Fashion and Politics in Barkley L. Hendricks’s Pictures
“Untitled (Self-Portrait),” c. 1975.
Photographs © Barkley L. Hendricks / Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
An artist of wide-ranging interests, he captured urban street style, American symbols, and musical greats—all with a unique passion.
The artist Barkley L. Hendricks was known during his lifetime, though not nearly well enough, for his swaggering portrait paintings. During travels in Europe as a young man, Hendricks had been struck by the absence of Black folks like him in the works of the Old Masters he admired. In paintings like “Lawdy Mama” (1969), showing a woman with a voluminous Afro against a gold-leaf, Byzantine-style background, Hendricks sought to redress this historical omission and make icons for a new era.