The New York Times-20080127-Pop Art Meets Photorealism

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Pop Art Meets Photorealism

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DRESSED in black jeans and a buttoned vest on a brisk December day, the artist Barkley L. Hendricks pottered about his studio, which occupies just about every room of a two-story house in this quiet blue-collar town.

One of this state's most gifted but least-known artists, Mr. Hendricks, who also plays trumpet and saxophone in a local band, has been photographing women's shoes lately.

I can't help it, he said, almost apologetically. Pairs of shoes appeared in one of my paintings in 1975, and it just opened the door to something. Now I photograph them, include them in my paintings and have even begun to collect them through donations and purchases from yard sales and thrift stores.

Mr. Hendricks's house is tucked away on a typical suburban street, about a mile from the old port on the Thames River, but the interior is far from typical. Across the living room, pairs of shoes were arranged along the floor, while on the walls were a photograph of red platform shoes and a print of a stiletto heel kicking a watermelon.

There were more shoes upstairs in boxes, along with wigs, baseball caps, piles of photographs (mostly of women's shoes), several stand-up cardboard cutouts of women in bikinis advertising alcohol (a friend at a local liquor store keeps them for him), empty bottles of San Pellegrino, groupings of thunder eggs and crystals, antique pith helmets, stacks of records and CDs, and other odds and ends arranged in what he calls piles of ideas. And yet there was order amid the chaos. I know where stuff is, Mr. Hendricks said.

Down in the kitchen, Mr. Hendricks offered some hot tea along with theories about his fascination with shoes. They are telling social signifiers, he said, through which to examine identity, fashion and style. These themes, which have preoccupied Mr. Hendricks throughout his career, are at the heart of his first retrospective, which opens on Feb. 7 at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N. C., and tours nationally from there for the next three years. (No Connecticut venue has yet stepped forward.)

Funky and hip are terms often used to describe Mr. Hendricks's painting style, which mixes pop art, photorealism and black nationalism. He mostly paints full-figure portraits of people, often of color, from the Northeast. At least this is the sort of artwork he is known for. He pays particular attention to a subject's attitude and style. How people dress is how they want to be seen by the world, he said. Shoes are a part of that.

Critics and curators have come to regard Mr. Hendricks's portraits as some of the most distinctive in recent art. He has always done his own thing and avoided easy categorization, said Trevor Schoonmaker, curator of contemporary art at the Nasher and organizer of the exhibition. His groundbreaking work is as fresh today as it was 30 or 40 years ago, and a generation of young artists is deeply indebted to him. Among them is Kehinde Wiley, a newcomer from Los Angeles whose slick portraits of the black entertainment aristocracy adopt much from Mr. Hendricks's bold photographic portrayals.

Mr. Hendricks was born in Philadelphia in 1945 and studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at Yale University, where Walker Evans was among his teachers. He credits Mr. Evans with an interest in photography, which remains an important part of his art practice.

I like to paint live models if I can get them to sit for me, he said, but oftentimes I work from photographs. Inspiration comes from the people themselves. With certain people there is a style or a feel that I have gravitated to -- in particular, I like stylish women. But it could even be something as minor as the sight of a well-turned ankle. He is back to shoes.

Sometimes he knows the subjects, but other times he meets them by chance. One time I met this guy on the street in Philadelphia dressed completely in white holding a black briefcase -- a white suit, hat, shoes. I was so attracted to his sense of style I asked if I could photograph him. This was around 1970. I kept the photograph for two or three years, then made a painting using white acrylic, oil and magna paint for a total monochromatic effect. I called it Dr. Cool.

Mr. Hendricks opened his books of photographs of people taken over the decades. This is my mechanical sketchbook, he said. I like to photograph people, recording them to maybe use later. The people he paints are always in their own clothes, but sometimes, he admits, he switches stuff around, adding in a color or a piece of clothing, or changing other things a little for a better image.

Mr. Hendricks came to New London in 1972 for a job teaching art at Connecticut College. He is still there, dividing his time between the classroom, his studio and Jamaica, where he goes every winter to paint the landscape. Everything is done on the spot.

I am at that time in my career where I want immediate gratification, he said. Most of the portraits are done over days and months, while I can usually get the landscapes done in a day. This gives them a kinship with a time and a place. It is therapeutic and pleasurable.

[Illustration]PHOTOS: ORDER AMID CHAOS: Barkley L. Hendricks in his New London home, with a portrait, called Frog, right, and a collection of hats and piles of ideas, below. Above, YS Falls #6. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY C. M. GLOVER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)