Portrait of the Artist

Barkley Hendricks calls his camera his mechanical sketchbook. With a salt-and-pepper beard and black beret, the 62-year-old artist effortlessly embodies what it means to be cool.

Hendricks looks back at the packed lecture hall through the moving screen of his digital camera as he captures a panorama image of the students, scholars and guests staring back at him. Four decades into his career, Hendricks is witnessing the opening of his first career retrospective exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art in February. Devoted fans and curious art lovers arrive by the dozens to fill the auditorium, an overflow classroom and the makeshift seats before a live projection in the museum's atrium just to get a glimpse of the artist having an intimate conversation with Rick Powell, eminent Hendricks scholar and John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History.

The new exhibition, "Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool," is the first solo exhibition for the artist, as well as the first solo exhibition assembled by Trevor Schoonmaker, the museum's curator of contemporary art. He tracked down the 57 paintings, including more than 40 of Hendricks' signature life-sized portraits. One painting came just a few miles down Fayetteville Road, from North Carolina Central University, while others traveled across the country to be a part of this milestone collection.

"I wish I had words that would adequately describe this feeling," Hendricks says to the crowd later that evening. "As I look out into the audience, I see a variety of faces of the here and now, and the past."

The artist hails from New London, Conn., where he has taught as professor of art at Connecticut College since 1972.

The images in the exhibition were created over a span of more than 40 years, from 1964 to 2007. There are more than a dozen recent landscape paintings, as well as a few abstract studies from the artist's early career. But the majority of the collection consists of oil and acrylic portraits of urban African Americans from the northeast, created in the 1960s-70s.

The inspiration of his work stems from an internal connection with his subjects. Hendricks often candidly speaks of the wide range of individuals that are captured in his work. He's photographed members of the Ku Klux Klan and the New Black Panther Party. Other subjects, like Lynn Jenkins and Miss T, were former girlfriends and lovers. George Jules Taylor and Robert Gowens were acquaintances with whom Hendricks established strong relationships while they posed for him. Every individual that Hendricks has worked with leaves a lasting impression of intimacy between artist and subject. But much to the disappointment to some of his students and curious observers, Hendricks has kept limited connections with the subjects of his paintings.

"Barkley's representations of the community are not idealized," Powell says. "Rather than developing images of men and women that subscribe to a social ideal, he is representing what he sees."

This younger wave of artists that flourished on a path first paved by Hendricks, have gained significantly more recognition in the international art scene than Hendricks had over the years.

Although senior Tadina Ross, a member of the Nasher Student Advisory Board, did not know about Hendricks before his arrival in Durham, she was among the many who were blown away by both the new collection and the artist himself.

"He was just as cool as he seems to be depicted in his paintings," Ross says. "He showed up with a toothpick behind his ear. It's not for show-that's actually who he is."

Senior Sam Chapin, another member of the NSAB, was also impressed by the down-to-earth personality of the artist and his wife, Susan.

"They're fantastic individuals," he says. "Oftentimes great art doesn't always come with great people."

A native of Philadelphia, Hendricks came of age with a generation of young urban African Americans, some of whom became recurring subjects in his works. He experimented with different media, at times teaching himself techniques by applying concepts from books through practice.

While keeping a job at the Philadelphia Recreation Department, Hendricks made sketches of geometric drawings in between "keeping kids from drinking wine in the bathrooms and stealing balls." His work from this time was later said to be heavily influenced by the abstract style of Josef Albers.

"I had no idea who Josef Albers was," Hendricks recalls. "This particular format was from my days of looking out the window and drawing things against the backboard. My very first basketball was bald. That was the kind of ball I played with and that was the kind of ball I painted."

Hendricks, who has traveled all over the world as a student and teacher of art, absorbed the influences of his surroundings, from the masterpieces of Rembrandt to the music of Miles Davis. In fact, "Birth of the Cool" was named after Miles Davis'1949 record. The artist explored new techniques of detail and texture and used New England's city slickers around him as his subjects.

In a time when people often depicted African Americans in austere ways, Hendricks stood out with his portrayals of the African-American community that often had an undertone of ironic humor. His portraits provide a transparent and honest view of the people and the time period. FTA, a painting that shows a young soldier, is a representation of defiance that stems from the artist's own military experience.

"I would argue that what he does with portraiture is fairly radical," Powell says of the seemingly ordinary people that Hendricks focuses on in his paintings.

At times irreverent, outrageous, provocative or simply humorous, Hendricks' painting evokes emotion and connection with the human spirit. The two-dimensional background contrasts with the three-dimensional figure in a way that is unique in the modern context, Ross says.

"Most of them were larger than life and you could feel who they are," she adds. "He captures the essence of the soul and the reality really well."

Just as Hendricks often does in public arenas, his pieces also have a way of eliciting viewer participation. Being in the presence of dozens of his portraits feels like attending a dinner party with the artist's closest friends.

"Conceptually, his work causes one to zoom in on that subject and examine every piece of hair and expression on the face," Powell says. "And it allows the viewer to add your own narrative of their experiences."

