Beauford Delaney: Biography from Answers.com

painter

Personal Information

Born Beauford Delaney, December 30, 1901 in Knoxville, Tennessee; died on March 29, 1979 in Paris, France; son of John Samuel Delaney (a Methodist minister) and Delia Johnson Delaney.
Education: Informally enrolled at several art schools in Boston including the Copely Society, the South Boston School of Art, and the Lowell Institute.

Career

Painted his first commissioned work at the age of 14; received first prize in his first New York show at the Whitney Studio Gallery, 1929; first one-man show at the New York Public Library, 1930; first fully expressionistic show at New York's Artist's Gallery, 1948; moved to Paris, France, 1953; first Paris exhibitions, 1954; first Parisian solo show at the Galerie Paul Facchetti, 1961; major retrospective show at the American Cultural Center, 1969; last major show while living at the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1978.

Life's Work

Beauford Delaney, one of the foremost American expatriate painters of the twentieth century and friend to such prominent artistic figures as James Baldwin, Georgia O'Keefe, and Henry Miller, was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on December 30, 1901. He was the eighth of ten children in the family, though only four survived into adulthood. Delaney's mother Delia Johnson Delaney was born a slave in Richmond, Virginia in 1865. She was a talented quilt maker and took in laundry and cleaned houses for a living. Delaney's father John Samuel Delaney came from a sharecropping family and served as a Methodist preacher and barber. The family enjoyed life in Knoxville, but soon moved to Jefferson City where Delaney's father served as pastor to a poor and rural black community. Since the position came with no salary the whole family was involved in working to support themselves and the fledgling church. Despite the lack of free time Delaney's mother encouraged Beauford and his brother Joe to draw scenes from the family Bible. In 1915 the family moved back to Knoxville so that Delaney's father could take on the pastor's position at the church where he had earlier been assistant pastor. By this time only Beauford and his brother Joe were at home and soon after Joe was sent to a private school because he had behavioral problems and needed discipline.

If Joe was somewhat wild as a boy, Beauford was just the opposite. He was an excellent student and at the age of 14 got a job cleaning tables after school at the Vine Street Cafe and also worked shining shoes. His first commissioned painting was for his boss at the shoe shine place. Delaney was supposed to paint a seascape in oil though he had never seen the sea nor worked in oil before. The painting so impressed his first patron that he introduced Delaney to a local impressionist painter named Lloyd Branson. Branson, a white man who admired the Confederacy, recognized the talent of the 14-year-old artist and agreed to give him art lessons in exchange for Delaney serving as his assistant. Delaney learned to work in pastels, oils, and watercolors and also received encouragement and financial help from Branson.

The Delaneys' life was fairly tranquil at this time in Knoxville until April 30, 1919 when John suffered a heart attack and died. In addition to this personal tragedy for Beauford there was a race riot in the city that same year which spoiled a relatively progressive atmosphere between the races in Knoxville. Delaney had been increasingly curious about the outside world and these two events seemed to give him the impetuous to explore. In September of 1923, with the encouragement and financial help of Branson, Delaney departed for Boston to pursue his dream of becoming an artist.

Delaney arrived in Boston with a few letters of introduction and a small amount of money Branson had given him. One of the first families he called on was the white, liberal, quasi-aristocratic Bryants. Through the Bryants Delaney was introduced in salons all over the city to the most influential people of liberal Boston society. This group was known in the 1920s as the Boston Radicals and included Edna St. Vincent Millay and a young Countee Cullen.

Despite the rich intellectual life Delaney was absorbing, he found that he still needed money. He found a job at Western Union working the midnight shift as a janitor. He seemed to live several different lives--a faceless janitor, a quiet and polite observer of elite Boston society, and a third self which he had yet to come to terms with--his homosexuality. It was also as a young man in Boston that Delaney began to hear voices in his head, a condition which would plague him for the rest of his life. As a respite from his own inner turmoil he turned to art. He was enrolled informally in several art schools because he was not allowed to register as a regular student because of his race. He took classes at the Copely Society, the South Boston School of Art, and the Lowell Institute. He also copied works at the Massachusetts Normal Art School and at different Boston museums. By the spring of 1929 when he left Boston he was no longer a "self-taught" artist. He had a solid classical background with influences from impressionists such as Claude Monet and John Springer Sargent. In addition he was introduced to activist politics which were some of the most radical racial ideas of his time.

