{"id":8200,"date":"2020-10-14T10:20:56","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T10:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=8200"},"modified":"2021-02-11T01:29:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T01:29:23","slug":"oil-on-the-water-light-reflections-on-baldwin-and-delaney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=8200","title":{"rendered":"Oil on the Water: Light Reflections on Baldwin and Delaney"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oil on the Water: <\/b>Light Reflections on Baldwin and Delaney<\/span><\/h3>\n
by D. Amari Jackson<\/pre>\n
\u201c<\/span>I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, \u2018Look<\/span><\/i>\u201d, recalled James Baldwin for <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> Paris Review<\/span><\/i>, in the spring of 1984. \u201c<\/span>I looked and all I saw was water.  And he said, \u2018Look again,\u2019 which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle.  It was a great revelation to me.  I can\u2019t explain it.  He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw.  Painters have often taught writers how to see.  And once you\u2019ve had that experience, you see differently<\/span><\/i>.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n
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James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney, Paris, circa 1960. The Estate of Beauford Delaney. Image from Knoxville Museum of Art website<\/p><\/div>\n
For  Baldwin, in many ways, Beauford Delaney was the<\/span> light. As a teenager<\/span> struggling with his impoverished circumstances and his own identity, the Harlem-born Baldwin showed up at the Greenwich Village studio of the nationally acclaimed painter on the recommendation of a schoolmate.<\/span> <\/span>Twenty-three years his senior, Delaney fast became a father figure for Baldwin, particularly given the established artist saw himself in the aspiring writer. <\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cBaldwin had a very repressive stepfather who beat him mercilessly, so James grew up never believing that he would be a literary genius, and then came Delaney,\u201d says<\/span> Sylvia Peters, chair of<\/span> the Delaney Project, the organization championing his art in Delaney\u2019s hometown of<\/span> Knoxville, Tennessee. The<\/span> retired school principal, activist, collector, and self-described Delaney-Baldwin \u201cjunkie\u201d once sat down with Baldwin after a 1984 book signing for an hourlong discussion on inspiring children.<\/span> <\/span>\u201cBeauford was a father figure and they loved each other,\u201d<\/span> explains Peters, noting \u201cthey were both gay men, but they were not involved, and I think that people always think they were.  But theirs was a very creative, artistic relationship.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n
The similarities were apparent. Both were soaring intellects with keen analytical minds and superior creative capabilities. Both were sons of ministers<\/span> raised in the church and struggled with their sexual identity.  Both were visionaries, so much so they could gaze into an oily puddle to see the world around them, for all its myriad colors and light, and in that timeless moment, the elder could convey the gift of sight.<\/span><\/p>\n
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Baldwin<\/a> by Khalif Thompson, 6ft x 6ft oil, handmade paper (abaca, Cotton, hemp), fabric, Gold leaf, construction paper on canvas. The Dorseys’ Black Art In America collection<\/p><\/div>\n
Delaney\u2019s near-instantaneous ability to see through Baldwin\u2019s insecurities and recognize his extraordinary intellect was based in the older man\u2019s capacity to see himself twenty years earlier, to see light emanating from darkness. In his 1985 introduction to <\/span>The Price of the Ticket<\/span><\/i>, Baldwin spoke to this unsettling scrutiny, recalling his first meeting with Delaney in the doorway of his Greene Street<\/span> studio:<\/span>  <\/span><\/p>\n
\u201c<\/span>I was terrified\u2026 A short, round brown man came to the door and looked at me. He had the most extraordinary eyes I\u2019d ever seen. When he had completed his instant X-ray of my brain, lungs, liver, heart, bowels, and spinal column\u2026 he smiled and said, \u2018Come in.’\u201d<\/span><\/i>   <\/span><\/p>\n
Those words would prompt a four-decade relationship between two uniquely gifted artists, one where each would inspire and even sustain the other. While fully acknowledging the two had a<\/span> \u201cgreat influence on each other\u201d given Baldwin\u2019s later influence on Delaney\u2019s social justice perspective, Peters clarifies that \u201cDelaney was the person that told James Baldwin how to see things differently.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n
