By Philippe Dagen
At the Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris, Barkley Hendricks, an uncompromising portrait artist.
The African-American artist, rarely shown in Europe, exhibits his works full of ironic or satirical undertones. In the United States, Barkley Hendricks (1945-2017) is now considered a historical figure. Following a museum retrospective that toured between 2008 and 2010, the presentation of his portraits alongside the ancient masterpieces of the Frick Collection in New York in 2023 cemented the African-American artist's reputation. However, he has been shown very little in Europe. No French museum saw fit to repeat the excellent exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” at the Tate Modern in London in 2017. The presentation of a collection of his works by the Marian Goodman Gallery is his first solo exhibition in Europe.
Fear of God celebrates the work of Barkley L. Hendricks and his love of the game of basketball with an exclusive capsule collection in partnership with the NBA and the Barkley L. Hendricks Estate. Iconic works such as Father, Son, and…, Black on Black in Black, and Dippy’s Delight are reinterpreted through the house’s core silhouettes.
“Beside the game that provided color and geometry for many of my compositions, there were the playground regulars who always provided attention-getting behavior besides their faces, fashions and attitudes.”
— Barkley L. Hendricks
By Lolita Mang
6 must-see exhibitions in Paris this February
Barkley L. Hendricks | All is Portraiture at Marian Goodman
From Vermeer to Rembrandt … the Old Masters of Europe have been an undeniable influence on the paintings of American artist Barkley L. Hendricks (1944–2017). The origins of this obsession? A trip to the United Kingdom in 1966. In the heart of the National Gallery, he came across a group of students learning to draw by copying the masters of painting, and he himself was captivated by a work by the Dutch painter Anthony van Dyck, the portrait of Agostino Pallavicini (1621). “I was electrified, as if struck by lightning,” he recalled in 2016 for the Tate. At the time, the young man had not yet become the established artist he is today. Marked by the style of these classical painters, he retained several elements from their works, beginning with the materials. For example, it is the Renaissance-inspired gold that we find used to enhance some of his portraits, including the striking Lawdy Mama (1969).
By Jasmine Weber
Barkley L. Hendricks’s Studio Was a Wonderland of Inspiration
A photo book documenting the late artist’s colorful, cluttered studio shows an amalgamation of decades’ worth of inspiration.
It seems like there’s nothing you cannot find in the studio of the late painter Barkley L. Hendricks. Feathers, shells, drums, and CDs pile up in heaps. Take your pick from dozens upon dozens of sunglasses or high heels. The monograph Piles of Inspiration Everywhere is a tour presented through photographs of Hendricks’s bursting studio, which spanned most of the top floor of the Victorian house that he shared with his wife, Susan Hendricks, for 35 years. During that time, she says in the book’s introduction, she was the only person permitted to cross the studio threshold; friends and curators alike were turned away from that section of their Connecticut home.
By Sarah Moroz
Barkley L. Hendricks: Piles of Inspiration Everywhere
This book illustrates the artist’s studio, the threshold of which no gallerist or curator had ever crossed.
Despite the wider contempt for clutter, it can be wonderful to live with memories made materially manifest, surrounded by things that you enjoy. The artist Barkley L. Hendricks (b. 1945, d. 2017) knew this, although the extreme context in which he lived and worked would give a certain type of scaled-back ascetic an aneurysm. The American artist was known for realist oil paintings of stylish Black Americans, staring out at viewers from the canvas with a direct gaze. Piles of Inspiration Everywhere explores the Victorian house in Connecticut, bought in the early 1980s, that Hendricks occupied for thirty-five years with his spouse, Susan. The space was photographed by Hendricks’s friend, David Katzenstein, across 175 color images.
By Kristina Dorsey
Barkley L. Hendricks: Piles of Inspiration Everywhere
A new book explores where the artist Barkley L. Hendricks worked and lived.
Although people knew him and his work, they didn't know the studio where he created his paintings. The space on the second floor of his house in New London wasn't open to visitors.
A new book provides a peek into his home - which in turn provides a fascinating glimpse into Barkley's
Over the course of his life, Barkley L. Hendricks grew to be a widely acclaimed artist.
Piles of Inspiration: New book invites readers into the home and mind of artist Barkley L. Hendricks.
At first glance, the images in the blue-velvet hardcover book appear to show the home of an eccentric hoarder. Nearly every surface is covered in seemingly random objects and paraphernalia: There are piles of women’s shoes. Wigs, magnets, pins, paintings. Drums, a bass clarinet, a tambourine. Paint cans, used paintbrushes, cameras. Life-sized cutouts of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Pages ripped out of magazines adorn the walls, along with ads featuring Vanessa Williams and artistic prints of Marilyn Monroe.
Keep looking, though, and you’ll also see photos of one man in various life stages. In one image, his salt-and-pepper beard and moustache frame his smile while a black bucket hat and sunglasses adorn his head. In another photo, he is younger; his beard and moustache are still dark brown. He dons a tuxedo and a red bow tie and holds a drink as a woman stands next to him.
By Karen Juanita Carrillo
The new book “Barkley L. Hendricks: Piles of Inspiration Everywhere,” a collaboration between fine arts photographer David Katzenstein and the artist’s wife, Susan Hendricks, offers readers a detailed look inside the home that inspired the artist’s naturalistic paintings.
The book features large, double-page photos of the rooms in the New London, Connecticut, home where Barkley both had his studio and lived for decades with his wife.
Two weeks after Barkley’s death on April 18, 2017, Susan allowed Katzenstein to begin photographing the house. The two say they didn’t want to begin packing up or making changes that would in any way alter what it was like for Barkley when he lived there.
Katzenstein’s photographs are visually stunning: as you turn the pages, several of Hendricks’s rooms are laid out before you. They are filled with bold and diverse colors: posters, books, musical instruments, paintbrushes, notebooks, vinyl records, clothes, and various other objects are in areas that clearly fit within the artist’s mental filing system.
The book includes quotes from what Barkley used to say, are meant to show his perspective and understanding of the rooms the book displays:
“I am part of a very fascinating drama which I record in the mediums of my desire.” “There is an inner vision.”
Flamboyance is a defining attribute of the stylish, life-size Black characters taking center stage in the large portrait paintings of Barkley L. Hendricks (1945–2017). The congregation of chic figures he represented, beginning in the 1960s, described a new African American aesthetic that blasted out from the conflicts of the civil rights movement. His was a vision that coincided with the liberated vibe of blaxploitation films; the activism and glamour of Black Power; and the exultant delirium of disco, funk, soul, and R&B music.
‘He Was Constantly Creating’: Little-Seen Barkley Hendricks Photos Get a New York Showcase
An artist of wide-ranging interests, he captured urban street style, American symbols, and musical greats—all with a unique passion.
Barkley L. Hendricks, who died in 2017, was known for his sleek, large-scale paintings of his friends. He was less widely known for the photographs taken in the course of producing those paintings.
Only recently did researchers and family members overseeing his archives begin to organize and dissect this little-studied part of his career. After his death, his widow and Jack Shainman, his longtime New York dealer, worked to select 60 photographs he’d taken and printed between 1965 and 2004. Some of those images, on view in a show at Shainman’s gallery that closes tomorrow, bring Hendricks’s world into focus.