Portrait artist Barkley L. Hendricks, who died in 2017, considered the Frick Collection as one of his favorite museums. Now Hendricks ’celebratory and large -scale painting of Black Americans will remain at that institution, home to Rembrandt, Bronzino and Van Dyck, as the first color artist to have a single show with 87 -year -old Frick.
In the fall of 2023, the museum will include approximately a dozen photographs of Hendricks in its own properties in an exhibition at its temporary home, Frick Madison. Hendricks created-sized photographs of Black friends, relatives and strangers he encountered on the street-paintings that have recently been widely recognized by museums and art markets but have helped set an uplifting tone. for figuration and opened the field for many younger artists.
“He painted in the old master tradition – the quality was great, their visual impact was there,” said Aimee Ng, a curator at Frick. “We want to foreground his paintings as we would any historical artist.”
Ng is organizing the show with Antwaun Sargent, a director at Gagosian, who will serve as the consulting curator and first proposed the idea.
“You have an artist who is very much in the tradition of the old masters, and largely disrespected in his time,” Sargent said. “He thinks about contemporary culture, but he also thinks deeply about our history, about artists like Whistler.”
Hendricks ’portraits of Black men and women hang throughout the museum. A canvas of his cousin in an Afro, “Lawdy Mama” (1969), for example, uses the gold leafing technique used in religious depictions, and is exemplified by a group of ancient Italian Renaissance panels in Frick’s collection.
The curators pointed to his limited palette painting “Steve” (1976), which noted that it was inspiring to Northern Renaissance artists such as Jan van Eyck, whose “The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos ”reside at Frick Madison’s Galleries in northern Europe.
“We don’t confine him – we put the work in the collection and say, he’s as valuable as anything on any other wall in the museum,” Sargent said. “I’m interested in what the reaction will be and what connection any of our visitors will make between Barkley’s work and the work of these European old masters.”
A catalog exploring Hendricks ’impact will include contributions by artists such as Derrick Adams, Nick Cave and Toyin Ojih Odutola, acknowledging Hendricks’ extensive influence.
“For the generation of portrait painters who followed him – Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, even Rashid Johnson – he was an important predecessor,” Sargent said. “I can even beat that, without Barkley’s work, you wouldn’t be able to get this moment in the figuration you see now.”
Hendricks ’interest in Black figuration in the 1960s and 1970s put him outside the mainstream of Black artists at the time, many busy with civil rights and the Black Power movement.
His work was largely unrecognized until recently, when the art world began to correct the cannon, and when Black portraiture became popular.
Although the moment seems overdue for Frick to focus on a contemporary Black artist, the museum – whose mandate is to collect and display European art from the 14th century to the 19th century – acknowledges that no there may not be some pushback from purists.
Frick is temporarily experimenting with more progressive programming. Its current project, “Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters,” features the work of four artists – Doron Langberg, Salman Toor, Jenna Gribbon, and Toyin Ojih Odutola – exploring issues of gender and bizarre identity that are common not included in the annals of early modern European art.
“There are traditionalists who don’t think there’s a place for artists of color because that’s not what Frick traditionally does, and there are those who are really dying for this kind of thing,” Ng said. “Our group of young people is bigger than ever. That tells me we’re heading in the right direction. I don’t want to alienate the people who have been with Frick for 40, 50, 60 years. I want to bridge the gap. historical collections and other art. “