Delaney arrived in Harlem in November of 1929 at the end of its famed "Renaissance" period. Some of the greatest African American minds of the time were active in Harlem--Cullen, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey. Though the academic world of New York soared, the reality of arriving there knowing no one was somewhat more down to earth. On his first day in New York, Delaney was robbed of all his possessions and that night, while sleeping on a park bench, he had his shoes stolen. Through an artist contact he was able to get a job as a bellhop at the Grand Hotel and rent a small room. During his time off, he painted. He again gained entry into the elite class by painting portraits, though he also painted the people on the streets of Harlem. It was in these portraits for which he would receive no money that he began to experiment distorting faces and drawing more blurred images. It was this experimentation that led to paintings such as "Can Fire in the Park," which now hangs in the National Museum of American Art (NMAA). The NMAA Research Bulletin described the painting: "In its integration of brilliant color, bold patterning, rhythmic lines, and tactile surfaces, the work hovers between representation and abstraction."

Through his work in portraits, Delaney was invited to enter a show at the Whitney Studio Gallery, which he won. His work so impressed the owners, they hired him at the gallery. He then moved from Harlem to Greenwich Village. He followed his success at the Whitney with a one- man show at the New York Public Library and joined the Art Students' League, which included such influential artists as Don Freeman, Jackson Pollock, Charles Alston, and in November of 1930, his brother Joe. He and his brother differed in their approaches to art and life and rarely spoke about art though Joe did follow his brother to Greenwich Village in 1931. After his early success Delaney quit his job at the Whitney to devote himself to his art.

In the mid-thirties Delaney seemed to live separate lives. One life he lived with his African American artists and friends, and he lived the other with his white, bohemian, and largely homosexual friends. With his fellow black artists he was serious and committed as he shared the tribulations of being an artist of color in the midst of the Depression. With his white friends he could be openly gay and enjoyed their care-free outlook on life as this circle of friends often included young men from wealthy families who helped support him. His two worlds never interacted. Dante Pavone was one of Delaney's white Bohemian friends with whom he would have a relationship from 1936 to 1953. Pavone was one of the painter's main subjects of this time period. Though Delaney was in love with Pavone, the two never had a physical relationship.

After a financially difficult summer of 1938 Delaney had a major breakthrough in the fall. He had two one-man shows and was featured in Life Magazine. In 1941 Delaney made another artistic stride in a one-man show at the Vendome Gallery. These new paintings were more modern, designed not to depict the likeness of the subject but to produce a particular compositional effect. His work was favorably reviewed by The New York Times and Art Digest. The Vendome show also presented a painting of nude white women and another called "Dark Rapture" which featured a 16-year-old James Baldwin with whom Delaney would remain friends for the rest of his life. Delaney saw much of himself in the young Baldwin who was also the son of a preacher struggling to find his own sexual identity. Delaney introduced him to jazz and classical music, the arts, and the New York intellectual scene. Throughout the 1940s Delaney continued to battle psychological problems, suffered through grinding poverty, and in 1942 was the victim of a racist and homophobic gang and was badly beaten. Despite his physical and emotional difficulties, he continued to progress in his art moving fully into the modernist tradition. His 1945 "Portrait of James Baldwin," which the Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired in February of 1998, showed him moving more and more towards abstract expressionism. In 1945 Henry Miller published his essay "The Amazing and Invariable Beauford De Laney" and he became a Greenwich Village institution, albeit an eccentric one. In 1948 he had a solo exhibit at the Artists Gallery which was fully expressionist for which he was hailed by The New York Times and Art News. In the late forties and early fifties he had several one-man shows at the Roko Gallery, but in 1953 he had his final show in New York. His thoughts were turning to Paris, where all the great modernist painters worked. He made up his mind to visit the city and after a quick stay with his family in Knoxville, he embarked for Paris on August 28, 1953. He left his apartment and his studio with all his paintings intact believing he was only going to be gone for a short time, but he would never see New York again.

