His time at last: the gay African-American painter Beauford Delaney spent his most productive years in Paris. Now, more than 50 years later, American art lovers are getting a look.
Until now, the gay African-American painter Beauford Delaney (1901-1979) may have been best known in art history circles as the less famous brother of realist painter Joseph Delaney--or, in gay history circles, as a father figure to James Baldwin.Now Delaney's own story comes to light thanks to "Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris," a dynamic retrospective of his painting on display through February 20 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The exhibit will also travel to the Knoxville [Tenn.] Museum of Art. (April 8-June 25), the Greenville County [S.C] Museum of Art (July 30-October 8), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (November 12-January 28, 2006).
A shy minister's son from Tennessee, Delaney made his way to New York's Greenwich Village just days after the stock market crash of 1929. In the years afterward he subsisted on the edge, but he stayed and studied. His work evolved along with the vanguards of the day. In the '30s Delaney concentrated on realism. But the '40s saw him reacting to modernism, with a new color palette and landscapes whose features gradually began to detach and float through the air like puzzle pieces, as in 1940's Greene Street. Much bigger changes were in store for Delaney. But first he had to get up the momentum to put away his first mecca, New York, and fix his gaze on Paris.
Delaney was beaten up more than once in New York for being gay and also for being black. "The Village was changing by the late '40s and '50s," says Patricia Sue Canterbury, the assistant curator of paintings at Minneapolis Institute of Arts who has spent nearly six years researching the painter's life. "Delaney was even referred to as the last of the bohemians. It was a tough way to be."
That toughness helped shape the cultural force we remember as James Baldwin. As a confused teenager in the early '40s, the young man came to Delaney for advice, says Canterbury. "He was sent there by someone who thought Delaney might provide a good example of an artist who had overcome a great many obstacles as a gay black man."
The bond between the older man and the younger lasted all Delaney's life. "Within 20 years," Canterbury says, "the tables were turning, and Baldwin starts looking after Beauford in his declining years, approaching the '70s. Some of the most moving portraits one can ever see by Delaney [including 1967's The Sage Black] happen to be of Baldwin."
Baldwin went to Paris, but Delaney saw the transatlantic trip as a fantasy out of his reach--until 1950, when he was invited to stay for a time at the Yaddo art colony in upstate New York. Meals and lodging were provided. For the first time in his life, Delaney wasn't scrambling to survive; he could concentrate on just painting.
"He was being nurtured on so many levels," says Canterbury. "I think that helped him gain the confidence to make the step. It's after Yaddo that he goes and gets his passport."
Delaney reached Paris in 1953. He was 52 years old. As he soaked up the excitement of European modernism, his style took off. Between 1954 and 1956, Delaney left figurative painting completely behind. "His New York works and his later Paris works were just worlds apart," says Canterbury. "I felt like I was dealing with two people."
Delaney clearly preferred being the man he could be in Paris. Although he never became really fluent in French, he never returned to New York. "He just sort of drops off the radar here," Canterbury says. Perhaps he also felt more comfortable exploring abstract expressionism in Paris; back home in America, Canterbury adds, black artists were calling abstraction "white boys' art."
Delaney lived long enough to be recognized by such bright lights of the next generation as Henry Louis Gates Jr., who describes in the catalog of the Minneapolis exhibit his 1971 pilgrimage to meet Delaney in Paris.
Now, thanks to an enterprising curator, Delaney's having his say in America as well.
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| Author: | Stockwell, Anne |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine) |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Feb 1, 2005 |
| Words: | 673 |
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