and while Kehinde Wiley and Jeff Sonhouse are following in Hendricks’ footsteps it is Hendricks’ works that blaze the trail with empowered images of African-Americans and a celebration of the black fashion sensibility.

I talked with Hendricks last month when the show opened. It should be no surprise that the artist loves his camera as well as his paints, brushes and canvas. Hendricks has been photographing people since his days as a student at PAFA. Check out a selection of his photos at the African American Museum through Jan. 3.

When I arrived at PAFA to interview Barkley Hendricks, he was in the gallery video-documenting his show, something he likes to do. It was my first clue that the painter is also a whiz with cameras.

Where did you show your work in Philadelphia when you first started out?
Kenmore Gallery–18th and Chestnut. It was run by Harry Kulkowitz. It’s defunct now. Then I moved to NY and showed at ACA gallery for years. Recently at The Project….for 2-3 years. Now I’m with Shainman Gallery.

Keeping track of your work is hard when you’ve had relationships with many galleries. Do you have lists of titles and owners…or maybe the galleries have that?
Whether or not you’re important has to do with whether they have lists.

Harry Kulkowitz, he picked me up right out of school. It was my third year when I got the Cresson traveling scholarship. 1967 is when I got my certificate from PAFA. Harry came to see the exhibit and we started a relationship. I showed at Kenmore until 1973 or 74. I had a couple solo shows.  Harry was a native New Yorker and thought beyond the boundaries of Philly. He worked his network in New York…got me my first Whitney and some group shows there. I credit Harry for that.

Barkley Hendricks, Sir Charles

How were sales?

I had reached the $5,000 ceiling that black artists have, in 67 or 68. Someone said that once (that there is a $5,000 ceiling for black artists).

Your work is political.
I’m about painting people and unfortunately we have a stratified world.  Only recently I’ve been on the radar. I was under or nowhere near the radar before.

I asked my students (at Connecticut College where he has taught since 1972) have you ever heard of the Guerilla Girls. They said no. I told them about them. I respect them tremendously. They dealt with the problem of the status quo and white male dominated world.

What do you think about the separating of art by race or gender in separate museums like the Women’s Museum in Washington or the African American Museum in Philadelphia?
It has to do with education and community. Thirty or 40 years ago we didn’t have anything like it [a museum that tells the story of African American art and culture]. Richard Watson is my very good friend…he works there. He sometimes has issues with the museum. Is it an art museum or a cultural institution? It needs to be both. Maybe down the road [you can do away with the need for separate ethnic museums]. But there’s a need of cultures to acknowledge their own and honor them]..like Gorky and Armenian pride.”

Barkley Hendricks, photo by Libby, taken last March at University of Pennsylvania where the artist gave a talk.

Would you paint President Obama?
(laughs)  I get that question all the time. I’ll tell you what I tell everyone. Maybe. I’m not opposed to it. But I don’t seek out celebrities. I painted Kuti and I’ve photographed a certain number of celebrities. I’ve been photographing jazz musicians in clubs and backstage.

Tell me about photographing musicians – who have you photographed?
Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, Modern Jazz Quartet, Oscar Brown Junior, Carmen McRea, Diane Reeves, Herbie Hancock.

You shoot film in dark jazz clubs? You must have a very steady hand.
Here’s a story for you. Here in Philly I went to the Showboat. Cannonball Adderly was playing. There was a roving photographer taking Polaroid photos of the couples in the audience . I asked him to take a shot of Cannonball ….and it was a piss poor shot. And I thought…if you want it you better do it yourself.  So when I got the Cresson (the travel scholarship at PAFA), people said you have to take a camera. I bought a Rangefinder….and then an SLR…and then I had the equipment to move into clubs.

So very early on you’re working with a camera.
It’s dealing with how to see. “Think before you click the shutter” ….pre-visualization. At Yale I hung out more with the photographers than with the painters.  They were working with 4×5′s, and [light] metering and setting up. I had a 4×5 and also a 2 1/2 x 2 12 Hasselblad. But 35 MM was faster and I could take it into places and shoot.  I recently started using a flash. Not always…it can get you kicked out of some places.