Delaney found that he enjoyed Paris, though he spoke almost no French. There was little obvious racism and he was able to meet like- minded Americans in the cafes to discuss art and society. He even met Baldwin again by chance and though he intended to return to New York, he settled in France more solidly. In many ways Baldwin mentored Delaney in Paris as he had mentored the young writer in New York introducing Delaney to friends and taking him to night clubs and gay bars. Delaney stayed in Paris through the winter of 1953 painting almost continuously (and almost totally in the abstract) to keep the voices in his head at bay. He survived on small donations from his friends back in the United States. He had his first exhibitions in the summer of 1954 at the Salon des Realites Nouvelles Musee d'Art Moderne and the Ninth Salon at the Musee des Beaux Arts. He continued to appear in exhibitions throughout the late fifties and though he would receive critical acclaim, he sold few paintings.

In the spring of 1955 Delaney showed his paintings in Madrid, Spain. In 1956 he appeared in a show of "Abstract American" artists which was exhibited in Paris and Iserholn, Germany. In May he had his first solo show in Europe. In 1961 Delaney had a major exhibition at the Galerie Paul Facchetti in Paris, though only two paintings sold. Personally this period of Delaney's life was full of turmoil. Though he appeared calm on the outside, his inner voices were tormenting him. After moving in with Baldwin in 1955 the two argued and Delaney moved out. The two quickly repaired the rift, and Delaney was sad and lonely whenever Baldwin was gone--which was quite often.

Delaney's mental and emotional problems became apparent during a trip to Greece in 1961. He began to hallucinate that people were trying to rob and murder him. On the boat from Italy to Greece he threw his overcoat which contained his wallet and passport over the side of the boat. He then jumped over the other side into the sea. He was soon discovered by a local fisherman cold and half-drowned. After attempting suicide in a hotel, he was put in a sanitarium. A friend brought him to a clinic where it was found that he had kidney and liver problems probably brought on by excessive drinking. Friends finally insisted that he see a psychiatrist who diagnosed acute paranoid delusions which were aggravated by his alcoholism. He checked into a clinic at Nogent where he spent his sixtieth birthday alone.

Delaney appeared to improve as he slowed his drinking and was put on medication to aid in quieting the voices. He moved to Rue Vercingetorix and began a fruitful part of his career. He was helped by his friend and patron Madame du Closel who also paid his rent from 1962 to 1975 with the occasional painting as compensation. Delaney was moved by Baldwin's descriptions of the civil rights battles in the United States and began a series of Rosa Parks paintings. In 1964 he held an exhibition in Copenhagen and in the fall at Farleigh Dickinson University. Delaney also had a one-man show of portraits and abstractions at the Galerie Lambert in Paris.

In the late sixties he balanced a growing notoriety and success with the struggle to keep his sanity. He had several shows in 1966 and 1967 including one at the American Embassy. The Embassy bought some of his paintings and hung them there. He also traveled to northern France, Venice, and Istanbul to be with Baldwin. In 1968 Delaney was awarded $5,000 by the National Council of the Arts in December. In March of 1969 he had a retrospective show at the American Cultural Center.

Through all of these professional high points and honors, Delaney suffered emotionally, especially when he drank. The murder of Martin Luther King Jr., sent him into a depression. During the Paris riots of 1968 he was wandering the streets dazed and disoriented. He was also having trouble with his memory. He gave much of his $5,000 grant to people who would come around him when he had money because he thought nothing of giving it all away. He made a short Christmas visit to Knoxville in 1969. His family was so distressed about his health that they urged him to stay, but he returned to France in January of 1970.

In the 1970s Delaney's mental condition became more unstable. He would forget or refuse to take his medication or start to drink again. He was unable to participate in a University of Tennessee exhibit that was created for him and his brother Joe. Ironically, as his health started to falter, his renown as a painter was growing. He had a painting at the Smithsonian Institute and was featured in several exhibitions as well as in Jet and Playboy magazines. In February of 1972 Delaney had a major show at the Speyer Gallery in Paris with tributes written by Henry Miller, James Jones, and Georgia O'Keefe. After undergoing a hernia operation and a short time of improvement, his health took a turn for the worse. Many of his friends thought he was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's disease. He was becoming more forgetful, careless, and sloppy in appearance and inviting homeless people into his apartment where they would eventually stay and abuse his real friends who would stop by.

