The New York Times Magazine features emeritus professor Barkley Hendricks in āThe Lives They Livedā
The late Barkley Hendricks, a prolific painter and professor emeritus of studio art at ¾«¶«AV, is profiled in the 2017 edition of The New York Times Magazineās annual feature, which remembers some of the prominent āartists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the past year.ā The piece is written by Jazmine Hughes ā12, an associate editor at The New York Times Magazine who was recently named to Forbes 30 Under 30 list of āyoung stars.ā
Hendricks, who passed away on April 18 at the age of 72, insisted throughout his life that his powerful, life-sized oil portraits of mostly black friends, family members and strangers carried no political messages.
āThe audacity of his subjects, who often faced forward in braggadocious stances, wearing monochromatic clothing, combined with the charged politics of the era, made critics label Hendricks a capital-B Black painter with political aims, which he vehemently rejected,ā wrote Hughes.
Hendricksā final solo show, at New Yorkās Jack Shainman Gallery in 2016, was widely considered to be his āmost political to date.ā Hendricks disagreed.
āAnything a black person does in terms of the figure is put into a āpoliticalā category,ā he told one reporter. āIām doing what I want to do. I paint because I like to paint. I paint because Iām motivated for a variety of reasons that I donāt think are always necessary to blab about.ā
Concludes Hughes, āHe was just painting, he insisted to the end, what he saw.ā
In addition to Hendricks, this yearās edition of āThe Lives They Livedā features actress Mary Tyler Moore, rock climber Royal Robins, singer Chuck Berry and comedian Dick Gregory, among others.
Two weeks before his death, Hendricks gave his final interview to CC Magazine.