I’ll tell you a story. Miles Davis was playing in New York. If you know about Miles you know he had his back to the audience when he played. Some people thought he was [elitist]…but no, he said he was about getting the music out. He’d play so you would see his band. I was backstage so i was facing him. I squeezed off 4 to 5 rolls of film. Then I got a tap on the shoulder. It was one of Miles’ roadies. “Miles said get off the stage.”

I went backstage after the concert. Miles is a painter. I gave him a catalog [of my work]. I said ‘I play the trumpet. I play the trumpet as well as you paint. And you play the trumpet as well as I paint.’ He smiled.

Barkley Hendricks. Portrait photo courtesy Barkley L. Hendricks and Nasher Museum of Art October’s Gone...Goodnight, 1973, oil, acrylic, and magna on linen canvas, 72” x 72”; photo courtesy A. Vincent Scarano

I know that you took a photography class with Walker Evans at Yale.  Tell me about that.
I did a portfolio on the NY Port Authority. It helped me get into Walker Evans’ advanced photography class. At Yale, there were 14 people in grad school. two or three representational painters, the rest were what I call “pour painters” like Helen Frankenthaler. They poured paint. They were nice guys but I had more contact with the photographers. I was leaning photo stuff…printing, tinting, etc.

Let’s talk about fashion.  You have taken photos at fashion shows.  Have you ever walked the runway yourself–you dress very fashionably and your painting, Slick, is yourself as a fashion plate.
I haven’t been in a fashion show. But every time you step outside your door you’re on a fashion runway. The streets are a runway.

Tell me about the trumpet. Do you play with a group?
Our group is called “Other Issues.” We all had scheduling issues…one member, his mom died. the bass player had hand issues; another had domestic issues; I had issues….I also play drums.

Did you take lessons? and did you pick this up as an adult?
I picked it up. As an adult. about 20 years ago (when he was in his 40s).

Here’s a story. I had a friend who was a thug. He came by the studio and said “Hey, butch, I have this trumpet, want it for $50? I said no, but how about $40. I got it and it had no mouthpiece so I went and bought a mouthpiece and blew and blew and got no sound out of it. So I did a painting of the trumpet and sold the painting and the trumpet and got another trumpet. –and had success with it. And I graduated to a master trumpeter in upstate NY (his wife is from upstate NY). He makes mouthpieces for me…from wood. It feels great on the lips in the winter!

Hendricks had a carpentry accident this summer. He was building a frame for a painting and the router backfired and jumped up and hit his right arm and made a deep cut. The aftermath of the accident affects his trumpet playing since he can’t feel his fingertips on the keys.

That must be awful all round.  You’re right handed. Does it affect your painting too?
(He’s always been ambidextrous painter. If he’s working one area of a painting and sees something on the left side of the painting he’ll take a brush in his left hand and work it.)

I’m not a finish painter with the left hand but I can do it.   I’m hoping for some regeneration (in his hand/arm)…If I was in my 20s…Now I’m in my 60s so regeneration is an issue.

You do your own framing. You must know your way around carpentry tools.
My father was a contractor. We did everything imaginable to a house. We had a dubious relationship when I was a kid but I took [the knowledge of tools] to the studio. I have a love/hate relationship to tools.  I get a lot now at yard sales.  I have 8 or so routers and a table saw.  I have tools up the yin yang.

Barkley Hendricks: “Birth of the Cool.” Through Dec. 20. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Hamilton Building, 118 N. Broad St.

Barkley L. Hendricks, Misc. Tyrone (Tyrone Smith), 1976. Oil and magna on linen canvas, 72 x 50 ¼ inches. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.Barkley L. Hendricks, Tequila, 1978. Oil and acrylic on linen canvas, 60 ¾ x 50 ¼ inches. Collection of the Butler Institute for American Art, Youngstown, OH.

I was struck by, how in a funny reversal of expectation, Hendricks’ paintings, with their blank backgrounds and fashion focus, come out of a recent photographic tradition, while so many of the photographs in Personal Views come more directly out of the painting tradition, in which sitters pose with symbols of their worth.