In the spring of 1975 Delaney was found sick and passed out in the street. Baldwin had himself declared responsible for his old friend's welfare and soon thereafter Delaney was committed to the St. Anne's Hospital for the Insane. Baldwin tried to get Delaney's affairs in order, but when he went to the painter's apartment he found it cleaned out with two angry homeless men residing there with whom he got into a fist fight. While he lay in the hospital in Paris, Delaney had the most important exhibition of his career back in New York in April of 1978. The Exxon Corporation and the National Endowment for the Arts sponsored a show of his at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The show, which highlighted his Paris work, was well received. But seemingly as ever, professional success was overshadowed by personal tragedy as his health was becoming more and more fragile. By the time of the exhibition he was not able to recognize anyone and slipped in and out of consciousness. Beauford Delaney died on March 29, 1979.

Death did not stop the rising acknowledgment of Delaney's mastery. His work was still being exhibited in places such as the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in the late 1990s. In Jabari Asim's article on Delaney's biography in the Washington Post, the reviewer offers some viewpoints on the twentieth century master: "To James Baldwin he was 'a cross between Br'er Rabbit and Saint Francis of Assisi.' To Henry Miller he was 'the summum and optimum of all the solar energies and radiances combined.' To most scholars and followers of African American art, Beauford Delaney was one of the most gifted men ever to wield a brush."

Awards

Received a $5,000 grant from the National Council of the Arts, 1968.

Biography

Early life

Beauford Delaney was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, in 1901. Delaney’s parents were prominent and respected members of Knoxville's black community. His father Samuel was both a barber and a Methodist minister. His mother Delia was also prominent in the church, and earned a living taking in laundry and cleaning the houses of prosperous local whites. Delia, born into slavery and never able to read and write herself, transferred a sense of dignity and self-esteem to her children and preached to them about the injustices of racism and the value of education. Beauford was the eighth of ten children, only four of whom survived into adulthood. He summed up the reasons for this in a journal entry from 1961, saying “so much sickness came from improper places to live – long distances to walk to schools improperly heated… too much work at home – natural conditions common to the poor that take the bright flowers like terrible cold in nature…”^[1]

Beauford and his younger brother, Joseph, were both attracted to art from an early age. Some of their earliest drawings were copies of Sunday school cards and pictures from the family bible. ”Those early years which Beauford and I enjoyed together I am sure shaped the direction of our lives as artists. We were constantly doing something with our hands - modelling with the very red Tennessee clay, also copying pictures. One distinct difference in Beauford and myself was his multi-talents. Beauford could always strum on a ukulele and sing like mad and could mimic with the best. Beauford and I were complete opposites: me an introvert and Beauford the extrovert.”^[2]

When he was a teenager, he got a job as a "helper" at the Post Sign Company. However, he and his younger brother Joseph were drawing signs of their own. Then some of his work was noticed by Lloyd Branson, an elderly American Impressionist and Knoxville's best known artist. By the early 1920s, Delaney became the apprentice of Branson.^[3] With Branson’s encouragement, the 23-year-old Delaney migrated north to Boston to study art. With perseverance, he achieved the artist's education he desired - including informal studies at the Massachusetts Normal School, the South Boston School of Art and the Copley Society. He learned what he called the “essentials” of classical technique. It was also while in Boston that Delaney had his first “intimate experience” with a young man in the Public Gardens. Through letters of introduction from Knoxville, he also received what he referred to as a “crash course” in black activist politics and ideas; having associated socially during his years in Boston with some of the most sophisticated and radical African-Americans of the time, such as James Weldon Johnson, writer, diplomat and rights activist; William Monroe Trotter, founder of the National Equal Rights League; and Butler Wilson, Board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. By 1929, the essentials of his artistic education complete, Beauford decided to leave Boston and head for New York.

