PAFA Alumnus Barkley L. Hendricks Wins CAA Award for Distinguished Body of Work

PHILADELPHIA—Philadelphia native and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) alumnus Barkley L. Hendricks will be a co-recipient of the College Art Association’s (CAA) Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work at the association’s annual conference which will take place in Chicago in February.

 

According to the CAA, award winners Hendricks and Emory Douglas have long challenged the art world’s boundaries and received definitions in different but historically important ways. While working on opposite coasts and in different mediums, they transformed how African Americans saw themselves, and how they were seen. Emerging during the mid-1960s at a time of intense social upheaval, the two made work that was confrontational and incendiary, subversive and sly. While Douglas worked outside the confines of the art world as the Black Panther Party’s minister of culture, contributing to the Black Panther newspaper, Hendricks worked inside it without succumbing to the pressures and proscriptions against painting, particularly observational painting, and, to go one step further, portraiture.

 

In May of 2009, Hendricks was presented with PAFA’s annual Distinguished Alumni Award during the Academy’s commencement ceremonies. In October of last year, his painting retrospective Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool opened to great critical and audience acclaim.

 

“PAFA is very proud to see one our most accomplished alumni recognized with this well-deserved achievement award from fellow artists and educators in the College Art Association,” stated PAFA President and CEO David R. Brigham. “Barkley Hendricks has created a powerful body of work and influenced the way that younger artists approach the contemporary human figure.”

 

Best known for his stunning, life-sized canvasses portraying people of color from the urban northeast, it is through these cool, empowering and sometimes confrontational images that Hendricks explores the cultural complexity of black identity in the contemporary world. Variously he works from real life sitters and from photographs—he calls his camera his “mechanical sketchbook”— in a format that is reminiscent of images from fashion magazines and movie posters. In these commanding, full-length portraits of African American men and women silhouetted against crisp monochromatic grounds, Hendricks transforms his subjects from ordinary people into larger than life celebrity icons. Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool presented 56 paintings from 1964 to the present, including works that he produced while a student at PAFA.

 

"To receive this award from the College Art Association is truly an honor," said Hendricks. “I am surprised and elated.”

 

Hendricks has always loved art, but noticed at an early age the people depicted in the famous paintings in museums didn’t look like him. “I was inspired by the masters and how they painted, but there was an absence of people I could recognize,” he said. “There is logic to an artist’s direction, which is to relate to what they know, and that is what I do.”

 

A Philadelphia native born in 1945, Hendricks studied at PAFA from 1963 to 1967 and was the first African American student to be awarded two consecutive travel grants, the Cresson European Traveling Scholarship and the J. Henry Scheidt Traveling Scholarship.

 

Hendricks subsequently graduated with a BFA and MFA in painting and photography from Yale University. He has exhibited widely in solo and group shows and his works are held in major museum collections. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, he lives in New London, Connecticut where he has been a Professor of Art at Connecticut College since 1972.

 

The College Art Association is dedicated to providing professional services and resources for artists, art historians, and students in the visual arts. CAA serves as an advocate and a resource for individuals and institutions nationally and internationally by offering forums to discuss the latest developments in the visual arts and art history through its Annual Conference, publications, exhibitions, website, and other events. Representing its members’ professional needs since 1911, CAA is committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of scholarship, creativity, criticism, and teaching.

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Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is America's first school of fine arts and museum.  A recipient of the 2005 National Medal of Arts presented by the President of the United States, PAFA is a recognized leader in fine arts education.  Nearly every major American artist has taught, studied, or exhibited at the Academy. The institution's world-class collection of American art continues to grow and provides what only a few other art institutions in the world offer: the rare combination of an outstanding museum and an extraordinary faculty known for its commitment to students and for the stature and quality of its artistic work.

 

Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Academy is located at 118-128 N. Broad Street in Philadelphia. Admission to the Permanent Collection is Adults $10, Seniors & Students with I.D. $8, Youth ages 5-18, $6. Admission to Special Exhibitions (includes Permanent Collection) is Adults $15, Seniors & Students with I.D. $12, Youth Ages 5-18, $8. Admission is free for members and children under age of 5. Admission to Morris Gallery exhibitions is free.