America’s fine art history of portrait painting cannot be described without the mention of Barkley, L. Hendricks. Barkley’s paintings are a window into the past of African-American life and style from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Barkley is popular for painting life-size paintings of mainly African-American subjects from Northeastern American cities. For over five decades, the artist has worked with different media including painting, photography, drawing, and fashion. Most of Barkley’s pieces of art feature African-Americans – a move that is by its nature was rather radical because it occurred in a rather predominantly white, western art context. Having grown up in the “Black is Beautiful Movement,’ and the Civil Rights era, Barkley creates an empowering and cool image that is at times seemingly confrontational through his works that explore the complex nature of black identity. Barkley is a true portrait painting virtuoso whose stylistic development in portraiture brings out a clear highlight of African-American life in contemporary art. This paper briefly reviews Barkley’s biography and his stylistic path in fine art, and it also conducts an artistic analysis of some sampled pieces of art from his works. The review shall include both artistic and thematic highlights in his contribution to conceptualism and black portraiture.

Barkley L. Hendricks was born in Pennsylvania in 1945 in the state of Florida. While there is no much information on his early life, Barkley is known to have acquired his certificate in fine art from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Thereafter, Barkley joined Yale University to further his professional development. Barkley acquired his Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s Degree from Yale University. In addition to developing his professional painting skills at Yale, Barkley also got a chance to study photography with Evans Walker, which he at times uses to develop his photo-realistic portraits. Barkley has been a tutor at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art for an inordinate length of time, and he has been a visiting fine artist in approximately twenty schools of art. Currently, Barkley is Professor Emeritus in New London’s Connecticut College from 1972. At Connecticut College, Barkley lectures as a professor of art in drawing, photography, illustration, and water colors

As contemporary painter, Barkley has specialized in the niche of black conceptualism and black portraiture. However, he has also featured into areas of landscape painting and photography. He has also worked on various genres of art and different media, but he is well-known for his life-size oil painted portraits. Most of the portraits feature African-American characters painted against monochromatic backgrounds to give portraits that try to give an impression of a dignified and proud presence of the subjects. Barkley’s work is artistically distinct because it brings forth elements of post-modernism and American realism. Though his pieces of art do not fit into civil and socio-political changes of the periods that they characterize, his subjects pose as normal under-represented African-Americans from the 60s and 70s. He does not present them in any unique way as victims, celebrities, or protesters, but common people who often were part of his social circle and family who accepted to pose for his works. Interestingly, Barkley even features in one of his pieces known as ‘Slick’ – a self-portrait in which he paints his nude image .

His pioneering pieces of work, which are at times perceived as being socially charged span different cultural backgrounds such as the ‘Black Power Movement’ in the 60s to the election of the first African-American president in the 2000s . Barkley’s fascination with black characters in his works of art was inspired after his tour of European Museums in his early 20s during the 1960s. Barkley was surprised by the fact that there were no black people featured in most paintings done by the old masters of fine art. This lack of black presence inspired him to start his works of art that incorporated more of black characters in his life-sized paintings consisting of mainly black urban men in classical and empowered depictions. Barkley’s works of art pair questions of black and personal cultural identity with art history, a path that is currently championed by other artists such as Wiley Kehinde. Barkley mixes abstraction, realism, and pop in developing his black portrait characters in fashionable outfits on monochromatic backgrounds that gives the painting significant accent and acuity.

Mr. Barkley, who has lectured at Connecticut College of Art since 1972, started a new venture in painting in the late 80s and early 90s. In his new artistic venture, Barkley moved away from figurative portraiture and focused more on outdoor landscape painting. In the mid-1990s Barkley made some lengthy visits to the West Indies in the Island of Jamaica. It is in this period that Barkley began creating new artistic pieces in the landscape painting niche. While in Jamaica, Barkley painted various pieces of impressionistic landscapes. A few of those landscape paintings on lunette and oval canvasses are also exhibited, but they are not as captivating as his work in portraiture. The landscape painting works and his least mentioned works in photography add to his great portfolio that shows his virtuosity in art.

Apart from creating great artistic pieces, Barkley is also famous for featuring in most museum art exhibitions and publications such as the Dewar’s Scotch magazine ad. Between 2008 and 2010 Barkley featured as the main subject in a large and long-term traveling exhibition known as the Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool. The traveling art exhibition was planned by Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art. The exhibition was also presented in his old college in 2009 and 2010 – the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) . Some of Barkley’s famous pieces of art are also included in art gallery and museum collections all over the globe. The art centers that feature some of Barkley’s pieces include the Nasher Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Studio Museum, in Harlem, NY, The Tate Modern in London, and The National Gallery of Art in Washington among others. A number of universities also hold some of Barkley’s best pieces and these institutions include Yale University, University of Wyoming, and the University of Connecticut. The numerous collections and artistic exhibitions that feature Barkley’s works of art attest to his great skills and prolific artistic talent.

In the recent past, Barkley has gone back to creating life-size portraiture; his new recent pieces include a piece of art from 2002 featuring Fela Kuti – a renowned performing African pop music artist in a brightly colored orange track suit. The piece has a tapestry-like golden field as the background . His new pieces of art are captivating too, but the most memorable achievements are from some of his earliest pieces known for their coolness personified. To bring out a clear depiction of Barkley’s artistic work an analysis of two of his popular pieces can do the justice of revealing his wealth of talent in the world of art within the style of portraiture.

Barkley’s life-size portraits date mostly from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, and they commonly present characters on monochromatic backdrops, which reveal color-field painting and minimalism. Barkley’s artistic skill is epitomized in “Slick,” which is one of his famous portraits from 1977 . Like other self-portraits by the artist, Barkley features in this portrait in a bearded image wearing a snow-white, double-breast suit. The artist is shirtless, and he appears against a slightly off-white, matte background. On his head, there is a multi-colored African skull-cap and a golden necklace with a pendant of a votive leg. He appears with a toothpick protruding from the side of his mouth and gives a confident gaze to the viewers through gold-rimmed glasses. The appearance is cool and calm.