Hendricks’ portraits also reference religious icons, an association that elevates his subjects to sainthood. Some of the paintings glow with an ethereal light; and some of them have iconic gilt backgrounds. Surrounded by nothing but ether, with no details of the urban environment from where they come, these subjects are well-positioned to communicate their self-worth with sartorial splendor. They come without pedigree and create their own individuality. It’s costume as self-invention. And Hendricks loves and admires them for being exactly who they are.

Barkley L. Hendricks, Icon for My Man Superman (Superman never saved any black people – Bobby Seale), 1969, Oil, acrylic, and aluminum leaf on linen canvas, 59 ½ x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

This is not art as fashion design; this is art with a political subtext. The scale is confrontational, grand and powerful at the same time that the figures are non-threatening. The iconoclasm in Icon for My Man Superman, a portrait of Bobby Seale, takes both Superman and Seale off pedestals, humanizing the cartoon, humorizing the man. Barkley Hendricks loves his subjects and loves people. It comes through loud and clear. He is legitimizing, embodying, making visible. It’s a gentle approach to a social revolution.

Sarah Stolfa, Benton, MS, 2007, Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 30 inches, Edition of 10

Sarah Stolfa’s, Zoe Strauss’ and Justyna Badach’s portraits at Gallery 339 may provide environment in the tradition of Rembrandtian burghers, but their subjects are not exactly burghers. not the usual powerful or moneyed class who can afford to commission Annie Leibovitz.

Justyna Badach, Rourke, 2009, Archival Pigment Print, 23" x 30"; Edition of 3; 31" x 40"; Edition of 3

Badach’s photos of bachelors are sad, the men isolated in forlorn environments of their own choosing and creation. These photos have no lushness to them, but the question of who we are looking at and why is plenty of a draw, with or without the statements Badach displays with the photos.

Sarah Stolfa, Memphis, TN, 2007, Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 30 inches, Edition of 10

In Stolfa’s current series on view, which references Robert Frank and Alec Soth, there’s a question of intention. She lets the subjects project who they are. But she cannot cross the social divide in the same way that she did in her portraits across the bar at McGlinchey’s.  Stolfa means to disconcert her viewer. And I suspect she herself is disconcerted by the kitchen worker with the gun at her waist. In this sense, Stolfa’s portraits are less about the individuals, and more about a cultural divide between northern and southern values.

Zoe Strauss, Bunny, 2001, Archival Pigment Print, 20 x 30 inches

Not so in Strauss’s work, where the people’s faces become a roadmap away from Britney and Joan Rivers, a different vision from the media circus of what it means to be human. Strauss is the Walt Whitman of Philadelphia photographers, singing her love for an entire side of the culture otherwise ignored. But unlike the romanticizer Hendricks, Strauss keeps the hard-scrabble environment and the hard-nosed realism, be it no makeup or too much makeup.

Andrea Modica, Sicily 7, 1990, Platinum/Palladium Contact Print, 8 x 10 inches, Edition of 20

Also in the show at 339 are Andrea Modica’s sociological photographs of Italians who have been largely untouched by glamor shots and the notion of performing for the camera; Rita Bernstein’s painterly photographs that are less about portraiture than mood and light and material; Jessica Todd Harper’s portraits of middle-class comfort, which seem closest to the burgher portraits of the Dutch golden age of painting; and Nadine Rovner’s setups, which are less about the individual people and more about cinematic mise-en-scenes.

a portrait by Josh Rickards

PS: I saw Josh Rickards at BYOTY at Little Berlin while I was thinking about the photos and Hendricks, so then I gave some thought to what Rickards is doing. He, like Hendricks, takes the subject out of a real environment. Sometimes the background is a blank color, but sometimes he creates a flat, abstracted environment that represents a milieu, a time and a place. And his stylized faces, which draw from craft veneer drawing, emphasizes the deadpan ordinariness of his subject. These are not so much personal portraits; they are pictures of a lifestyle and subculture.

Personal Views: Contemporary Photographic Portraiture in Philadelphia is up through November 14, 2009 and Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool is up to January 3, 2010.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Curator of Contemporary Arts Julien Robson snagged a whopping $440,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation for contemporary art programing over the next three years, including support for the Philagrafika exhibit opening January 2009, five solo exhibits of young and emerging artists starting in May in the Morris Gallery, and the exhibit We’re All Still Here, scheduled to open October 2011.

