An American in Paris

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The art of Beauford Delaney traces a line of progression found in the works of many 20th-century American artists. Essentially, it is the story of talent fostered at home, celebrated, but ultimately unsatisfying to its creator. A trip abroad allows the artist to find a new creative spirit and search through problems in an atmosphere of isolation and experimentation followed by a return home in triumph.

The difference with Delaney is his work is intensely personal, highly emotional and free of inhibition. These qualities keep his art from the cliché. Thankfully, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s "Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris" is a major show with enough examples to allow for a career assessment. The exhibition runs through Jan. 29. Running slightly longer is "Beauford Delaney in Context: Selections from the Permanent Collection," an accompanying installation that closes Feb. 12.

This allows the museum to show work from Delaney’s contemporaries and associates.

Delaney’s work certainly wasn’t breakthrough, but his talent and expertise allowed him to capture exactly what he wanted from his subjects, as well as his style. Born in 1901 in Knoxville, Tenn., Delaney moved in his early 20s to Boston, where he studied at the Copley Society and the South Boston School of Art. He moved to New York in 1929 and lived in Harlem and Greenwich Village.

He found early success with exhibitions at the Whitney, the Public Library, the Baltimore Museum of Art and a number of New York galleries. He also studied at the Art Students League with John Sloan and Thomas Hart Benton. Delaney, in the ’30s and ’40s, associated himself with leading avant-garde figures such as Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe. Part of the "in context" show includes a marvelous drawing by O’Keeffe of Delaney from that time.

Delaney’s figurative compositions were replaced by abstraction after he relocated to Paris in 1953. He joined an expatriate crowd of intellectuals including James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Sam Francis and Bob Thompson. He was particularly close to novelist and civil rights activist Baldwin, who sought Delaney out in New York and whose portrait is a show highlight. Delaney succeeded in Paris, with his work featured in two major solo exhibitions. That was far from his first work in Paris in 1954, which was examined for this show and found to have been painted on a canvas cut from a raincoat. Delaney died in 1979 in a Parisian sanatorium after years of struggling with schizophrenia and alcoholism.

Delaney’s reputation has not continued to grow and part of this exhibition, mounted by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, is to revive his stature. Michael Taylor, the museum’s curator of modern art, said, "This exhibition offers a truly revisionist account of this outstanding artist. We are delighted to show Delaney’s work in Philadelphia, where his pivotal 1947 exhibition at the Pyramid Club will be highlighted, along with his ‘Portrait of James Baldwin,’ which the museum acquired in 1998. The work of this extraordinary artist will also be placed with the context of the museum’s outstanding collection of American modernists, such as John Marin, Jacob Lawrence, and Sam Francis, all of whom Delaney knew and admired."

The Pyramid Club, a prestigious African-American club in Philadelphia, hosted a Delaney show where he met and inspired other African-American artists such as Dox Thrash and Humbert Howard. That show is partially re-created within this modern exhibit.

Delaney’s art also provides a glimpse into pre-World War II New York with urban landscapes, jazz clubs, streets and parks of Harlem and Greenwich Village. The organizers also offer a personal vision of Delaney as his faced life and his work as a gay black artist. Rather than seeking the esoteric and hidden, the viewer would do well to enjoy the forms, color and excitement Delaney generated in his vision.

The exhibition comes with an illustrated catalogue with essays by scholars who personally knew Delaney. It, along with the "in context" side exhibition, provides the environment for a deeper appreciation of Delaney’s work, while perhaps not spectacular, was first class in the context of American modern art of his time.

"Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris"
Through Jan. 29
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway
215-763-8100
www.philamuseum.org
Admission: Adults, $12; seniors, $9; and students with valid ID and ages 13-18, $8; children 12 and younger, free; pay what you wish on Sundays