{"id":4141,"date":"2018-08-29T11:07:40","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T11:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=4141"},"modified":"2018-08-29T11:12:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T11:12:13","slug":"barkley-hendricks-philadelphias-native-son-leads-portraiture-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=4141","title":{"rendered":"Barkley Hendricks: Philadelphia\u2019s Native Son Leads Portraiture Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barkley Hendricks:<\/span><\/strong> Philadelphia\u2019s Native Son Leads Portraiture Movement<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
By Shantay Robinson <\/span><\/pre>\n
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\"Soul<\/a>
Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (NEW, Hardcover book) $39.95<\/p><\/div>\n
Barry Schwabsky of <\/span>The Nation<\/span><\/i> wrote, \u201cOnce upon a time it seemed obvious that the future of painting lay in abstraction and that representation was becoming a thing of the past. Today it\u2019s abstraction that has been eclipsed. And yet it would be misleading to say that representation, in the sense that was developed in the Renaissance and remained the standard for European painting until Modernism, has made a comeback.\u201d Portraiture has reemerged as a dominant art form in the early 21<\/span>st<\/span> century. Although photography eclipsed portraiture in the 19<\/span>th<\/span> century, artists today are interested in representation despite and perhaps due to the popularity of photography. <\/span><\/p>\n
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A generation of artists who were not present during the Renaissance have resurrected the portrait. Led by a fearless Barkley Hendricks, black artists of the early 21<\/span>st<\/span> century are making up for lost time. Many black portrait artists, while being enthralled by museum visits in their youth, couldn\u2019t help but notice the lack of black subjects at the museums. Because of lack of representation, there has been a shift in practice from conceptual art and abstraction to portraiture among the artistic elite. Artists like Kehinde Wiley<\/a>, Mickalene Thomas, Amy Sherald<\/a> and more have taken to inserting the black body into the most prestigious of Western art institutions. <\/span>Newer artists to the national stage like Alfred Conteh<\/a>, Gerald Lovell<\/a>, and Delita Martin<\/a> are also taking up Hendricks\u2019 lead.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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While the insertion of the black figure into Western culture has happened within the last few years, the movement\u2019s forefather started more than 40 years ago. When Barkley Hendricks toured Europe in the 1960s, he fell in love with old masters, van Dyck and Velazquez, but he didn\u2019t see black subjects in the museums he toured. He wanted to correct that. He emerged as an artist at a time when modern art was king and many deemed portraiture dead. Hendricks is quoted as saying to the <\/span>Brooklyn Rail<\/span><\/i> in 2016, \u201cI didn\u2019t give a fuck what was going on. There\u2019s nothing new out there\u2026I didn\u2019t care what was being done by other artists or what was happening around me. I was dealing with what I wanted to do.\u201d His attitude made its way onto the canvas, as he painted black subjects who also looked like they didn\u2019t give a fuck about what was going. During a time when civil rights for black people was just becoming law, black people had a right to be skeptical. And it showed. <\/span><\/p>\n
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