Julien Robson, from the philagrafika site, www.philagrafika.com

We especially wanted to know who he would be giving those solo and two person shows to so we phoned the curator and grilled him a little bit.

“In April we dismantle the black box [in the Morris Gallery] and start a series of solo and 2 person shows…regional and elsewhere.  I don’t want it to be the ghetto where we throw a bone to the local artists,” he said. But he wasn’t naming names yet. “I feel very strongly about creating a context in which regional artists can be seen.  I’m not a fan of one show after another after another of artists in the region.”

Unlike the party line art coming out of what he calls “the economic centers” of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Robson said there is wonderful art out there in places where artists make unique things.  He’d like to give those regional artists the chance to shine.

Greta Pratt. Nineteen Lincolns, 2005. 18 archival inkjet prints. 28 x 24 inches. Courtesy artist on nashermuseumblogs.org/2009/06/25/my-weird-america/

For We’re All Still Here Robson will also be searching for artists outside the big three art cities. He’ll be working with a team of six curators from other regions (also not all selected and also no naming of names) to select a mix of local and national artists whose work exhibits a sense of place. His models are The Old Weird America Show (at the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum and the DeCordova) and Nowhere, a show he himself curated for the Speed Museum in Louisville, Ky., his former gig. That show also traveled to Gratz, Austria. Both shows surveyed what is happening in art all across the country. “We need to recognize that sense of place. …artists working from some sense of where they are, conscious of where they are…that comes out of the Nowhere idea.”

q.  Are you anti New York?
a. “No, we’ll be showing some artists from New York.  It’s not an anti-New York bias.  I’m deliberately trying to complement what’s here already.

“When I say I worked in Louisville most people say it [move to PAFA] must be a step up.  I say, What do you mean?  It’s not a step up. [Louisville] was a very important scene, a vital art scene. We need to recognize that sense of place.”

Orit Hofshi will be in The Graphic Unconscious. Witnessing Woodblock, drawing, carving 67" x 69", from www.orithofshi.com/woodblocks.htm#

When we asked about how the William Penn Grant will help PAFA commission some new work, he said the money was more on the honorarium level than the full-blown commission level, just seed money. Some will go to artists who are creating new work for the Philagrafika: The Graphic Unconscious exhibit, a seven-artist show that includes Kiki Smith, Pepon Osorio and Mark Bradford. “Things always cost more than you think. But it helps us think how to create even more projects. Money always attracts money.”

q. What about the fall lineup at PAFA?

a. “There will be two kinds of hip–Malcolm [McLaren] and Barkley [Hendricks]. [McLaren's "Shallow 1-21" will be in the Morris Gallery; Hendricks' Birth of Cool will be in the Hamilton building.]

“[Barkley's] work is immensely popular.”  He will give a talk in October. And the Academy will be offering many programs, especially for underserved communities. Every Sunday during the exhibit’s run will be free, and the first free Sunday, Hendricks will attend, to mingle and talk to people. Each Sunday will also include special events, with some help from Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative.

Barkley L. Hendricks, Sweet Thang (Lynn Jenkins), 1975-1976. Oil on linen canvas, 52 1/8 x 52 ¾ inches. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

Barkley will take part in a  symposium “Evolution of the Cool” on Saturday, Nov. 21.  The symposium will include speakers from Duke, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, and show curator Trevor Schoonmaker will give a talk in the auditorium on Thursday, Nov. 19.

A number of pieces of work from local collectors will supplement the Hendricks show here (it’s traveling and this is its fourth stop of five). Hendricks, who is PAFA trained, has a big local following. “There were a couple pieces Hendricks was happy about because he lost touch.”

q. And McLaren, the other ultra hip show?

a. “At the end of October McLaren will give a talk [date TBD], and then a week later, he will dj at an event in another venue, with a video element. Malcolm was one of the first to do mixes and scratch music, and had hits in the ’80s and ’90s. [Be sure to check the PAFA website for dates and times since the schedule has changed since we wrote this post.]

