It has been two weeks already since Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door opened at the Knoxville Museum of Art, part of a celebration of native son Beauford Delaney. I have been to the exhibit three times and still I feel like I haven’t seen it. I’ve looked but i haven’t seen.
Inevitably my eyes focus on a few paintings, the same few paintings that struck me initially that first viewing, the evening of the VIP preview reception. Of course I was unable to focus amidst the crowds and general hubbub. There were over 100 people in the rooms, and I would dash into one of the exhibition rooms, become overwhelmed by the energy in the paintings and drift back out to the reception, my nerves already tingling from the melee. And melee is the apt term here: The art vibrated at its own frequency, and usually I find the energy of a social setting exhausting in its own flow, but this night the energy of cocktail hour conversation seemed placid next to the vibration of the art, and what felt like almost clashing energies where art met social scene in the galleries. But perhaps I was simply too wired to my social self, and my quiet side needed to take in these paintings in peace. And, rare for me, I usually want at least a small opportunity to take in the works before listening to a curatorial discussion, I wished for some kind of talk about the works, something to focus my scattered attention. I find it overwhelming, and I struggle with my inability to absorb, my inability to focus or to articulate, although images of the art continue still to drift through my sleeping and waking mind.
I met the charming and fascinating Dr. Monique Y Wells, whose blog Les Amis de Beauford Delaney, I have since begun to read. Therein lies more information about Delaney and the exhibit and events in Knoxville. I actually did not speak to her as much as I would have liked. In my normal fashion, I flit at parties and am not good at striking up conversations with new people. I do occasionally regret this, my lack of small talk, that on-spark that might lead to further things. Instead I listen, and I flitter about. I dance around, occasionally looking for a place to land and what is, for me, the repose of a deeper conversation, but more often carried around on the energy of the evening. And as friends ask me, “did you meet X?” I sometimes regret my skittishness, my introspection combined with this restless social instinct and failure to connect on a broader scale, but I also realize that the key to this is something I consider essential to myself, and so I am content.
I returned to the exhibit two days later for a brief visit with the paintings. I had hoped to spend more time, but I found myself overwhelmed and unable to focus for more than a short period. I do wonder about that sometimes, my inability to spend time in museums, my short attention span and inability to focus, to absorb, to transform my thoughts and reactions into a coherent flow of words. Or perhaps I want to absorb too much, to crawl inside the painting and find my way out again, and each such experience drains me and I retreat. This act of articulation remains a problem. In fact it seems I look at art, perhaps in all its forms, music, painting, writing, in much the same way I go through parties. I flit and alight to stay and absorb something. I miss much, but occasionally I see something.
Of course we are all that way. What we see isn’t really so much about where we are or even what we are looking at, but about us, about how openly we are able to engage, and then about our own personal histories with all their biases and vulnerabilities. What art does of course, is strip all that away and cut to something deeply essential beneath the layers we have padded onto our souls over the course of our lives. It doesn’t really matter what the art is — it is the way it strips us bare and brings us to a new viewing and understanding of ourselves and the world.
In fact I was having a conversation with a fascinating woman about just that, about the power of art, and about how sometimes we do not really want to be cut and bleeding, our hearts laid bare, we just want to look. And this is true about painting but also about words, and music, they all tap into some essential melody of life. Fitting I think for an exhibit about painting, but also about words, about Delaney and Baldwin, in an exhibit that captures the way painting itself has its own rhythm and melody, like writing, and music. Fitting I think also because I was speaking with Carole Weinstein, sister-in-law of the late James Baldwin, although our conversation was cut short as others sought her out and I drifted away.
When I was talking to Carol she was sitting in front of the painting shown above, Dark Rapture (James Baldwin) 1941. One of the paintings that drew me, even though I struggled against its pull as it was such a bright beacon in the room simultaneously deep and dark and filled with light — the depths of human emotions and potential captured in a painting. Not the only one, of course, but still. I was held. There is so much in this painting, much beyond the obvious, the glowing naked boy. Baldwin was still a teenager, Delaney was in his 30s. This was early in a lifelong friendship. Was Delaney “in love” with Baldwin? Perhaps. That sense of potential, of eros, of both the sexual and the romantic is there, the way the world glows and simultaneously retreats back, the way the body of the boy floats above the surface of the painting, a body in all its complex erotic potential. But being in love is as much about the self as it is about the person one loves, perhaps more so. What I find fascinating about this painting is that it is both about the yearning and objectifying of desire, but also about moving beyond that, about coming to a somehow greater communion of two minds, a conversation that blurs the understanding of self and other, making each better at seeing themselves. This painting comes from an awareness far beyond that first flush of love. Both Delaney and Baldwin, at least the young Baldwin, struggled with their sexuality. Both were sons of preachers. Both were black, gay, artists in a culture that truly accepts none of those things. Still. We pay lip service to art, admire it even, put art and artists on a pedestal, but do we treasure our artists? Love our artists? Care for them?
The problems with photos of paintings is that you cannot capture the depth of the color, the way color deepens, and reveals itself, leaks out like little flashes of light. You cannot see the brushstrokes, feel the energy, the movement of the work. Notice the depth of contrast and color in Baldwin’s flesh. The complexity, the wonder, but also the struggle of both beauty and despair, the desired and yet the forbidden. The colors are strong here, the feeling as well, but it is not feeling without struggle. And yet compare it to the background. Swirling and wild and yet happy, as if this sitting, this relationship painter with sitter, is the source of something greater than either. Notice the changes in the direction of the brushstrokes, they way thy create a small gap around Baldwin, giving him the appearance of floating. The way the struggle, the relationship, which I will say seems to initially speak of something physical but is actually something greater than that, the burgeoning awareness of a communion of souls, the way a deep friendship can grow and make each participant more themselves than they would be alone.
Look at the contrast between head and body. I am not an art critic. i regret deeply that I never took Vassar’s acclaimed art history class, never studied art, and often feel adrift trying to put words to feelings. But look at the way the face is surrounded by pastel light, the face itself in contrast to the body, a body that speaks of struggles for selfhood and understanding, and yet a head also filled with fierce intelligence, with light of spirit, simultaneously young, yet filled with sight and yearning beyond its years. Mind and Body. Head and Heart.
I still do not understand this painting. I think the eyes are important. Baldwin’s eyes, Delaney’s eyes. I need to study the portraits. Sometimes, although the two individuals are quite distinct, the eyes confuse me, as if they are twin mirrors. But I have no photos of Delaney’s self portraits, yet.
Look at this portrait of James Baldwin made 16 years later. Baldwin middle aged now, and the portrait softer, and yet still intense. The same eyes. Deeply seeing. The same fierce, deeply seeing, intelligent face. But also contrast the portraits. The whole portrait is at the top of this post, James Baldwin 1957. Baldwin is now middle-aged. And yet in this portrait too he floats above the background, in a similar position, except this time more contained within himself. Do not fool yourself that this portrait is less powerful, or has less energy. The young Baldwin is blistering with the energy of youth, of unrestrained potential and its power. The older Baldwin seen here, clothed, more pulled into himself, legs crossed in a more enclosing way, is just as powerful, with just as much energy, but this time more controlled by self-awareness, perhaps even more powerful due to its control. I still see explosive power here, but it is a power lurking behind the veneer, leaking out like layers of colors in paint. In fact I think I need to go back and look at this painting again.
I haven’t even gotten to the second painting that seared itself into my memory that first night. But the exhibit will be here until May, and I, like a moth to a flame, will undoubtedly find myself returning again and again. If you have any reason to be near Knoxville, please come take a look.