New York

His arrival in New York City at the time of the Harlem Renaissance was exciting. Harlem was then the centre of black cultural life in the United States. But it was also the time of the “Great Depression” and it was this that Beauford was confronted with on his arrival. ”Went to New York in 1929 from Boston all alone with very little money…this was the depression, and I soon discovered that most of these people were people out of work and just doing what I was doing – sitting and figuring out what to do for food and a place to sleep.”^[4]

Delaney felt an immediate affinity with this “multitude of people of all races – spending every night of their lives in parks and cafes” surviving on next to nothing. Their courage and shared camaraderie inspired him to feel that “somehow, someway there was something I could manage if only with some stronger force of will I could find the courage to surmount the terror and fear of this immense city and accept everything insofar as possible with some calm and determination”.

Members of this disenfranchised community became the subjects of many of Delaney’s greatest New York period paintings. In New York “he painted colourful, engaging canvasses that captured scenes of the urban landscape…his works from that period express, in an American Modernist vein, not only the character of the city, but also his personal vision of equality, love, and respect among all people”.^[5]

One of Delaney’s works from this period, Can Fire in the Park (oil on canvas, 1946), where a group of men huddle together for warmth and companionship around an open fire, is described by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as a “disturbingly contemporary vignette [which] conveys a legacy of deprivation linked not only to the Depression years after 1929 but also to the longstanding disenfranchisement of black Americans, portrayed here as social outcasts… Despite its sober subject, the scene crackles with energy, the culmination of Delaney’s sharp pure colors, thickly applied paints, and taught, schematic patterning. Abandoning the precise realism of his early academic training, Delaney developed a lyrically expressive style that drew upon his love of musical rhythms and his improvisational use of color.” Works such as Can Fire in the Park “hover between representation and abstraction as that style evolved during the 1940s.”

Delaney would eventually obtain work as a bellhop, and later as a telephone operator, doorman, caretaker, and janitor. He also managed to find “little corners in the world of the Great Depression that would or could be receptive to his work.”^[6]

In time, Delaney would establish himself as a well known part of the bohemianism of the art scene of the period. His friends included the “poet laureate” of the period, Countee Cullen, and he would also become the “spiritual father” to the young writer James Baldwin, and friends with artist Georgia O’Keeffe, writer Henry Miller and many others.

Despite the friendships and successes of this period, he remained a rather isolated individual. David Leeming, in his 1998 biography Amazing Grace: a life of Beauford Delaney, presents Delaney as having led a very “compartmentalized” life in New York.

In Greenwich Village, where his studio was, Delaney became part of a gay bohemian circle of mainly white friends; but he was furtive and rarely comfortable with his sexuality.

When he traveled to Harlem to visit his African-American friends and colleagues, Delaney made efforts to ensure that they knew little of his other social life in Greenwich Village. He feared that many of his Harlem friends would be uncomfortable or repelled by his homosexuality.

He had ‘a third life’ centered around questions concerning the aesthetics and development of modernism in Europe and the United States; primarily influenced by the ideas of his friends the photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the cubist artist Stuart Davis (painter), and the paintings of the European modernists and their predecessors like Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh.

The pressures of being “black and gay in a racist and homophobic society” would have been difficult enough – but Delaney’s own Christian upbringing and ‘disapproval’ of homosexuality, the presence of a family member (his artist brother Joseph) in the New York art scene and the “macho abstract expressionists emerging in lower Manhattan’s art scene” added to this pressure. So he “remained rather isolated as an artist even as he worked in a center of major artistic ferment… A deeply introverted and private person, Delaney formed no lasting romantic relationships.”^[7]

While he worked to incorporate African-American influences, such as the “Negro” idiom of jazz, into his own artwork, he often preferred to visit one of the clubs when he was in Harlem rather than join in the serious socio-political discussions or “Negro art” questions that were taking place at the 306 Group or the Harlem Artists Guild. Though he resisted thinking of himself as a Negro artist, Beauford had tremendous pride in black achievement. He was also pleased to participate in a number of black artists exhibitions with fellow artists like Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Selma Burke, Richmond Barthe, Norman Lewis and his brother Joseph Delaney.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum notes that "neither early success nor gracious spirit spared Delaney from the obscurity and poverty" that plagued most of his adult life. Brooks Atkinson wrote in his 1951 book Once Around the Sun, "No one knows exactly how Beauford lives. Pegging away at a style of painting that few people understand or appreciate, he has disciplined himself, not only physically but spiritually, to live with a kind of personal magnetism in a barren world."

