Beauford Delaney, Yaddo, 1950, pastel on paper, 18 × 24 inches. Knoxville Museum of Art, 2017 purchase with funds provided by the Rachael Patterson Young Art Acquisition Reserve. © The Estate of Beauf
April 2 – June 21, 2021 @ Asheville Art Museum
ASHEVILLE, N.C.— Featuring more than 40 paintings and works on paper,Beauford Delaney’s "Metamorphosis into Freedom"examines the career evolution of modern painter Beauford Delaney (Knoxville, TN 1901–1979 Paris, France) within the context of his 38-year friendship with writer James Baldwin (New York 1924-1987 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France). The exhibition is on view in the Asheville Art Museum’s Explore Asheville Exhibition Hall April 2 through June 21, 2021.
The works in this exhibition bring into special focus Delaney's experiments with abstraction sparked by the artist’s 1955 move to the Paris suburb of Clamart, as well as the ways that the artist and Baldwin’s ongoing intellectual exchange shaped one another’s creative output and worldview from their first meeting in 1940 until Delaney’s death in 1979.
"Metamorphosis into Freedom"also calls attention to Baldwin’s role as “witness” to the painter’s evolution, which he deemed “one of the most extraordinary personal and artistic journeys of our time.” Baldwin found in Delaney a father figure, muse, and model of perseverance as a gay man of color, who opened for him the transformative possibility that a Black man could become an artist. Delaney found in Baldwin a powerful intellectual and spiritual anchor who inspired some of his finest works and who provided vital emotional support and creative validation.
“The Asheville Art Museum is excited to partner with the Knoxville Museum of Art to bring Beauford Delaney's work this side of the Blue Ridge Mountains,” says Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator at the Asheville Art Museum. “An Appalachian-born artist, Delaney's portraits, landscapes, and abstractions offer an important view into his experiences in both the region and abroad. Combined with materials related to his friendship with James Baldwin,Metamorphosis into Freedompresents visitors with a unique opportunity to journey through Delaney's rich and deeply thoughtful career accentuated by materials from his sketchbooks and other ephemera."
The wealth of powerfully vibrant works of art that Delaney produced during his 50-year career is nothing less than a remarkable and unlikely triumph. Seemingly at every turn, he faced daunting obstacles in the surrounding environment and from within his own psyche. Although gregarious and charismatic, Delaney left behind journals and letters that afford insight into an already well-documented battle with mental illness, depression, poverty, marginalization, and loneliness. As Baldwin once observed, Delaney “has been starving and working all his life . . . He has been menaced more than any other man I know by his social circumstances and also by all the emotional and psychological stratagems he has been forced to use to survive; and more than any other man I know, he has transcended both the inner and the outer darkness.” His artistic practice provided a steadying influence and a lifelong source of intellectual engagement and creative experimentation. To Delaney, art was an act of love and faith capable of revealing inner truths and offering entry into a world of illumination. Over the course of his career, Delaney made a winding journey through artistic territory whose technical borders and stylistic intersections have only begun to be examined and documented. The broad expressive range the painter navigated reflects his boundless creative drive and tireless pursuit of lofty and far-reaching artistic goals.
Designed to underscore the powerful presence of Baldwin in Delaney’s life,"Metamorphosis into Freedom"includes more than 40 works by the painter that depict Baldwin, were inspired by or dedicated to Baldwin, illustrate key turning points in Delaney’s development as described in Baldwin’s writings, or document key places and events where their ongoing dialogue unfolded. The exhibition focuses special attention to a chapter in Delaney’s studio practice in which he intensified experiments with abstraction after moving to the Paris suburb of Clamart in late 1955. The relatively quiet suburban surroundings of his new studio sparked Delaney’s pursuit of representing light in bold abstractions in which references to the physical world appear incinerated. Baldwin witnessed this exciting new development and considered Delaney’s Clamart abstractions as representing the pinnacle of his artistic achievement, and the fullest realization of his lifelong search to express metaphysical concepts of light and movement. In an essay for a 1964 show at Galerie Lambert, Baldwin noted Delaney’s extraordinary painted light was such that it “held the power to illuminate, even to redeem and reconcile and heal.”
Beauford Delaney’s "Metamorphosis into Freedom"is organized by the Knoxville Museum of Art, which owns the largest and most comprehensive public collection of Beauford Delaney’s art. Fore more information, visitashevilleart.org.
The Museum’s galleries, the Museum Store, and Perspective Café are open with limited capacity. Art PLAYce, an intergenerational makerspace, and the Frances Mulhall Achilles Art Research Library remain temporarily closed. The Museum welcomes visitors Wednesday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with late-night Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Museum is closed on Tuesdays. General admission is free for Museum Members, UNC Asheville students, and children under 6; $15 per adult; $13 per senior (65+); and $10 per student (child 6–17 or degree-seeking college students with valid ID). Admission tickets are available atashevilleart.org/visit. Visitors may become Members at the welcome desk during their visit or online at?ashevilleart.org/membership.
Category: Exhibits