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BEAUFORD DELANEY: SO SPLENDID A JOURNEY,

the first full-length documentary about Beauford.


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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Bob Tomlinson on Beauford's Painting at the Centre Pompidou

Bob Tomlinson is an artist, a retired French professor, and a long-time Paris resident who made the City of Light his home “by accident”! He lived in Paris during the 1968 uprising, moved away for several years, and then came back and established permanent residency in the city.

Bob Tomlinson and Anna Comnena
Image courtesy of Bob Tomlinson

Bob shares a few personal remarks on the untitled painting by Beauford in the exhibition Modernités Plurielles at the Centre Pompidou.

************

Untitled
(1957) Oil on canvas
© Discover Paris!
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

For me, Beauford’s most productive period evokes with a certain nostalgia a period of my life in Paris — the 60s, when I was a young painter and he had attained his artistic maturity. So I was very interested to see this unique and rarely exhibited work from the Centre Pompidou’s permanent collection.

The exhibit aspires to be a survey of global modernism and as such it is somewhat overwhelming. (Admittedly, I have a limited tolerance for museums; after an hour my retinas overload and I can no longer see.) For anyone interested in African-American artists in the City of Light, the undoubted highlights of the show are the three appearances of Josephine Baker (a photo, a film of her dancing, a wire sculpture by Alexander Calder) and, of course, the painting by Beauford.

Unfortunately, whether intentional or not, the exhibition continues the neglect and marginalization from which Beauford suffered during his lifetime. As far as I could tell, he does not figure in the catalog and one finds his painting almost by accident in a small transverse corridor two-thirds of the way through the vast exhibit.

Done a few years after his arrival in Paris, this 1957 painting is a striking example of Beauford’s personal appropriation of an abstract expressionist aesthetic. Usually Beauford’s works in this vein are wholly non-representational. However, this one is different. The thick paint surface is agitated by an abstract textual and coloristic whirlwind, but out of this tangle of yellows and reds a form resembling that of a fierce lion emerges, suggested by paint strokes of an intense blue, although other purely abstract splashes of the same blue scattered on the background render the interpretation ambiguous.

The tension between the abstract and the figurative in Beauford’s paintings (I’m thinking of paintings like his 1965 portrait of James Baldwin, which perhaps unconsciously inspired my own 2013 version) is not restricted to African-American artists, but they (we) feel it with a particular acuteness — the interest in the formal qualities of the work pitched against the need to express the heavy burden of history in a more figurative narrative form.

Portrait of James Baldwin
(1965) Oil on canvas
Private collection
Image courtesy of Levis Fine Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

James Baldwin
(2013) Bob Tomlinson
Image courtesy of the artist

Beauford bridges this gap in the ambiguously abstract Pompidou painting by his imagery and personal use of color, as he does in his portraits, which despite their figurative content utilize the same techniques. For him, his favorite color yellow had complex spiritual and emotional meanings, from the unsettling lime-yellow background of Baldwin’s portrait to the vibrant yellows that dominate the other primaries, red and blue, in the Pompidou painting. All this intense personal energy contrasts with the gentle, contemplative soul whom I knew in the cafés of Saint Germain and Montparnasse.

The disjunction between the surface personality of artists and their work is not uncommon. I consider myself somewhat laid back, and I think I’m often perceived as such, yet I’ve been described as “a serene New Yorker who paints troubled pictures.” Whether he is in an abstract or figurative mode, one of the things I admire most about Beauford is his fidelity to a private, deeply felt emotion that may not be apparent on the outside, a quality lacking in some other works of the exhibition that seem dictated by an impersonal artistic doctrine rather than any inner truth.

Having said that, there are many interesting things to see: for example a section of contemporary African artists and Larry Rivers' reworking of Manet’s Olympia in terms of American race relations. The show is on until January 2015, so don’t miss it!

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Beauford's Art: The Tricoire Collection - Part 2

Robert Tricoire's brother, Jacques Tricoire, is also enamored of Beauford's work and owns original Delaney paintings.

The painting shown below is one of them. It is utterly fascinating to me because it is the only one I have ever seen by Beauford that is predominantly white!

The story behind the painting tells all:

Jean-Claude Killy
(1962) Gouache on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

In 1962, alpine skier Jean-Claude Killy* was slated to compete in the World Cup Championship in Chamonix, France. Only a couple of weeks prior to this competition, Killy broke his leg in an attempt to qualify for a downhill competition in Italy and was unable to compete for the World Cup. This is what inspired Beauford to paint Jean-Claude Killy.

Jean-Claude Killy (detail)
(1962) Gouache on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Jean-Claude Killy (signature)
(1962) Gouache on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

We can presume that the white in this painting represents snow and the blue-brown arcs that cross the painting represent ski tracks. Splotches and specks of blue add the "chill factor" of winter.

*Killy would go on to win several gold medals at the World Championship competition in Portillo, Chile in 1968 and at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.


Saturday, January 11, 2014

Beauford's Art: The Tricoire Collection - Part 1

Robert Tricoire has been gracious enough to share information and anecdotes about Beauford's Paris years and he has also allowed me to view his wonderful collection of Delaney paintings.

He commissioned one of them,

Portrait of Robert Tricoire
(1969) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image © Discover Paris!

purchased others,

Untitled
(1963) Aquarelle on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image © Discover Paris!

and received others as gifts from Beauford.

Les Embruns
(1963) Aquarelle on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image © Discover Paris!

Robert's brother owns paintings by Beauford as well.

Next week, I'll share an image of one of these works that completely astonished me!

Saturday, January 4, 2014

A New Year for Les Amis de Beauford Delaney

Happy New Year everyone!

It's hard to believe that the Les Amis blog has been in existence for just over four years! I have loved every minute of the effort that it has taken to keep Beauford's memory alive and to share his artistic gift with the world. 2013 was particularly special in this regard due to the large number of paintings that Beauford's estate has recovered and the exposition at Levis Fine Art that showcased many of them last May / June.

Untitled: Abstract in Red, Green, Ochre and Black
(1962) Gouache on wove paper
Signed and dated lower right, Paris
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image supplied by Levis Fine Art Gallery*

This year, Les Amis hopes to accomplish something that will preserve Beauford's memory in a different way. The organization continues to pursue the possibility of having a Beauford Delaney commemorative plaque installed in Beauford's beloved Montparnasse.

We were engaged in talks with the Hôtel Lenox (formerly the Hôtel des Ecoles) about this last summer, but the owner of the building eventually declined to accept our proposal. Happily, the owner of the Hôtel Odessa, where Beauford spent several of his first days in Paris, has agreed to have the plaque installed there. We must now receive the approval of the City of Paris before anything further can be done. I will certainly keep you posted as things progress!

Hotel d'Odessa
© Discover Paris!

I have also had the pleasure of meeting Paris residents who knew Beauford personally and who have graciously taken the time to talk with me or write to me about their experiences with him and to show me paintings that he gave them. I plan to bring you as many of these stories as I receive permission to share.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the faithful followers of this blog for your support and encouragement. I am looking forward to sharing new discoveries with you in 2014!

Beauford's Paint Box
© Discover Paris!