Malcolm McLaren, Double Dutch, video, 4:31 from YouTube

McLaren’s video Shallow 1-21 has never been shown in the U.S. in its entirety, and it will be followed by an Indonesian rock video, Tomarama, made with woodcuts. (Tomarama prints are also in the Philagrafika exhibit.) Then down will come the black box to make way for the solo and two-man series of shows.

Meanwhile, Robson says he is trying to differentiate what he shows from what the ICA s the PMA shows. “I have to put restrictions. ICA can do international. We’re an American art museum. That’s what we do, and it will differentiate us.”

Andrew Brehm, Venezuela, video in Summer Shorts, photo courtesy the artist

q.  Before we let you go, tell us how the PAFA/Fleisher-Ollman collaboration came about for The Summer Shorts video art program, now in the Morris Gallery to Oct. 13. ICA has unjuried local video calls but this is a curated show of local video artists in the museum.

a. “I’d been discussing with Amy … local artists. Amy was able to find these artists…she helped me co-curate that.

“I hope to one day have resources to have a permanent video space.  Obviously video is an important medium.  it’s important to acknowledge it and it fits the boundaries of PAFA — it extends the figurative tradition. The Philagrafika exhibit is also figurative, and we included alumna Orit Hofshi, so it gives us a sense of looking at our traditions.

“There have been moments when PAFA was revolutionary.  We hope to get back to that.  I’ve Been talking with [fellow curators] Bob [Cozzolino], Anna Marley, and [Museum Director] David [Brigham]. We are all people who haven’t been here long.  We’re all excited.”

Barkley Hendricks at Penn before the talk.

“The city and I have a love-hate relationship. My 2-years younger brother was murdered here,” began the Philadelphia native, who lives and teaches in New London at Connecticut College.

A bit of a charmer, Hendricks is a funny mix of ego and diffidence, discussing his work in terms of its technical challenges and methods–info for students sandwiched between anecdotes about each piece.

Barkley Hendricks, Blood, a reference to Picasso's harlequin paintings

But it’s not the anecdotes or materials that make this work of particular interest. It’s the beautifully painted content–dark-skinned subjects, reflecting their time and their individuality, yet standing timeless and universal–a sort of African American hagiography, iconic against flat fields of color. Hendricks himself, in one of his few art historical references in the talk, mentioned Byzantine icons. He tipped his hat to Picasso in a couple of paintings, including Blood, a red-on-red portrait (his red period?) of a young man whose stance and plaid clothes call to mind the Picasso’s acrobats in harlequin.

Barkley Hendricks, "Sweet Thang"

I particularly liked the information he gave about his choices–choosing a tile pattern for a background in Sweet Thang, adding balloons to “Arriving Soon” (the painting sat incomplete in his studio for a couple of years until the balloons appeared–in the studio and then in the painting), or omitting the word “nihilism” from a subject’s t-shirt. I also like how he told about the sitter in Sweet Thang first pouring out her heart to him until he was moved to tears. “Then she blew that bubble.”

Barkley Hendricks, Arriving Soon

Hendricks, by the way, is a PAFA Certificate holder, where he was one of Louis Sloan’s students; he also has a Yale BFA and MFA,where he studied under Walker Evans.

“Icon for My Man Superman (Superman never saved any black people — Bobby Seale),” 1969.

Hendricks came of age in the ’60s, and that era’s desire for Black empowerment and visibility is reflected in his work. His 1969 painting Icon for My Man Superman has as its subtitle a quote from Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale–”Superman never saved any black people.” Hendricks, who said he grew up loving comics, recalled that there were no black people in there–but “if there were, they were always blue. They never got the color right.”

"Fela: Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen," 2002. Oil and variegated leaf on canvas, wooden frame, armature, 66 3/4 x 46 3/4 inches.

Hendricks is a political painter. His portrait of Nigerian singer Fela Kuti turns him into a saint and icon. Hendricks said the Nigerian government tried to kill the singer. The singer’s mother, died under suspicious circumstances, pushed out of a second-story window. In the frame of the painting is embedded a camera to spy on the gallery. Soon to be installed in the exhibit in Santa Monica, he said he is hoping the camera will be properly hooked up there to stream live video.

But the political content is also subtle. And this is where things get quite interesting.

