Beauford Delaney and Free Lunch - Part 2

Last week, I introduced "Beauford Delaney (Instrumental)," a track on Volume 3 of the newly released three-volume recording entitled Free Lunch,. Intrigued by the music, I interviewed recording artist Free (Lee) Tillman about it. Read Part 1 of "Beauford Delaney and Free Lunch" HERE.

Part of our interview explored Tillman's associations between "Beauford Delaney (Instrumental)" and specific pieces of Beauford's art.

I asked him what he would say if he had to describe the instrumental Beauford Delaney as a color, and he responded "It would be a cloudy gray."

He then shared links to images of some of the darker pieces of Beauford's work that come to his mind when he thinks about the song. The works are pictured below.

Composition, 1963
Watercolor
Signed at bottom right, dated, and annotated "Souvenir" at bottom left
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Untitled, circa 1960
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
  Image courtesy of www.ha.com
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Untitled (Ibiza) (1956) gouache and watercolor
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

The majority of music Tillman makes is instrumental, yet he was inspired to insert a mysterious voice into "Beauford Delaney (Instrumental). Listening carefully, you will hear a woman saying "Sometimes I wish we could vanish." When I asked Tillman about this, he told me that he also created a vocal version of "Beauford Delaney" for his album. He shared that recording with me and commented about it as follows:

"This song happens to be one of only two songs on the album that has alternative versions where I provided vocals. The song “Theaster Gates” has a spoken word passage and the song Beauford Delaney has me rapping on it. I provided the instrumental versions in case people didn’t want to hear my voice."

Regarding a possible relationship between the single line of spoken words in the instrumental version and the lyrics of the vocal version, he said:

"There is no direct relationship. When I originally made the song, it felt like it needed a human voice, so I added the vocal sample. It's not meant to be completely intelligible. It's meant to sound like something you might hear in a dream. I then decided to create something more direct, so I added my own vocals. One thing let me to the next, but I wouldn't say that they're directly related as far as what's being said."

Listening to the vocal version of "Beauford Delaney" and comparing it to the instrumental version, the two Beauford Delaney works shown below came to my mind. I sent images of them to Tillman and asked him to share his reactions to them.

Grèce
(1967) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

The Sage Black
(1967) Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

His response:

"The blue painting feels like the instrumental. The portrait feels like the vocal version."

To wrap up our interview, I asked Tillman the following questions:

Les Amis: Relating to the theme of your album, Free Lunch, if you could have lunch with Beauford today, what would you want to discuss with him?

Free Tillman: I would love to talk with him about the Harlem Renaissance and what it was like living in Greenwich Village.

Les Amis: What might you ask his advice about?

Free Tillman: How to convey one's political and social beliefs through abstract art.

Beauford Delaney and Free Lunch - Part 1

Free Lunch is a three-volume digital album recorded by Free Tillman. Via a Google alert, I learned that Volume 3, entitled "Rap Ballads," includes a 2-minute recording called "Beauford Delaney (Instrumental) "

After listening to the recording multiple times, I contacted Tillman to ask for an interview. He responded quickly and affirmatively. 

I learned that Free (Lee) Tillman became aware of Beauford because of his fascination with the Harlem Renaissance. While he is more familiar with the writers and musicians of the time, anyone who was involved with the Harlem Renaissance is an inspiration to him.

Beauford in his Greene Street studio, New York City, 1944
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Tillman is also fascinated by James Baldwin and encountered Beauford's name in connection with Baldwin. He learned about Beauford mostly from reading online articles and watching YouTube videos, and he was aware that Beauford painted several portraits of Baldwin. He has never seen any of Beauford's works in person. 

Serendipitously, Tillman and Beauford share the same birthday, and Beauford died the year Tillman was born. Tillman is something of a visual artist as well - he creates his own visual backdrops for his performances and he also draws (though he has not produced anything he would be willing to show anyone yet). 

The majority of the twenty-two (22) tracks on Volume 3 of Free Lunch are named after artists - people such as Amy Sherald, Faith Ringgold, Ed Clark, and Sam Gilliam. I asked Tillman why. He responded:

Over the past few years, I’ve been studying art history on my own. Trying to understand different movements and where certain ideas came from. This year there was a documentary released called “Black Art: In the Absence of Light” which focuses a lot on the 1976 LACMA exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art. It features a lot of Black artists, new and old, that I had never heard of before. As I was wrapping up this project, Black art was on my mind, and I thought it would be an interesting idea to name all the songs after Black artists. Maybe someone would see all the names, do some research and find out something new. I’m familiar with the work of all the artists named but I do not know any of them personally.

I explained that Beauford did not want to be viewed as a black artist, or even as an American artist.  He strongly felt that "ARTIST" was the only term required to define him professionally.   I also explained that this in no way indicated that Beauford wanted to cast aside his identity as a black person.

Tillman then asked whether Beauford adopted Abstract Expressionism as a style because he did not want to be defined as a "Black artist."  I replied that I believe Beauford became an Abstract Expressionist painter because it allowed him to express the incredible emotion and energy that always churned within him, particularly when his inner voices became more insistent and more cruel.

