Object Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Delaney, Beauford |
Title |
Portrait of James Baldwin |
Medium |
Pastel on paper |
Date |
1944 |
Description |
Beauford Delaney (Knoxville 1901-1979 Paris) Portrait of James Baldwin, 1944 Pastel on paper, 24 x 18 3/4 inches Knoxville Museum of Art, 2017 purchase with funds provided by the Rachael Patterson Young Art Acquisition Reserve Knoxville native Beauford Delaney overcame poverty, racial discrimination, and mental illness to achieve international renown. Seeking greater artistic and personal freedom, Delaney settled in New York by 1929, where he attracted a distinguished circle of cultural luminaries that included Georgia O'Keeffe, W. E. B. DuBois, and Henry Miller. However, his most significant and enduring bond came by way of writer and activist James Baldwin (1924-1987). Baldwin, who met Delaney as a teenager, came to regard the painter as a father figure, muse, and model of perseverance as a gay man of color. Delaney found in Baldwin a powerful intellectual and spiritual anchor who inspired some of his finest works. This pastel represents the distinctive contours of Baldwin's features in what is perhaps Delaney's first true portrait likeness of his protégé. Baldwin's prominent eyes appear as enlarged reflective portals capable of revealing the essential inner light Delaney sought, the "light contained in every thing, in every surface, in every face," as Baldwin once described. The artist created it the same year Baldwin credited Delaney with expanding his artistic vision back in the winter of 1940. As the two walked the rainy streets of Greenwich Village, Delaney called his attention to "oil moving like mercury in the black water of the gutter" whose swirling colors formed a visual experience the writer later credited as a revelation. Here, similar iridescent pastel hues dance across the sitter's face. In the lower right corner is a note of dedication to the men's mutual friend John Arvonio (1913-1994), a photographer and experimental filmmaker. Arvonio is perhaps best known for his short film Abstract in Concrete (1952), filmed at night over a five-year period. The ten-minute piece captures the dazzling effect of storefront lights as reflected in Manhattan's rain-soaked streets. Although no evidence has been found that Delaney or Baldwin related the story of the gutter reflections to Arvonio, the film's imagery and vantage point are strikingly similar to Baldwin's description of the experience. Of this portrait likeness, Delaney biographer David Leeming explains "the pastel presents a very handsome Baldwin with clearly outlined, somewhat heavy features that suggest the Picasso style rather than Van Gogh's. As an idealization the drawing is in keeping with Beauford's supportive insistence over the years that Baldwin was handsome despite his friend's equally constant insistence that he was ugly." |
Catalog Number |
2017.13.01 |
Search Terms |
Pastels (Visual works) Portrait drawings Drawings Men Paper Portraits LBGTQ+ Artist |
Credit line |
purchase with funds provided by the Rachael Patterson Young Art Acquisition Reserve |