Birth of the Cool

Barkley L. Hendricks, Slick (Self- Portrait), 1 9 7 7 . Oil, acrylic, an d m ag n a o n linen canvas, 67 x 4 8 1/ 2 in. Chrysler Mu seu m of Art , Norfolk, VA. Gift of t h e Am er i can Acad em y an d Institute o f t h e Art s an d Letters, N e w York, Childe Hassam Purchase Funds. 1 6 «I U k a Journal of Contemporary African Art BIRTH OF THE COOL Trevor Schoonmaker E ntering the home of Barkley L. Hendricks is a transporting, kaleidoscopic visual experience . Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, the house is covered with a barely imaginable assortment of objects. Hendricks's own oil paintings, portraits, landscapes, still lifes, watercolors, photographs, assemblage sculptures, and pencil and black-light drawings live, in true democratic fashion, side by side with mass-produced odds and ends that overlap , touch, balance, and teeter. There are women's heels (lots of them), wigs, fake fur, feathered carnival masks, religious icons, magazine covers, exhibition posters, musical instruments, stacks of vinyl records and CDs, books, postcards, sculptures , and generally anything that has caught Hendricks's eye over the years. An unfinished selfportrait head with a gold-leaf background sits by a blue Smurf and a high-heeled shoe with a string of beads dangling from it. A Xena the Warrior Princess action figure is pinned to the wall next to taped-up black and white images of Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and the famous 1969 Marsha Hunt Vogue cover photo.1 By the front door are rows of shiny gold, silver, or beaded hats (ranging from ball caps to pith helmets), piles of sunglasses, wind chimes, license plates, a green and white 1970s environmental American flag, JFK memorabilia, Virginia Slims life-sized cardboard cutouts of women selling the sexiness of smoking, Courvoisier liquor store pinups, and an old Frankenstein movie poster. You get the idea. No surface is left uncovered. The entire house is Hendricks's sprawling studio, a living installation, with objects of inspiration piled high at every turn. These items serve multiple functions. They are fashion accessories for portraits , ready-made still lifes for paintings, materials for assemblage works, visceral stimulation, and material reminders of our cultural history. It is sensory overload, a visual feast, and a passageway into the mind of the artist. This is what I encountered when I first met Hendricks at his home in early spring of 2000. It was one of those moments that is immeasurably memorable in the way that one is instantly transported and completely immersed in another environment , much like my experience of stepping off a plane into the swirling energy of Lagos, Nigeria while in college. Having never met or spoken to Hendricks, I had called him to see if he might be interested in being part of an exhibition I was organizing that summer at a Chelsea gallery where I worked. At the time he was as surprised that I knew something about his work as I was that he invited me out to visit him in Connecticut. In our initial phone conversation, we made a connection over our mutual admiration for the late Nigerian Afrobeat musician and political activist Fela Kuti.2 It occurred to me then that Hendricks and Fela have some strong commonalities. They were both incredible talents who, since their prime in the 1970s, had been grossly overlooked by the mainstream in the United States. They were staunchly independent, rugged individualists who followed their respective visions to create innovative new artistic expressions, despite a lack of commercial success. They both called attention to and even championed people in society who had been IMka - 17 Fela: Amen, Amen, Amen (detail), 2 0 0 2 . Oil an d var iegat ed leaf o n canvas, w o o d en f r am e, ar m at ur e, 6 6 3/ 4 x 4 6 3/ 4 in. Im ag e court esy of t h e artist. Ph ot o by Pet er Paul Geof f r ion. Part of Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool, Nasher Mu seu m of Ar...