Come back next week to read about Tillman's associations between "Beauford Delaney (Instrumental)" and specific pieces of Beauford's art.

First Beauford Delaney Research Award Recipient Announced

Beauford Delaney
1953 - Carl Van Vechten

On Sunday, June 6, 2021, during a ceremony held at the Festival d'histoire de l'art (Festival of Art History) at the Château de Fontainebleau, the first recipient of the Beauford Research Grant was announced.

The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, in partnership with FACE Foundation and INHA, and with support from the Ford Foundation, awarded the prize to Ms. Vanina Géré for her research project entitled "'Hacking apparatuses of control': Contemporary African-American Political Digital Practices and Beyond." She will receive $20,000 to cover expenses related to her research project in the U.S. next year.

Ms. Géré is a Paris-based scholar who specializes in contemporary American art, with special interests in art and activism, feminist art history, African-American studies, software studies and contemporary painting. She wrote Les mauvais sentiments – L'art de Kara Walker, a book that "traces the career of Kara Walker (born in 1969), the most internationally recognized African-American artist since Jean-Michel Basquiat, and explores the history of the reception of a work that faces the limits of representation, challenging the question of the figuration of the black body."

Currently teaching at Villa Arson National School of Fine Arts in Nice, France, Ms. Géré will be on a sabbatical leave this upcoming year to conduct a research on feminist, Afro-feminist and anti-racist activist practices in digital art and culture in Europe and the U.S. Thanks to this grant, she will be traveling to New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles to meet with artists, curators and writers.

France Nerlich, who granted Les Amis a two-part interview about the award, presented Ms. Géré to festival attendees. Watch her presentation and Ms. Géré's acceptance speech (in French) here:

FHA21 - dimanche 6 juin - Salle des Colonnes, château de Fontainebleau

France Nerlich at the Festival of Art History

Screenshot from Festival's YouTube video

Beginning at 24:06 minutes, Ms. Nerlich relates the story of how the grant was conceived.

At 26:11 minutes, she explains why the grant is named after Beauford.

At 27:08 minutes, she introduces Ms. Géré.

At 28:17 minutes, Ms. Géré takes the microphone and describes her encounter with Beauford's art at the Tate Modern during the Soul of a Nation exhibition in 2017.  She then presents the project that inspired the committee to grant her the award.

Vanina Géré at the Festival of Art History

Screenshot from Festival's YouTube video

The selection committee, comprised of art historians Eric de Chassey, Director of INHA in Paris, Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University, Anne Lafont, Art Historian and directrice d'études à l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), France Nerlich, Director of Studies and Research at INHA, and Anne-Claire Duprat, Visual Arts Officer at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., received a total of six excellent research proposals, which is an honorable number for a new grant in its first year. The committee extends its warmest encouragement to Helene Valance for her project “Re-present: African-American representations of the national past, 19th-early 20th century,” which came in second place.

Committee member Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University, and curator of the Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow exhibition launched at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta in 2002, commented on the award as follows:

I am delighted that this new research grant, named after the legendary artist Beauford Delaney, will further strengthen the long-standing cultural ties between France and the United States. Given the importance of France in the careers and creative works of countless artists of African descent, this grant honors Delaney and his fellow travelers, and promises to make their artistic contributions better known.

Gaëtan Bruel, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy in the U.S., commented as follows:

In our current socio-political context, both in France and the United States, BIPOC communities are rightfully asking for equality and better representation and visibility, including in the arts. We at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy are committed now more than ever to pursuing our mission to support high quality artistic projects that speak to the crucial issues of our times while promoting the social and humanistic values that are at the core of the Franco-America friendship. We send Vanina Géré our best wishes for the success of her future research project. We also thank our partners, FACE Foundation and the Ford Foundation, for their essential support, and their ongoing commitment to make this world a better, fairer place through art and culture.

Judd Tully on Beauford's Studio Museum Retrospective

A few months after Beauford's death (March 26, 1979), art critic and journalist Judd Tully wrote an exposé of sorts regarding the Studio Museum of Harlem's retrospective show of Beauford's work and the disposition of his estate.

Catalog cover for retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem

Tully says that steps were taken to eliminate French bureaucratic obstacles and settle debts so the show could take place, but he does not specifically indicate who took these steps. He indicates that Exxon Corporation and the National Endowment of the Arts funded the Studio Museum exhibition and that the tutelle responsible for handling Beauford's affairs was dissolved.

What follows is biographical information admixed with statements that various artist acquaintances made about Beauford and his work during his lifetime.

Near the end of the article, Tully states that "...Beauford Delaney remains a tantalizing enigma to the all too color-conscious art historians. He has eluded history for the moment."

Forty-two years later, fueled by the work launched by Les Amis de Beauford Delaney in 2009, history is "catching up."

Read the entire article here: https://juddtully.net/reviews/beauford-delaney/