Atlas Obscura Features Beauford's Grave - What's Next?

Atlas Obscura published a wonderful article about Beauford's gravesite on August 21, 2020:

Grave of Beauford Delaney

Serendipitously, the publication coincides with the 10-year anniversary of the laying of Beauford's tombstone. I went to Thiais Cemetery to check on the finishing touches for the stone on August 18, 2010 and took several photos to document the completion of the work.

One of these is presented in the Atlas Obscura article.

Portrait of Beauford Delaney on the tombstone at Thiais Cemetery
(ca. 1950)
Possibly by Gjon Mili
"Grave of Beauford Delaney" pays particular attention to the role that Sue Canterbury plays in the story of the stone. Currently The Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, Canterbury was a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts when she granted Les Amis a two-part interview about the ArtsMIA exhibition called From New York to Paris that we published as "Anatomy of an Art Exhibition":

Anatomy of an Art Exhibition - Part 1

Anatomy of an Art Exhibition - Part 2

The Atlas Obscura article also mentions Zachary Miller's filming of the gravesite ceremony for posterity.

Zachary Miller filming graveside ceremony
(2010) Franz Fox Kennedy
Miller is now producing the full-length documentary entitled Beauford Delaney: So Splendid a Journey, the trailer for which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

When Les Amis was founded in 2009, we set out to achieve four goals:

1) Placement and maintenance of a tombstone for the grave of painter Beauford Delaney, who is buried at the Parisian Cemetery of Thiais.

2) Payment of the renewal fees for his grave.

3) Organization of commemorative or educational events in his honor.

4) Inform the press and the media of his life and accomplishments.

The Knoxville, TN chapter of The Links, Incorporated generously donated funds to cover the next ten years of maintenance on Beauford's tombstone. This gift fulfills Goal 1 for the next several years.

The Paris Cemetery system placed Beauford's grave on its "celebrity list" in 2014, eliminating the need to pay for renewal fees for his grave. This fulfills Goal 2.

Goals 3 and 4 are ongoing!

The Atlas Obscura article represents our latest accomplishment regarding informing the press and media of Beauford's life and accomplishments (Goal 4).

For Goal 3, our most important work at present is the production of Beauford Delaney: So Splendid a Journey and the screening of this documentary at film festivals and local theaters in the U.S. and Europe. We are part of the IFP (Independent Filmmaker Project) Fiscal Sponsorship program for 2020 and US dollar donations for the film are tax deductible.

Watch the trailer (and give to support the project if you desire) here:

Beauford Delaney: So Splendid a Journey

We're looking forward to another ten years of shining glorious light on Beauford's story and his œuvre!

Museums Use Beauford's Art to Reach Out to Children

The Classes Duo Paris/Knoxville program - a collaboration between the Wells International Foundation and the City of Paris' CASPE 6/14 department - is the largest program to date that has used Beauford's art to engage children. Works selected for lessons during the course of this two-year program included Beauford's Portrait of Marian Anderson, Untitled (Trees), and Greece.

Portrait of Marian Anderson
(1965) Oil on canvas
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
J. Harwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Untitled (Trees)
(c. 1945) Oil on canvas
29 1/8" x 23 1/8", signed
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

Grèce
(1967) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Recently, three museums have selected a Beauford Delaney work in their collection to support their outreach to children.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is using Portrait of Marian Anderson as part of a lesson that teaches small children about portraiture as they explore the museum's galleries.

https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/early-childhood-lesson-concept-portraits/

In June 2020, the Brooklyn Museum selected Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit) to create a lesson that provides step-by-step instructions for children ages 2–6 to create offering/honoring bowls and for kids ages 7 and up to create still life drawings.

Untitled (Fang, Crow and Fruit)
(1945) Oil on canvas
25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm)
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum Fund for African American Art, A. Augustus Healy Fund, and Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund , 2014.73.
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esq., Court Appointed Administrator
https://brooklynmuseum.tumblr.com/post/621087915437670400/mini-art-lesson-tuesday-june-16-2020-our-mini

In March 2020, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina was inspired by Beauford's Untitled (1959; shown at the Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color exhibition in Paris) to encourage children of all ages to make "marble prints" with shaving cream.

Untitled
(1959) Oil on canvas
Mint Museum, Charlotte
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
https://mintmuseum.org/abstract-shaving-cream-prints/

This exercise looks like great fun!

A Study in Portraiture - One Year Later

Just over a year ago, I had the pleasure to announce the opening of the virtual exhibition entitled Beauford Delaney: A Study in Portraiture on the Wells International Foundation's (WIF) Web site.

Curator Maija Brennan was a rising senior at Smith College when she created the exhibition during her 2019 WIF summer internship in Paris. Now employed as an oral history researcher focused on the history of African American art and artists at The HistoryMakers in Chicago, IL, she attributes her interest and skills in this area to the knowledge she acquired while working on A Study in Portraiture.

The HistoryMakers is a national 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational institution committed to preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of well-known and unsung African Americans. Their mission is to create a more inclusive record of American history.

Today, I'm bringing you a few of the portraits that Brennan selected for the virtual exhibition. Click on the hyperlinked title for each image to go to the exhibition and read the information there.

Untitled (Portrait of a Young Man), 1928
Charcoal on paper Knoxville Museum of Art 2017 purchase with funds provided by the Rachael Patterson Young Art Acquisition Reserve © Estate of Beauford Delaney by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator Image courtesy of the Knoxville Museum of Art

Untitled (Portrait of a Young Man)
(circa 1930-35) Color pastels and charcoal on gray, textured wove paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries

Portrait of Howard Swanson
(1967) Oil on canvas
Image courtesy of Levis Fine Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Auto-portrait
(1965) Oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Seventeen (17) additional portraits are featured in A Study in Portraiture. I strongly encourage you to visit the Wells International Foundation's Website to see them!

