Barkley Hendricks
(1945-2017)
Portraits of Everything
“The idea of a still life—really, of stillness itself—sits uncomfortably with these works. In most cases, they are not arranged on tables, or cloths, or other structures of support in the manner we traditionally associate with still life. Rather, the objects themselves, their agentic heft of presence, their meticulous, mysterious shadows hold them in space. It is for this reason that these are more comfortably portraits than still lifes—they are not part of a presence that, if they are inanimate, conveys nonetheless a sense of identity.”
Dr. Kool, silver gelatin print, 7-1/8 x 4-1/8 inches.
Barkley Hendricks (1945-2017) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art from 1963 to 1967 and Yale University from 1970 to 1972. From the year he graduated college until his retirement in 2010, he taught drawing, oil and watercolor painting, and photography at Connecticut College (New London, CT). He is best known for his life-size portraits of Black Americans, executed in a marriage of realism and post-modernism.
Several years ago, a “picker” brought two photographs by Barkley Hendricks into my gallery. A “picker” is a person who buys and sells art—usually on a wholesale level—along with anything else of value and doesn’t have a gallery or shop. I suppose that TV show familiarized the public with the concept, although like everything else on television, the depiction is not always 100% authentic. Anyway, it was weird that this person found these somewhere in the Midwest and had paid next to nothing for them. He wanted to consign them to an auction I was directing of African American art. I must admit that I did not know (at the time) Barkley Hendricks did photography or if it had any value. Apparently, neither did anyone else, because they failed to sell for modest prices at the auction. As a matter of fact, I even put them in a later auction and lowered the expectation. Yet again, they failed to sell. I believe the estimate was around $1,000.
I thought they were cool. Maybe I should spell it “Kool” because one was a depiction of the subject of a famous painting he did, “Dr. Kool” (collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art). Anyway, I felt bad that I could not generate any interest, so I offered to buy them from the picker for what he wanted. He gratefully accepted. I hung them on the wall and thought that was that, but then about a year later people started asking me if I had any photos by Hendricks. Someone offered me $25,000 for Dr. Kool. What changed? Well, many things, including the awareness and desirability of the artist’s work and African American art in general—but specifically, it was the fact that the audience, always familiar with the portraits, discovered Hendricks did other things: he took photographs, he painted still life watercolors and oil landscapes (in tondo even!)—he also used x-rays in multi-media works.
Swann Auction Galleries sold a watercolor of magnolia blossoms in 2019 for $37,500. Apparently, when the artist made a trip to Durham, North Carolina, in 1975, he painted a series of these. He also took preliminary photographs for his creation of Take All the Time You Need (Adrienne Hawkins), another important large figurative painting (collection of the Nasher Museum) on that trip.
Jack Shainman Gallery, which has represented Hendricks’ work for many years, presented several exhibitions and made a series of books illustrating the diversity of the artist’s body of work, including BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS Works on Paper (there’s another for photography and another for landscapes, etc.)
I always find it curious when people envision artists waking up every day of their lives and doing the exact same thing. Aren’t they creative people by nature?
The work included in this auction, Banana Plant Leaf #2, is a very good painting, and Barkley Hendricks is a very important artist (and a talented watercolorist). Don’t let this be your Dr Kool event.
“Unless one was looking for Hendricks, they are not pieces that, at first glance, one would look at and say, That’s a Barkley Hendricks! And yet these could not be anything but Hendricks works. If their subject matter —watercolors of fruits and cultural icons, anemic writings, postcards and mixed media works on paper with esoteric symbols, handmade stamps and eclipses—is not what we initially think of as imprimatur, they are so very Hendricks that they draw us back into our understanding of the more familiar portrait work, clarifying his styles and themes, distilling his vision.”
Reference: Pedro, Laila. Barkley L. Hendricks: Works on Paper. Skira, 2020.