With his own traumatic background, Delaney was well positioned to do so.<\/span>  The loss of two sisters at an early age, coupled with his identity struggles, was challenging enough for the growing teen. But, in 1919, two major events had an indelible impact on the reeling 18-year-old. In April, his father died suddenly from a heart attack. Four months later, his hometown erupted in<\/span> the Knoxville race riot of 1919 and, according to<\/span> biographer David Leeming\u2019s<\/span> Amazing Grace, <\/span><\/i>\u201cThe Delaneys had a terrible time getting home on the day of the riot, and young Beauford was particularly horrified by what he saw\u2026\u201d The trauma contributed to lifelong nightmares and reoccurring battles with mental health.  Years later, wrote Leeming, \u201cwhen in an acute paranoid attack, Beauford inexplicably threw himself onto the floor of a car I was driving and shouted, \u2018Get down, they\u2019re shooting from the roof!”        <\/span><\/p>\n
Despite dealing with his share of darkness, Delaney was a master of light.  As an artistic conduit, light flowed through him, through his unique \u201cX-ray\u201d eyes, through his floating, masterful hands, anointing every canvas with its simmering foundational presence in layered golden colors, in reddened rays of sun. Consistently, Delaney\u2019s paintings were characterized by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery as \u201cexpressionistic\u201d with<\/span> his abstractions having<\/span> \u201cclear ties to Monet\u2019s studies of light\u201d and \u201cconsisting of elaborate, fluid swirls of paint applied in luminous hues\u201d as \u201cpure and simplified expressions of light.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n
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“Shine The Light”<\/a> by Najee Dorsey<\/p><\/div>\n
Peters stresses how both men were \u201cvery keen observers of light, Beauford through his painting, and James through his writing.\u201d Each, she says, had a way of \u201clayering\u201d his work for increased impact, be it Baldwin\u2019s masterful employment of timeless literary themes or Delaney\u2019s rich, vibrant colors.<\/span>  \u201cBeauford\u2019s paintings look like they were made last week,\u201d notes Peters, \u201cnot 60 and 70 years ago. They\u2019re just brilliant, they\u2019re that vibrant. And I think that\u2019s where Baldwin got the notion of writing for all times.\u201d<\/span> <\/span>She points to how Delaney mixed his own colors in a special way to produce such an indelible effect under relatively crude circumstances.<\/span> <\/span>\u201cI\u2019ve never seen color like that,\u201d says Peters, insisting what Delaney did to raise the level of abstract art was \u201cotherworldly. It\u2019s like moving away from this planet and into the cosmos. I\u2019ve spent six hours in the Picasso Museum because I just thought Picasso was the greatest. But after looking at Beauford\u2019s painting\u2026\u201d   <\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cThis man was so far ahead of his time.<\/span>  <\/span>He knew how to layer the pigment on the canvas so that if you look up at a portrait from the right side, you see one view, from the other side we see another and, if you look straight on, yet another. It\u2019s simultaneity of time, it\u2019s like classic existence in space.\u201d  Peters cites how 15<\/span>th<\/span> century Florentine artist<\/span> Masaccio was acclaimed for his similar skill at producing such dimensionality in his early Renaissance works.<\/span> <\/span>\u201cSo you see three different images and it’s like telling a story, the beginning, the middle and end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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Scattered Light by Beauford Delaney, 1964. via Knoxville Museum of Art website.<\/p><\/div>\n
The middle of Delaney\u2019s own story was spent in Paris as he and Baldwin were part of a growing community of<\/span> African American expatriates and artists working in and around the city.  Despite being widely regarded, in the mid-20<\/span>th<\/span> century, as the<\/span> most popular Black artist living abroad,<\/span> Delaney\u2019s celebrated reputation and productivity did not attract financial success. Consistently, the end of his story was nothing to celebrate. Drinking heavily, suicidal, and plagued by<\/span> paranoia and depression, Delaney managed to labor through the 1970s with Baldwin\u2019s support before succumbing to his poor mental and physical health.<\/span> <\/span>He died in a Paris asylum on March 26, 1979.<\/span><\/p>\n
Ultimately, Delaney\u2019s impact on Baldwin is best captured by the writer himself.  In <\/span>The Price of the Ticket<\/span><\/i>, the iconic writer eulogized that  \u201c<\/span>Beauford was the first walking, living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognized as my Master and I as his Pupil,\u201d wrote<\/span><\/i> Baldwin.<\/span> \u201cHe became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion\u2026 I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken, but I never saw him bow<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Peters believes he never will, that Delaney\u2019s light, with time, will only grow brighter.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cLet me tell you something about Beauford,\u201d she confidently offers. \u201cI believe that Beauford, in the future, is going to be more prominent than Monet, Picasso and Rembrandt.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n
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