This collection of pieces also provides context for an innovative look at the artist's work. This is the first show in which a large number of Hendricks' portraits are presented as a group.

"Focusing on portraits together-having 40 or so in a room-is really powerful," Schoonmaker says. "By virtue of sheer number, it's an in-depth look at [Hendricks] as a painter."

The collection includes a series of abstract renditions of basketball hoops that shows the painter's introduction to color geometry and form, a popular form of study for artists in the early 1960s. These abstractions later appear in the background of his portrait paintings. But while other artists drifted toward pop art, minimalism, new expressionism, performance and conceptual forms of expression, Hendricks chose to work with the human form. Hendricks continued to explore the figure at a time when his work didn't fit into the mold of the contemporary art movement, but layered his works with other frameworks of study.

"When people look at his pieces superficially, they think they see one thing when in fact there is more going on," Powell says. "He was willing to show the specificities of people and the individualities of men and women at a time when it would have been easier to do something generic."

With the steady climb of the blogging and YouTube culture, new revivals in representations of the self are contributing to a fresh look at Hendricks' portraits of the 1960s and 70s, Powell says. "I think it would be na've to say that these works don't have a social and political dimension to them. Anything by any artist is political."

Schoonmaker also considered the impact the exhibition would have on the Duke and Durham communities while planning its arrival. He says he has always tried to create exhibitions that make a statement. His first show for the Nasher, "Street Level," complemented the new urban renewals of downtown Durham.

Although Schoonmaker would have curated the same show anywhere, the exhibition's impact on the local community should not go unnoticed. Throughout the four months that the art will be on display, the Nasher has planned a series of programs to complement and enhance the impact of the artwork. Furthermore, Powell's expertise in Hendricks' work makes the collection even more relevant to the University and its greater community. With a history of strained race relations, Durham is making strides in bridging gaps among its residents.

"[The exhibition] expands the scope and reach of the art community because [Hendricks] deals with subject materials that aren't often dealt with in modern art," says Chapin, who is majoring in art history. "There's a connection that's made, especially with the Durham community, given its demographics, that you wouldn't get otherwise."

Viewers gravitate toward the artist's eccentric and bold personality, which radiates from his work. With a background of tracks spun by disc jockey 9th Wonder, the opening of "Birth of the Cool" attracted crowds from all corners of Durham and beyond.

"One of the things that struck me at the opening was that I saw a cross section of Durham I don't normally see at most places," Powell says. "Already, the show has reached across boundaries and barriers. It's brought a lot of people together under the banner of art."

The artist himself, however, didn't create the pieces with a targeted audience in mind. He recognizes the effect that art has on people, but says he prefers to create art for his own sake, rather than a political move or social commentary.

"There's certainly an awareness of what's going on," Hendricks says. "There are times when an influence from the outside can be used as a visual statement."

But these influences are hardly ever the purpose of creating a piece of art. Hendricks, as an artist, is not interested in pushing buttons through his works.

"There are certain aspects of creativity that can give you wings above and beyond the unfortunate shackles that deal with the misery of the subjugation and the oppression of humankind," Hendricks says. "Why not dream beyond and inspire us to dream beyond?"

That dream has led Hendricks to become a true renaissance man, who is an accomplished photographer and jazz musician in addition to his talent in visual arts.

"You don't have to lock yourself in anything if you don't want," he says. "That room is chock-full of images that, for the most part, make me feel good."

For Hendricks, the creation of art is a personal process in "widening the perspective of what human potential can be and what it can do."

The opening of the bold exhibition is also a bold move for the Nasher. "Birth of the Cool" was recognized by Vogue magazine in "The Vogue 25" cultural highlights in 2008.

"We sometimes think New York and L.A. are the only places for fresh exciting provocative ideas," Powell says. "But this exhibition shows that regional institutions including the Nasher are forging a path of their own that, ironically, are getting other places to follow suit. We're ahead of the curve, not behind it."

When its installation at the Nasher comes to an end in July, the exhibition will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts-the artist's alma mater-and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

"It's always exciting to see art in a new context," Powell says. "People always think artists are calculated, but sometimes they're just as amazed and surprised to people's responses to their work, and that causes them to rethink things."

Hendricks' paintings are cool and approachable. Even for those who are unfamiliar with his work, or art in general, they still represent an aura of affability, much like the artist himself.

In his weeklong visit, Hendricks compromised his diabetic diet and satiated his craving for sweet tea and Southern cuisine. Hendricks' jam-packed schedule refamiliarized the artist to the charms of the South. He reconnected with long-time admirers and met young artists newly introduced to his work. Dressed in sleek black outfits and with at least two cameras in tow, he took mechanical sketches of people he met in Durham.

"Maybe the best part of spending time with him was seeing him being able to enjoy the attention he so deserves," Powell says.

Perhaps one day a gallery in New York will feature life-sized portraits of familiar faces through the cool lens of Barkley Hendricks.