Barkley L. Hendricks, "Bahsir (Robert Gowens)," 1975. Oil on canvas, 83.5 x 66 inches. Collection the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

Hendricks’ Byzantine icons are also full-length fashion plates standing against blank photo backdrops. (He has a photography interest and many of his portraits are based on photos, even photos of strangers on the street; he also paints from life).

I am struck by how there’s a conversation that goes on with my old Jimi Hendrix black light poster (it’s not the one that’s all over the internet, but a two-tone purple and green portrait, with the planes of Hendrix’s face running into the background). Hendricks-the-artist plays with white clothing bleeding into white backdrops or black into black backdrops. The clothing-encased body is often flat, but then emerges with luscious dark skinned volume from the collar and cuffs.

He loves people, he loves how they present themselves–their clothes and their attitude. And in those choices of clothing and hairdo, he presents not just character, but also a cultural time capsule that is the figure en costume, each subject sartorially self-exoticized. These are black people not trying to be white people but just being themselves, and everyone’s a character.

Barkley Hendricks, Tequila

I want to say that without Barkley Hendricks, there is no Kehinde Wiley, who also takes academic painting technique and history to express Pop culture. Wiley, like Hendricks, appropriates poses from religious saint paintings, creating often full-length portraits of his street hustlers in hip-hop regalia. Wiley’s settings also are flattened, although Wiley uses wallpaper patterning to domesticate his subjects, the fronds of pattern crossing over their outfits, making street dudes look positively tame and lovable–not to mention gorgeous.

Both artists take subjects with major attitude and humanize the threat their clothing and posture implies. They are inserting African Americans into an European art history with its pale faces and tastes. But Hendricks is about political power and about the individual personality in a way that Wiley is not.

Barkley L. Hendricks’s “Sir Charles, Alias Willie Harris” (1972) is a portrait of a weed dealer as Three Graces.

To say Hendricks is  political, however, oversimplifies. He’s about African American musicians, especially jazz musicians.  He has a strong sense of connection to people. He showed a slide of a self-portrait in which he placed himself in Virginia, where his family has roots, and where he is called Doc and Ruby’s Oldest Boy, which is the name of the painting.  Hendricks’ anecdotes include his ex-wife, his ex-girlfriend, his models, his friends. His personal life is part of what fuels his art, which is a mix of the personal and the impersonal, the private and the public. He uses song lyrics and titles–like (Marvin Gaye’s) What’s Going On– for his paintings and recently completed a print of jazz musician Dexter Gordon, who starred in the movie Round Midnight. He has embraced them all as his people.

There’s also a sense of humor here, a willingness to laugh at himself and to paint work that has the spark of the real world! A portrait of his wife is called Mon Petit Kumquat. She’s a 6-foot tall woman, heroic in platform shoes,  delicately holding a kumquat between her index finger and her thumb.

Barkley Hendricks, Slick

He is able to tell a joke on himself–laugh at some criticism he got from the late Hilton Kramer in the New York Times, who wrote, “Hendricks is brilliantly endowed, but has a tendency toward slickness.” The comment resonates in the titles of two of his paintings. One is a self portrait dressed in all white, “Slick.” The other is a nude self portrait, in athletic socks and a white cap. It is called Brilliantly Endowed. It didn’t come directly out of the Kramer comment, Hendricks suggested. “I took a shower and looked in the mirror. Hey, that’s a painting.” But he grabbed onto the joke, and the picture is richer for it.

It’s that touch that allows Hendricks to deal with touchy subjects and still charm. He knows how to get a lot of mileage out of indirection!

TUESDAY MARCH 17

Gary Hill, Wall Piece, (2000); Single-channel video/sound installation. Video projector, strobe light and strobe controller with steel floor mount, two speakers, one DVD player and one DVD (color; stereo sound). All images courtesy of the artist and Donald Young Gallery, Chicago.

Gary Hill–NOTE:  AS OF 2 PM MONDAY, MAR. 16, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Hill has been working with video and sound since 1973. His intermedia use of text, speech and image explore the physicality of language and our thought processes. Winner of a MacArthur Foundation Genius award in 1998, and winner of the Leone díOro Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1995, his work has been included in six Whitney Biennials and Documenta IX.