Delaney’s paintings seem to say, "I may be suffering, but what an experience this is". Delaney’s work "is never depressing, though Beauford was often depressed; he could say yes to life in spite of the fact that life was kicking him in the ass."^[8]

Paris

In 1953, at the age of 52, and just as the centre of the art world was shifting to New York, Delaney left New York for Paris. Europe had already attracted many other African-American artists and writers who had found a greater sense of freedom there. Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Chester Himes, Ralph Ellison, William Gardner Smith and Richard Gibson had all preceded him in journeying to Europe. In his journal, Richard Wright described Paris as "a place where one could claim one's soul."

Europe would be Delaney’s home for the remainder of his life. About his new life and possibilities, Beauford entreated himself to "Keep the faith and trust in so far as possible. Love humility and don’t mind the insinuations that cause sorrow…and loneliness and limitations. We learn self-reliance and to hear the voice of God, too…and how to…not break but bend gently. Learning to love is learning to suffer deeply and with quietness."^[9]

His years in Paris would lead to a dramatic stylistic shift from the "figurative compositions of New York life to abstract expressionist studies of color and light."^[5]

“Delaney's relationship with abstraction predated the notorious Abstract Expressionist movement, positioning him as a forerunner of one of the most important ideological and stylistic developments in twentieth-century American art. Although he chose not to identify himself with the movement, as the Abstract Expressionists began to gain notoriety in the late 1940s, Delaney's abstract work increasingly gained attention.”^[10]

Though abstract expressionist work predominated during this period, Delaney still produced figurative compositions. His portrait of James Baldwin (1963, pastel on paper) is described by the US National Portrait Gallery as “heated and confrontational, its harsh colors roughly applied” and glowing with “the vibrant, Van Gogh-inspired yellow the artist often used after he moved to Paris." The portrait “is both a likeness based on memory and a study in light.”

Mental deterioration

By 1961, heavy drinking had begun to impair Delaney's often fragile mental and physical health. (Heartney 1994) Periods of lucidity were interrupted by days and sometimes weeks of madness.^[11] This pattern would continue for the remainder of his life.

Continued poverty, hunger and alcohol abuse fueled his deterioration. ”He has been starving and working all of his life – in Tennessee, in Boston, in New York, and now in Paris. He has been menaced more than any other man I know by his social circumstances and also by all the emotional and psychological stratagems he has been forced to use to survive; and, more than any other man I know, he has transcended both the inner and outer darkness.”^[12]

He returned briefly to the United States in 1969, to see his family, dogged by mental illness. He believed malicious people would come to him at night “and speak unpleasant and vulgar language and threaten malicious treatment…interfering with my health and urgent work…the constant, continuous creation.”^[13]

He returned to his work in Paris in January 1970. In the early 1970s it became clear that he could no longer cope with daily life. In the autumn of 1973 his friend, Charley Boggs, wrote to James Baldwin, “Our blessed Beauford is rapidly losing mental control.” His friends tried to care for him but, in 1975, he was hospitalized and then committed to St Anne’s Hospital for the Insane. Beauford Delaney died in Paris, at St Anne’s, on March 25, 1979.

In his Introduction to the Exhibition of Beauford Delaney opening December 4, 1964 at the Gallery Lambert, James Baldwin wrote, “the darkness of Beauford's beginnings, in Tennessee, many years ago, was a black-blue midnight indeed, opaque and full of sorrow. And I do not know, nor will any of us ever really know, what kind of strength it was that enabled him to make so dogged and splendid a journey." He was a wonderful man but lost himself in the frustration.

Since his death

Following his death, he was praised as a great and neglected painter but, with a few notable exceptions, the neglect continued.

