Remembering Barkley L. Hendricks, Master of Black Postmodern Portraiture
The prescient painter—who died at the age of 72—documented the African American figure as a cultural, and commodified, phenomenon.
, one of the best-known portraits by Barkley L. Hendricks, arrived in 1974, three years after the Marvin Gaye album of the same name. At the time, Gaye’s record was well-regarded, but not yet universally recognized as a masterpiece of protest art. Hendricks saw in it something not far off, a moment when black protest music would come into its own as a commercial concern. His striking portrait acknowledged the record’s place