Coinciding with the talk, a show of Hill’s work opens at Slought on Saturday, March 21. 6:30-8:30 pm, with a conversation between Hioll, George Quasha and Charles Stein at 7 pm. The show runs to May 1.

Gary Hill
UPenn Graduate Fine Arts Lecture
Cosponsored by Slought Foundation
5 pm, Meyerson Hall, B1
210 S. 34th St. Philadelphia PA 19104
Open to the public

WEDNESDAY, MAR 18

Barkley Hendricks

Barkley Hendricks
The talk, by this major African American painter who put his own stamp on Pop Art, is the precursor to Hendricks widely acclaimed upcoming exhibit at PAFA (now at the Studio Museum in Harlem). The PAFA show opens Oct. 17, 2009 and runs to Jan. 3, 2010.

Barkley Hendricks
5:00 PM
Upper Meyerson Gallery
Meyerson Hall
210 S. 34th St.
Open to the Public

Lawrence Weschler
Weschler is a former New Yorker writer and culture critic. He’ll be talking about the shift from books to blogs and instances of the world melting into thin air, i.e., the transitory quality of the internet and what it means for the culture.

Lawrence Weschler
All that is Solid
2008-2009 Penn Humanities Forum on Change
5:00 pm
Rainey Auditorium, Penn Museum
To register (required): go here
Event free and open to the public.

Drew Leshko, 2009, Untitled Installation (detail), paper, wire, plaster, basswood, plastic, acrylic, enamel, 40" x 80" x 40"

Seriously, Stupididity
And here’s a new show at a new outpost in North Philly. When you’ve had enough of the words and lectures, you can come up for air and look at some art. Damian Weinkrantz and Adam Wallacavage, both from Space 1026, are in charge here in a new space called Shadow’s Space Gallery above Kung Fu Necktie, a watering hole with one of the best signs on north Front Street.

showing work by
Drew Leshko, David Dunn, Danny Perez, Spencer Wunder, Mary Deevy, Manuel Dominguez Jr., Jessica Roberts, Gloria Joan Haag, Laura Lee and Susan Houwen, Brieann Robyn Tracey, Carrie Collins, Jason Goldberg, Isaac Lin, Kelly Turso, Adam Crawford, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Ken Sigafoos, Ben Woodward, Judith Schaechter, Amber Lynn Thompson, Crystal Stokowski, Matt Leines, Jim Houser, Jayson Musson, Andrew Clark, Plankton Art Co., Erich Weiss, Dan Tag, Dave Fox, Carolynne McNeel, Nick Paparone, Shelly Spector, Charles Burns, Aryon Hoselton, Paul E.

Seriously, Stupididity
Shadow’s Space Gallery
upstairs at Kung Fu Necktie
Opening Reception
Wednesday March 18, 2009
6:00-10:00
1248 N. Front Street
Philadelphia

THURSDAY, MAR 19

The new Temple Gallery at Tyler School of Art. Image from Temple Gallery.

New Temple Gallery Grand Opening
NEW Temple Gallery at Tyler School of Art on the main campus has its official opening Thurs. Mar. 19, 6-8 PM. It’s the kickoff for the series of student MFA shows as well. Those shows run Mar 18-May 9, with each student getting a 4-day slot in that window. First up and on view for the grand opening are Bassem Mostafa, Charlotte Rodenberg, Fabian Lopez, Tom Gallagher

Temple Gallery
Grand opening reception 6-8 PM
NEW ADDRESS: 2001 North 13th Street, Philadelphia 19122
215.777.9139

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, MARCH  20 AND 21

George Tooker, Lunch, 1964

George Tooker Symposium
A scholarly array of scholars from around the country and across the pond discuss the art of George Tooker, whose 40-year retrospective is on display at PAFA now through April 5.

George Tooker Symposium
Friday, 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m.
Saturday, 9.00 a.m. – 3.00 p.m.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Broad and Cherry Streets
$50 members, $60 non-members, $30 students with ID. For tickets, please contact 215-972-0522 or rsvp@pafa.org.

Also on Saturday night, the reception for Gary Hill at Slought–see top entry.