Barkley L. Hendricks, Sweet Thang (Lynn Jenkins), 1975–1976
Oil on linen canvas
52 1/2 x 52 3/4 inches
Courtesy of the artist.
Opening reception: Friday, January 29, 2010, 7:00–10:00 p.m. On view: January 30 – April 18, 2010
Best known for his life-sized portraits of ordinary people living in his urban northeast community of Connecticut, Barkley L. Hendricks’s bold portrayal of his subject’s attitude and style elevates the common man and woman to celebrity status. Organized by Trevor Schoonmaker, curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool is the first painting retrospective of the American artist, and includes over 50 works from 1964 to the present. For CAMH’s presentation, a series of photographic works by the artist from a correlated exhibition, Walkin' with Walker: Narrative Photography of Barkley L. Hendricks, will be included. Spanning four decades of work, Walkin’ with Walker was organized by The African American Museum in Philadelphia and co-curated by Barkley L. Hendricks and Richard J. Watson, curator of exhibitions.
Hendricks’s stylistic renderings connect the art movements of American realism and post-modernism while touching upon many of the art movements of the 1960s and 70s—pop art, photorealism, minimalism, even black aesthetic nationalism. His work occupies a space somewhere between portraitists Chuck Close and Alex Katz and pioneering black conceptualists David Hammons and Adrian Piper. Cool, empowering and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks's artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today's younger generation of artists.
“Hendricks is a sophisticated practitioner who combines impressive references, forms, and techniques in renderings that seem to cut to the core, to reveal his subjects as vulnerable individuals even as they self-consciously pose in displays of hipness,” says Janet Koplos (as reviewed in Art in America, November 2008).
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is the final touring venue for Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool after stops in New York at the Studio Museum in Harlem; California at the Santa Monica Museum of Art; and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
Barkley L. Hendricks was born in Philadelphia in 1945. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts from Yale University. He is a professor of art at Connecticut College in New London, where he has been teaching since 1972.
Hendricks’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and Europe, and include venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; and Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
The exhibition and related programs are sponsored in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.; National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art; Mary Duke Biddle Foundation; and North Carolina Arts Council with funding from the State of North Carolina.
This documentary was prepared for Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool, organized by Trevor Schoonmaker, curator of
contemporary art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Odili Donald Odita Crash, 2008
Acrylic on canvas
Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY
Opening reception: Thursday, February 11, 2010 On view: February 12 – May 02, 2010
Widely recognized for his pulsating hues and meticulously painted wall and canvas works, Odili Donald Odita creates paintings that often function as narratives. Although devoid of any discernable figurative marks, the works tell of the nomadic journey of our ever-shifting global society: shapes and intersecting lines become metaphors for time and place while color evokes mood and impulse. Perspectives 169: Odili Donald Odita features a site-specific environment created from a new body of paintings that echo the unique architectural features of the Museum’s lower gallery space, The Zilkha Gallery. The result is a familiar, yet fantastical immersive landscape. While Odita’s wall works often find corollary references to those of Sol LeWitt, his angular pulsating color fields immediately hint at the artist’s cultural roots—he was born in Enugu, Nigeria and raised in Columbus, Ohio. Odita’s abstract paintings suggest the fractal nature of his own experience as an African émigré and the interweaving of his past and present selves.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Odili Donald Odita received a BFA (with distinction) in painting from The Ohio State University and an MFA from Vermont’s Bennington College in 1990. He has been included in many national and international group exhibitions including La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2007); DAK’ART 2004, Dakar, Senegal (2004); A Fiction Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2003); Black President The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the New Museum, NY (2003); and 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa (1997). His solo exhibitions and projects include such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA (2008); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY (2007); Haunch of Venison (Galerie Judin Belot), Zürich, Switzerland (2004); and the Matrix Art Project, Brussels, Belgium (2003) among many others. Odita is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, NY and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa. He is currently Associate Professor of Painting at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