Beauford Delaney: A Study in Portraiture

Beauford and Marcel Duchamp

Thanks to Peter Stebbins, President of the Lily and Earle M. Pilgrim Art Foundation, I was recently able to publish an article about Vincent Livelli's recollections of Beauford during Beauford's New York years.

Stebbins also graciously connected me with Kate Prendergast and Jane Barrell Yadav, the daughters of painter Marcia Marcus. Marcus and Lily & Earle Pilgrim were dear friends and Marcus' daughters are passionately working to preserve their mother's legacy.

Marcus had the extraordinary opportunity to photograph Beauford with French artist and writer Marcel Duchamp. Her daughters kindly allowed me to publish the photo below and shared the story of how the opportunity came to be.

Marcel Duchamp (center) and Beauford (lower right), 1953
© Marcia Marcus / Artists Rights Society (ARS)
Image courtesy of Kate Prendergast
An article that describes the events of that day states that:

"In March 1953, Michael Freilich, owner of the Roko Gallery in Greenwich Village, asked twenty-eight year-old Victor Obsatz to photograph Marcel Duchamp in his apartment at 210 West 14th Street. A double exposure occurred by chance, creating an overlay of Duchamp’s playful smile and iconic profile ....

"The work has since become one of the most well-known and sought-after images of the artist, and has been reproduced in many texts on Duchamp, Dada, and Surrealism, including the National Portrait Gallery’s 2009 exhibition catalogue “Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture.”

Though the article mentions neither Marcus nor Beauford, both were present that day. Obsatz, who was Marcus' classmate at Cooper Union, took a photo of her sitting next to Duchamp on a sofa, with her camera lying between them.

According to biographer David Leeming, Beauford met Duchamp in New York when he visited Freilich's home. Duchamp and Freilich lived in the same building at the time.

Portrait of a man in red / Michael Frelich
(1965) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
By permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Obsatz invited Marcus to assist him at the photo shoot and Marcus took several photos of Duchamp with her camera. She is the author of the photo that places Beauford at the scene. She later became known for double imagery (reflections - shadow - mirrors) in her paintings.

Click HERE to see a couple of the photos Marcus took that day, as well as Obsatz's photograph of her and Duchamp.

The phrasing of the Moeller Fine Art article regarding the location of the photo shoot is ambiguous - it could be taken to mean that the group met at Freilich's apartment or at Duchamp's place.

Note that Beauford's Still Life with Pears is partly visible on the wall to the left of Duchamp in Marcus' photograph.

Still Life with Pears
(1946) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

It is certainly possible that Duchamp owned the painting. But given that Freilich had been showing Beauford's work at the Roko Gallery since 1949, it seems more likely that Still Life with Pears would hang in Freilich's apartment. (To the best of my knowledge, this work remains in a private collection.)

Kate Prendergast found the image of Duchamp and Beauford in her mother's archived materials. In a telephone interview that she recorded with Obsatz in July 2016, he mentions that Freilich introduced him to Duchamp and indicates that Beauford was present during the shoot.

Had it not been for the legacy work that Marcus' daughters are pursuing, we may never have known about Beauford's involvement in this moment in art history!

In a Mood

In last week's blog post, "Silencing the Voices," I talked frankly about Beauford's life journey with mental illness and the role it played in his artistic production.

I quoted Beauford's friend, Richard A. Long, who expressed his opinion that much of what Beauford created during his Clamart years reflected melancholy. And I promised to share several images of Beauford's work from this period so that you can draw your own conclusions about the mood that these works might convey.

I have previously explored the subject of Beauford's illness and its effect on his work in posts entitled "Capturing the Shock of Life" and "Melancholy, Sorrow, and Joy." I've republished images from these posts below. Click on the hyperlinked article titles centered above the images to read the original articles.

CAPTURING THE SHOCK OF LIFE

Untitled (Green Drip Abstraction)
(1958) Gouache on wove paper
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Untitled (Yellow Abstraction)
(c. 1958-1959) Oil on paper, laid down on canvas
Image courtesy of Aaron Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Untitled (Abstract composition)
(1958) Oil on wove paper
Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Clamart Red
(1958) Oil on canvas
On loan from a private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
MELANCHOLY, SORROW, AND JOY - PART 2

Untitled
(1961) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Untitled
(1961) Mixed media on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
I'm posting additional images and article hyperlinks from previous posts with the same intent:

BEAUFORD IN INK

Untitled
(1961) Ink, inkwash, and aquarelle on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
MORE BEAUFORD DELANEY WORKS AT AUCTION

Untitled
Aquarelle signed et dated 1961, lower right
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
BEAUFORD'S SOLO SHOW AT THE PAUL FACCHETTI GALLERY

Untitled
(1960) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
CASE ANTIQUES OPENS BIDDING ON THREE BEAUFORD DELANEY WORKS

Untitled
Watercolor and gouache on paper (recto)
Signed and dated lower right in black ink, "Beauford Delaney 61"
Photo courtesy of Case Antiques
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Find additional images at the links below (look at the works mentioned below).

Swann Auction Galleries African American Fine Art Sale - Results Are in
Untitled (Composition in Green, Red and Black)

What Sold at Swann Auction Galleries' October 2017 African American Fine Art Sale
Untitled (Brown and Orange Abstraction)

Beauford at Swann Auction Galleries: April 2016 Sale Results
Untitled (Composition in Purple, Blue and Green))
Untitled (Abstract in Mustard Yellow and Gray Green, Mallorca)