A retrospective of his work at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a year before his death, did little to revive interest in his work. It was not until the 1988 exhibition Beauford Delaney: From Tennessee to Paris, curated by the French art dealer Philippe Briet, at the Philippe Briet Gallery, that Delaney's work was again exhibited in New York, followed by two retrospectives in the gallery: "Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective [50 Years of Light]" in 1991, and "Beauford Delaney: The New York Years [1929-1953]" in 1994.

"Whatever Happened to Beauford Delaney?," an article by Eleanor Heartney appeared in Art in America in response to the 1994 exhibition asking why this once well regarded "artist's artist" was now virtually unknown to the American art public? “What happened? Is this another case of an over-inflated reputation returning to its true level? Or was Delaney undone by changing fashions which rendered his work unpalatable to succeeding generations? Why did Beauford Delaney so completely disappear from American art history?” The author believed that Delaney's disappearance from the consciousness of the New York art world was linked to “his move to Paris at a crucial moment in the consolidation of New York's position as the world's cultural capital and his work's irrelevance to the history of American art as it was being written by critics” at the time. The article concludes, “Today [1994] as those histories unravel and are replaced by narratives with a more varied and colorful weave, artists like Delaney can be seen in a new light.”^[14]

In 1985 James Baldwin described the impact of Delaney on his life, saying he was "the first living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognised as my Master and I as his Pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow."^[15] He further wrote, "Perhaps I should not say, flatly, what I believe – that he is a great painter – among the very greatest; but I do know that great art can only be created out of love, and that no greater lover has ever held a brush."

Delaney’s work has now been exhibited by, among others, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Harvard University Art Museums, Art Institute of Chicago, Knoxville Museum of Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Newark Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

External links

Works:

Can Fire in the Park, oil on canvas, 1946
Jazz Quartet, oil on canvas, 1946
Self Portrait, Yaddo, 1950
Untitled, gouache on paper, 1960
James Baldwin, pastel on paper, 1963
Selected Paintings, Beauford Delaney: from New York to Paris, Exhibition Website

Notes

^ Journal of Beauford Delaney, quoted in Leeming 1998:13.
^ Joseph Delaney, [1] 1978.
^ Neely, Jack. Knoxville's Secret History. Scruffy City Publishing, 1995.
^ Journal of Beauford Delaney, quoted in Leeming 1998:32.
^ ^a ^b Canterbury 2004.
^ Leeming 1998:36.
^ Neuman 2005.
^ Biographer, David Leeming, quoted in, Neely 1997.
^ Journal of Beauford Delaney, quoted in Leeming 1998:127.
^ Adrienne Childs, University of Maryland.
^ Leeming 1998.
^ James Baldwin, December 4, 1963.
^ Journal of Beauford Delaney.
^ Heartney 1994.
^ James Baldwin, from The Price of the Ticket, 1985.

References

Baldwin, James 1964 Introduction to the Exhibition of Beauford Delaney opening December 4, at the Gallery Lambert, reprinted in Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective, Studio Museum of Harlem, 1978
Canterbury, Patricia Sue 2004 Beauford Delaney: from New York to Paris, University of Washington Press
Delaney, Joseph 1978 Beauford Delaney, My Brother, from Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective, Studio Museum of Harlem, 1978
Heartney, Eleanor 1994 Whatever happened to Beauford Delaney? - Philippe Briet Gallery, New York, New York, Art in America
Leeming, David 1998 Amazing Grace: a life of Beauford Delaney, Oxford University Press
Miller, Henry1945 The Amazing and Invariable Beauford Delaney, reprinted in Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective, Studio Museum of Harlem, 1978
Neely, Jack 1995 No Greater Lover, Metropulse, Volume 5, Number 8
Neely, Jack 1997 A Tale of Two Brothers, Metropulse, Volume 7, Number 13, April 3-10
Neumann, Caryn E. 2005 An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture
Smithsonian American Art Museum Biography of Beauford Delaney

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Beauford Delaney

Born	December 30, 1901(1901-12-30) Knoxville, Tennessee
Died	March 25, 1979 (aged 77) Paris
Nationality	American
Field	Painting

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Beauford Delaney

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