The Brooklyn Rail
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.